Wednesday’s Locked On Ole Miss was a football-first show with one eye three weeks down the road and the other on Norman. Steven Willis made the case for Ole Miss’s quarterback of the future, broke down what Oklahoma’s head coach just admitted about last year’s game, and explained why the coming 24-team playoff is built for a program like Ole Miss. Here’s what mattered.
Keegan Croucher Is Ole Miss’s Quarterback of the Future
The headline take: Keegan Croucher is the best high school quarterback in America, and he’s already committed to Ole Miss. “He is the best quarterback in the entire United States of America high school football system,” Willis said, trusting the tape over the industry rankings (Rivals has him fifth among 2027 quarterbacks). Croucher reorganized his life around the Rebels, moving to the Baylor School in Chattanooga for daily film and a college-style strength program, and he stayed committed through the coaching change because of Pete Golding. Through five games this fall he has completed 74% of his passes with 10 touchdowns and zero interceptions.
With the early signing period set for December 2-4, three weeks out, Ole Miss sits at 23 commitments in the 2027 class, ranked 14th nationally and 8th in the SEC by On3. The backbone of the class is the defensive line, and Golding is building through high school rather than leaning only on the portal. The first name Willis says he’ll be looking for when the signatures start coming in: Croucher.
Brent Venables Told Oklahoma Exactly How It Lost Last Year
Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables opened his Tuesday press conference on Ole Miss, and specifically on Trinidad Chambliss, whom he called arguably the best player in college football and compared to Vince Young. Venables pointed to third and fourth down as where last year’s 34-26 loss in Norman turned: Ole Miss converted nine third downs that day to Oklahoma’s four and held the ball for more than 35 minutes.
Willis’s read is that the blueprint cuts both ways. If Ole Miss wins third down and keeps Chambliss on the field, it’s running the exact game Venables just described as the problem. The flip side is Oklahoma’s new Jason Witten-called offense, which leaned on long, clock-draining drives in last week’s win at Florida, the ball-control script every opponent tries to use to keep Chambliss on the sideline.
Why the 24-Team Playoff Is a Home Run for Ole Miss
The College Football Playoff is expanding to 24 teams in 2027, and Willis’s take is unambiguous: for a program built like Ole Miss, it’s a home run. The four power-conference champions and the top Group of Six team get automatic bids, the other 19 are at-large, the top eight seeds get byes, seeds 9 through 16 host first-round games, and 17 through 24 go on the road. The conference championship games go away.
The number that matters isn’t 24, it’s 16. For a program that wins nine games in a good year and eight in a normal one, making the field becomes the floor, and the question is no longer in or out. It’s host, not host, or miss it entirely. The receipt: the 9-3 Ole Miss team of 2024 finished 14th and got left out of a 12-team field; under the new math, that team is in, and a home first-round game, as Golding noted this week, is worth a fortune to Oxford.
Also on the Show: Bill Flowers on the Georgia Autopsy
Ole Miss legend Bill Flowers joined to close out the autopsy on the Georgia loss and put it squarely on the sideline. “This was probably the worst showing I’ve ever seen from Ole Miss,” Flowers said, arguing the staff ran the same beaten plan it used against Florida and Georgia instead of adapting; his fix for Oklahoma is to spread it out, get Chambliss into space, and stop playing into a defense built to pressure. Willis pushed back with the counter he keeps coming back to: if Ole Miss had even an average defense this year, this team is 8-1, because the offense has largely done its job.
Hotty Toddy.
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