Ole Miss head football coach Pete Golding knows his defense play-calling and is confident about it.
With Ole Miss football preparing for the College Football Playoff and their first-round matchup against Tulane, Golding re-emphasized his confidence in running the defense through the decision of continuing to be the Rebels' defensive coordinator.
"Yeah, I’m the defensive coordinator. So nothing’s changed on who’s calling plays," Golding said in his press conference previewing Tulane.
"I love calling defense. I feel like I do a decent job at it. That’s not going to change."
Pete Golding answers the most-obvious follow-up question as well
And as for who will be sitting up in that box, Golding explained that as well.
"Obviously, some responsibility that I took in that room has changed. And obviously, Coach Bryan Brown will move up to control that room, which we’re super excited about. He’s going to take on a lot of responsibility of managing that room from a practice-scripting standpoint, and that throughout the week, and have some more responsibility within that."
"But as far as actually calling the defense, the system, the terminology, we’ve recruited that system for three years, and I’ve looked at every kid in the face and every parent in the eye and said, ‘I can assure you that system won’t change and it’s not going to.’ And so we’ll be in a position, we have a lot of really good people in this room, to be able to allow me to still do that on game day, and that’ll be at this point and moving forward."
The clarity was much needed since Kiffin's exit and Golding's promotion, and not to mention the staff's uncertain future, had cast a doubt on play-calling duties.
Another factor in calming down this storm of questions was getting JD Baker as OC and Kelvin Bolden back in the game as Rebels.
So far, Ole Miss seems unbothered with Kiffin's absurdly timed exit, since Golding has handled the shift well right before the Playoff.