Ole Miss lost at home to Georgia 42-7 and did not score until the closing minutes. The Bulldogs led 7-0, then 14-0, then 21-0, and the Ole Miss defense gave up 295 rushing yards. Three games remain, beginning Saturday at Oklahoma.
Locked On Ole Miss host Steven Willis called it the worst version of a Pete Golding defense he has seen, and said it ends with Golding hiring a defensive coordinator. Former Ole Miss quarterback John Fourcade, a weekly guest, said his nephew had told him the same thing earlier that day: Golding has to give up the play calling.
Fourcade argued it would cost Golding nothing. “It doesn’t hurt for you to be just a head coach and control both sides of the football,” he said. He can still build the plan with his coordinator, stay on the headset and step in when he wants to. Coaches who come up on offense, he said, resist surrendering that stamp of approval on every play.
Willis said the sample size is large enough to stop calling the defense talented, blamed misevaluations in a transfer class assembled in about a month, and said Ole Miss must hit the portal in 2027. Set the Georgia game aside, he argued, and the offense played well enough to win the rest. Fourcade did not spare it: “You got to score points. You scored seven at the end of the game.”
Fourcade said a 42-7 loss at least does not linger the way a close one does, and expects Oklahoma to be hard to beat in Norman behind a good defense. Before the season, he said, he had Ole Miss at 9-3 and out of the playoff either way. Willis called Oklahoma a test of offensive coordinator John David Baker against an elite defense.
Photo: Ole Miss head coach Pete Golding, November 7, 2026, at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Petre Thomas-Imagn Images.
Adapted from the November 9, 2026 episode of Locked On Ole Miss, hosted by Steven Willis, part of the Locked On Podcast Network. Watch the full episode.