Ole Miss Football: Grading Out The Ole Miss/LSU Game
Offensive Grades
Ole Miss Rebels Football
For the sake of optimism we’ll start with the offensive side of the ball. We try to look at the stats and grade from there. In this case there is few positives from the LSU game to grade so the marks the offense receives will be pretty bad.
Quarterbacks
Of course, it’s never good when you lose a starter for the season. In this case, it’s even worse when its your SEC leading quarterback. There is an obvious void when you lose your team leader. We saw it last season when Chad Kelly went down for the year. Once again, there will be a void left in Shea Patterson‘s absence.
Enter Jordan Ta’amu. The junior college transfer came into the game in the wake of Patterson’s injury and played remarkably well considering he was playing from far behind. Ta’amu was 7 of 11 for 78 yards and orchestrated the final score for the Rebels.
Considering Shea was allowed to play hurt for much of the game, Patterson played as well as could be expected. Patterson finished the evening 10 of 23 for 116 yards. However, Patterson did throw three picks.
Quarterback Grades, C
Wide Receivers
The NWO dropped the ball. In fact, there were a number of drops on the day for the Ole Miss receiving corp. Tight-end Dawson Knox led all receivers with 5 grabs for 72 yards while SEC leader AJ Brown had 4 catches for only 39 yards. All total 8 receivers had 17 catches for only 194 yards.
Drops are going to happen from time to time. Bad games will affect even the best receivers in the nation from time to time and it happened against LSU. Going forward this receiving corp has to step up and help Jordan Ta’amu. Dropped passes and takeaways have to stop or Ta’amu will be behind the gun. However, this grade is for the LSU performance alone.
Wide Receivers Grade, C
Running Backs
Of course, Ole Miss offensive coordinator Phil Longo has failed to produce a legitimate rushing game thus far in the season. It’s not on the running backs so far this season. When they’ve been given the ball they’ve done pretty good.
Right now, Jordan Wilkins is sitting at 468 yards rushing and is the leading rusher for Ole Miss. Wilkins is a hard-nosed running-back and gets his yards. However, he has to touch the ball to be competitive. 13 carries in the LSU game for 86 yards limits his impact.
In the game Ole Miss rushed for 153 net yards. This is unacceptable for SEC play. Until Ole Miss can run the ball with authority there will be more losses. Being a passing team is great when you can accent it with a dominant rushing attack. So far we’ve failed to see it. Therefore, we have to grade the rushing attack accordingly.
Running Backs Grade, C-
It’s obvious we have an offensive game-plan which is easy, in fact very easy to circumvent. Until Ole Miss can produce yardage on a regular basis and score TDs then there will be more bleeding on the offensive side of the ball. Until that time we have to grade them on what we saw in the LSU game. Keep in mind the majority of these marks fall on the coaching staff and not the players.
Overall Offensive Grade, C-