We Really Don’t Have to Remind Kirby Ole Miss Is Good

OXFORD, Miss. — It’s tempting to point out to No. 3 Georgia coach Kirby Smart his Bulldogs probably won’t be the only good team on the field Saturday. Don’t waste your time. He knows.

Coaches see the films, too. They are better able to analyze teams than we are and he knows exactly what they’ll meet at 2:30 p.m. Saturday in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.

“They’re probably, when you look at offense and defense, both sides of the ball, they’re probably the best combination of those two things in our conference,” Smart said on the SEC Teleconference on Wednesday morning. “They are really good at both and are playing really good football right now. We’ll have a great challenge over in Oxford.”

Since they both were on Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama for a time, the inevitable reach for a story dealing with nothing got asked. The bottom line to that is Smart and Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin aren’t constant text buddies and Saban doesn’t even like to do that stuff. I agree with Nick.

At No. 16, the Rebels can’t afford a loss and have any shot at the College Football Playoff. Georgia may be able to survive one if it’s a close game, but probably not anything like the 63-31 beatdown Ole Miss laid on Arkansas last weekend.

Smart knows how it happened, though, because he does still talk to Razorbacks coach Sam Pittman on a fairly regular basis.

“The biggest difference is their defense,” Smart said about the Rebels. “They’re really good, arguably the best defense in the country in terms of sacks and tackles for loss in the SEC. It’s a product of back to their line of scrimmage play. They upgraded all the way across the board. Second year in the system Pete Golding has, last year was the first year and he didn’t have the personnel to play like he wanted to. He had to do it with smoke and mirrors. Now, he’s got really good players. Players make schemes better.

“They haven’t had to totally rely on their offense with the defense they have. If anything, they’ve relied on their defense. (Defense) has kept them in games, and they almost won games for them. They can very easily be undefeated. They did what they went out to do for sure.”

Smart also knows the defense has had Kiffin’s attention this week in practices. He’s been jumping up and down a little over the defense giving up 31 points to the Hogs. Even using backup players, Kiffin is making that a coaching point because he wants everybody never letting go of the rope, no matter what the score is.

“Ole Miss is a tremendous team,” Smart said. No bulletin-board material there. Ole Miss fans should at least know, though, he agrees with them.