Friday’s show was a straight Texas preview, and Steven led with a number instead of a question: Ole Miss’s worst offensive day all season is still better than the best Texas has managed against a Power 4 team. From there it was the case for the upset, the Colin Simmons news that reshapes the matchup, three keys with the names who decide them, and a read on one of the weirdest lines of the year. Here’s the best of it. Hotty Toddy.
Ole Miss’s floor is higher than Texas’s ceiling
That was the whole thesis, and it opened the show: 28 points is Ole Miss’s floor this year, and 24 is the most Texas has scored against a Power 4 opponent. Go down the game log — 41 on Louisville, 41 on Charlotte, 32 on LSU, 28 at Florida, 52 at Vanderbilt, 31 at Missouri — and that 28 in the Florida loss is the bottom of the range, a shade under 37.5 points a game. Texas, meanwhile, has topped out at 24 against Ohio State, Oklahoma and Florida and managed 20 at Tennessee. Ole Miss has cleared 400 yards of total offense in all six games, 444 a night, and the run game has climbed every SEC week: 63 yards on LSU, 128 on Florida, 196 at Vanderbilt, 257 on Missouri — 453 on the ground over the last two games alone.
The defense carries its own math into Austin: 36 tackles for loss to the opponent’s 19, 11 sacks to five allowed, and just 20 points surrendered total across the Vanderbilt and Missouri games. Missouri came in averaging nearly 36 a game and left with a field goal and 39 rushing yards. A team with that floor on offense and that ceiling on defense is why Steven said he’s confident, not hopeful.
The Colin Simmons factor
This was the honest caveat, and Steven refused to wave it off. Texas edge Colin Simmons — and his backup — were ruled doubtful, and Simmons is not a role player: 10.5 of the Longhorns’ 18 sacks and 16.5 of their tackles for loss run through him. “Losing him is the equivalent, in my opinion, of losing Trinidad Chambliss on the offensive side of the ball,” Steven said, and he meant it as a measure of how much Simmons warps a game plan.
What it changes is the how. Without Simmons on the edge, Ole Miss can run its normal protections instead of keeping a tight end in or chipping with a back every snap, which opens the RPO game back up for Chambliss. Steven expects Will Muschamp to try to make up the difference by blitzing — because standing pat against Chambliss right now, in his words, is a losing idea — and sees that as a pick-your-poison the Rebels can live with.
Three keys and the names to watch
Key one is tempo. Ole Miss snaps it every 23.5 seconds, eighth-fastest in the country, and in a stadium holding 100,000 that pace is how you keep a Texas front that’s down its best rusher on the field and keep the crowd out of it. Key two is getting Texas into third-and-long, where the Longhorns went 8-of-36 over their last three games — Blake Purchase (team-high 6.5 TFL, 3.5 sacks) and Suntarine Perkins are the two who live in the backfield. Key three is Kewan Lacy in the red zone: 29 rushing touchdowns since the start of last season, on a team that has scored on every red-zone trip this year, and he’s a Lancaster, Texas, kid going home.
For names, Steven is watching Luke Ferrelli, who leads the team with 39 tackles and was the show’s Player of the Game against Missouri; Will Echoles, who the game notes flat-out call a disruptive force against a shaky Texas interior; and Caleb Cunningham, PFF’s top-graded Ole Miss receiver on under half the snaps, as the young guy who makes Texas pay down the field if they sell out on Lacy. The back end — Jaylon Braxton and Nick Cull — has to win the explosive-play battle against Arch Manning, Ryan Wingo and Cam Coleman, because those are the throws that keep Texas alive.
The line, and the number
As of Thursday morning, FanDuel had Texas -3.5 with a total of 54.5 and Ole Miss at +134 on the money line — and the tell, Steven said, is that the spread hasn’t budged since Simmons was ruled doubtful. The price on the Ole Miss side got more expensive and the total dropped a point, but 3.5 held even with 88% of the money and 86% of the bets landing on the Rebels. When that much comes in on one side and the number doesn’t move, the book is telling you it’s comfortable. The prediction market, for its part, had Ole Miss at about 42% to win.
The show reads the market; it doesn’t hand out picks. But asked for a score, Steven landed on Ole Miss 31, Texas 27 — built on the same floor-and-ceiling logic he opened with: Texas is too talented at home not to score some, but he doesn’t see them reaching the 30s without Simmons, and he doesn’t see Ole Miss getting held under 30.
Also on the show: Todd Wade on the run game
NFL veteran and former Rebel offensive lineman Todd Wade joined to explain how the run game finally broke loose on Missouri: better leverage, more movement at the point of attack, and linemen finishing blocks, all of it tracing back to the open week after Florida. He liked the defensive-line rotation — not leaving a smaller end like Purchase out there alone, mixing in Kam Franklin so Texas can’t just pick on one matchup — and he thinks the Rebels’ front is the better unit against a Texas offensive line that’s struggled all year. “I feel like we’re more talented in the right spots,” Wade said, and he put his prediction at 34-31 Rebels.
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