Ole Miss hosts Auburn on Saturday in Oxford as a favorite, with two losses and five games left: Auburn, Georgia, Mississippi State, Wofford and a road trip to Oklahoma. The Rebels will be without their best running back and are carrying injuries on the offensive line. Auburn’s quarterback has run for 480 yards this season.
Locked On Ole Miss host Steven Willis framed the rest of the season as a matter of results rather than margins. Ole Miss has dropped two games, Willis said, but style points no longer matter and the Rebels have to win the ones in front of them. He called Georgia the one genuinely difficult game left and said Ole Miss can outscore Oklahoma on the road.
Tom Vanderford, the Corinth mayor who joins the show each week, picked Ole Miss 38, Auburn 17. His path to it was to do to Auburn what LSU did: get up by a significant amount rather than let the game stay close. He noted a forecast for rain Saturday but argued Ole Miss plays well in any climate.
What Vanderford kept returning to was tackling. Ole Miss has to tackle well in space against Auburn, he said, against Georgia and for the rest of the season, with Antonio Kite and Jalyn Crawford on the outside carrying much of it. Three rough games are coming in a row, he said, and he is not discounting the Oklahoma trip. He credited Makhi Frazier for filling in well.
Willis had already arrived at the same number. Told Vanderford’s prediction, he said it was literally the exact score he had picked himself, two independent calls landing on Ole Miss 38, Auburn 17. He closed by noting Georgia is eight days away and that this team cannot afford to look past Saturday.
Photo: Trinidad Chambliss, September 12, 2026, at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Petre Thomas-Imagn Images.
Adapted from the October 30, 2026 episode of Locked On Ole Miss, hosted by Steven Willis, part of the Locked On Podcast Network. Watch the full episode.