Ole Miss was routed at home by Georgia last weekend and goes to Oklahoma on Saturday without Patrick Kutas, its best offensive lineman. The Sooners have struggled on offense but carry one of the stronger defensive fronts the Rebels will see, and several of those linemen played in last year’s meeting.
Locked On Ole Miss host Steven Willis reviewed the loss with former Ole Miss offensive lineman Todd Wade, whose central argument was that the opponent barely mattered. Wade said Ole Miss would have struggled against a mid-level SEC team, and that the problem was not Georgia but what the Rebels were doing.
Wade’s reading of the defense was technical. He said the defensive tackles appeared to come off the snap a beat late against the run, at home, which he called a problem in itself, and that a lineman a hair late sets off everything that follows. Behind them, he said, the linebackers were not filling gaps or attacking the front, which in a four-two front is the inside linebacker’s job.
Those corrections have not come all season, Wade said. He also pushed the too-many-cooks diagnosis past the defense: with John David Baker calling the offense and other voices in the headset, he said he sees the same crowded structure on that side. Willis argued that Baker, a first-year coordinator in the Southeastern Conference under a defensive-minded head coach, was meant to have room to grow rather than be perfect.
Wade was unimpressed by Oklahoma’s offense and said he is glad it is this week’s opponent, with the Rebels’ postseason case at its last real chance. He put the week on the staff as much as the players, saying Ole Miss will find out what its coaches deliver and that a show-me game belongs to the whole program.
Photo: Jack Patterson, Nov. 7, 2026, at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Petre Thomas-Imagn Images.
Adapted from the November 13, 2026 episode of Locked On Ole Miss, hosted by Steven Willis, part of the Locked On Podcast Network. Watch the full episode.
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