One day out from the trip to Norman, Friday’s LOOM Flagship flipped a week of doom and gloom on its head. After days of laying out how Oklahoma could win, Steven turned the table and made the case for why Ole Miss walks out with the upset — three reasons, three keys, three players to watch, a betting line that moved all week, and a final score. The thread tying it together: an average defense and a heavy dose of the right running back are enough to steal this one. Hotty Toddy.
Three reasons the Rebels win in Norman
Start with the explosive plays. Oklahoma’s defense is the real thing — through eight games it gave up about 304 yards a game, only around 175 through the air, and held opponents to 28% on third down before smothering Florida 23-7. You do not grind out 12-play drives on that unit; you beat it with two or three shots of 30-plus yards. Ole Miss has the man to hit them. Trinidad Chambliss went for 315 passing and 53 rushing in last year’s 34-26 win, and Brent Venables spent this week all but tipping his cap, calling Chambliss arguably the best player in college football — “he got us when we had him.” Steven’s ask is simple: take two deep shots every quarter to Deuce Alexander, Caleb Cunningham or Caleb Odom down the seam. Even the incompletions keep the safeties from squeezing everything down.
Reasons two and three are where the upset lives. “Ole Miss’s defense only has to be average because the Oklahoma offense is not that good,” Steven argued — the Sooners average about 22 points a game, ran for just 106 a game through eight, and scored 25 or fewer in seven of nine. Average, not elite, gets it done. And reason three could outlast the game itself: with Kewan Lacy out again, the backfield belongs to Shekai Mills-Knight, and if he hits 20 carries he keeps Oklahoma’s clock-control offense on the sideline and starts answering whether he is the guy going forward.
The defense is the problem — it just has to be serviceable
Steven did not sugarcoat the Georgia blowout — the worst Ole Miss performance he can remember, explosive play after explosive play, a defense that has cracked against Florida, Texas and Georgia alike. The number he keeps coming back to is third down: a year ago in Norman, Ole Miss converted nine third downs to Oklahoma’s four and won the game. He is not asking for a shutout in this one, just a couple of early three-and-outs to buy the offense an extra possession. If the defense is merely serviceable, the offense is good enough to win. If it is what it was against Georgia, none of the rest matters.
The number moved all week
Ole Miss opened as a 2.5-point favorite on FanDuel on Sunday, and by Thursday morning it was a pick ’em, with the money line sitting at -110 both ways and the total parked at 49.5 all week. Steven’s read: the market still respects this team enough to make them a road favorite after a 35-point home loss, but every tick since Sunday has drifted toward Oklahoma and toward the idea that Jason Witten’s Florida game plan is the real deal. His final score lands on the Rebels anyway — Ole Miss 24, Oklahoma 21 — banking on a couple of explosive plays and Mills-Knight’s 20 carries.
Players to watch
Chambliss has to wash off the Georgia tape — 18 of 34 for 170 yards with an interception and a lost fumble — and get back to the version Venables compared to Vince Young. Mills-Knight is the engine; give him the ball 20 times and let him get lathered up. And the name Steven says nobody mentions enough is tight end Caleb Odom, who has 27 catches for 360 yards and two scores and sits right behind the linebackers on play-action when they crash on the run. One real worry up front: Patrick Kutas is out at right guard, forcing a reshuffled line a week after Chambliss was sacked four times, against an Oklahoma front that averages 2.8 sacks a game.
Also on the show
Two guests joined the same day. Ole Miss legend Todd Wade broke down the Georgia film and the offensive line, saying he had “never seen our team so unprepared,” and both he and Corinth mayor Tom Vanderford kept circling the same structural question — whether Pete Golding can run the program and call the defense at the same time, and whether handing the defensive play sheet to Bryan Brown is the fix. Vanderford, for his part, was not writing the trip off: “I think we’ve got enough to get a W … in Norman,” he said, while echoing Steven’s push to lean harder on Mills-Knight.
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