Ole Miss transformed its defense with heavy use of transfer portal

OXFORD, Miss. -- No one likes a bully, but Lane Kiffin thinks the best thing that happened to his Ole Miss football program was being pushed around a year ago by the SEC's biggest, baddest bully over the past few seasons.

Georgia did everything but take Ole Miss' lunch money in a punishing 52-17 beatdown last season in Athens, leaving Kiffin, athletic department officials and the school's NIL program, the Grove Collective, to do some serious soul-searching.

"I remember saying in the second half of that game, 'This will not happen again,' and then thinking about it on the whole plane ride home, 'How is this not going to happen again?" Kiffin told ESPN.

The answer: Ole Miss had to become the bully, and that's exactly what happened Saturday night in the Rebels' 28-10 bludgeoning of the Bulldogs in Kiffin's first signature win -- a statement win, really -- at the school.

The decisive victory, which helped lift Ole Miss to No. 11 in this week's College Football Playoff rankings, provided some validation after a preseason filled with hype for the Rebels, who boasted one of the more talented and higher-priced rosters in the country, a roster brimming with transfer portal heavyweights in the line of scrimmage.

"Maybe it's not as much now with the way Lane has raised our program to national relevance, but it's hard to go recruit five-star after five-star here at Ole Miss," athletic director Keith Carter said. "But when you can go get guys that are those same caliber guys in the portal, it's an equalizer.

"We proved that our roster is as good as Georgia's."

Kiffin, the self-anointed portal king, brought in 25 transfers this offseason with an eye on getting bigger and more physical on the offensive and defensive fronts, adding a "twitch" pass-rusher, a physical cornerback and another big tight end who could complement Caden Prieskorn, who transferred in from Memphis a year earlier.

"It wasn't going to be enough to just have a great running back and throw the ball for a lot of yards to beat Georgia," Kiffin said. "And if you're going to be a championship-caliber team, you have to beat Georgia, and you might have to beat them twice. The only way you do that is beat them at their own game -- in the line of scrimmage."

Kiffin also had to adjust his thinking.

"I made a decision to play differently than I ever used to play. Play to our defense and don't make mistakes and don't have turnovers and don't make penalties," Kiffin said. "We had one turnover on the first series against Georgia and zero penalties on offense or special teams."

It was a team effort that transcended the locker room. When former Ole Miss linebacker Walker Jones took the reins as executive director of the Grove Collective in 2022, his new best phone pal quickly became Kiffin.

"Coaches keep a really tight inner circle, and I give Lane a lot of credit for letting people like myself and others behind the curtain to understand how he wanted to build the roster, build the program, and the style of players he was looking for," Jones said. "He had to trust me as well as others. What we were able to do speaks to the alignment across the board with Keith [Carter], Lane and myself. If you don't have that tight alignment and trust among all those stakeholders, you're going to spin yourself in circles."

The Rebels zeroed in immediately on defense and added one of the more coveted defenders in the portal in Texas A&M tackle Walter Nolen, ESPN's top overall prospect in the 2022 class. Talented edge rusher Princely Umanmielen transferred from Florida along with linebacker Chris Paul Jr. from Arkansas and cornerback Trey Amos from Alabama. The Rebels had already beefed up their defensive line in previous years with JJ Pegues from Auburn and Jared Ivey from Georgia Tech.

At one point during Saturday's win over Georgia, former Duke and Ole Miss coach David Cutcliffe leaned over in the press box and said, "Look out there on the field, and a lot of the plays that are being made have come from guys who came here from other SEC schools."

The Rebels lead the country with 46 sacks and 103 tackles for loss, which is 18 more than the second-place FBS team (Duke). Almost a third of those tackles for loss (34) are from first-year transfers, and the number goes up to 61 if you include all transfers.

Georgia scored on its first possession after an Ole Miss turnover at its own 21-yard line. But after that, the Rebels' defense took over the game. The Bulldogs managed just one field goal the rest of the way, were held to 60 rushing yards and turned the ball over three times.

"I told some of our guys, I was like, 'They're not going to score again. This game doesn't need to be close,'" said Umanmielen, who had two sacks and six quarterback pressures against the Bulldogs.

"I don't think they're on our level."

The Ole Miss defense -- ranked sixth nationally in scoring (12.9 points allowed per game) -- hadn't played with that kind of edge under Kiffin, nor did it have this level of talent. The Rebels sacked Georgia quarterback Carson Beck five times, and his longest pass completion was to running back Cash Jones for 29 yards early in the third quarter.

"I remember some of our guys coming off the field saying, 'Carson doesn't want to play any longer,' that he wants 'No mas,'" Kiffin said, referencing boxer Roberto Duran's infamous line to end his 1980 fight with Sugar Ray Leonard.

Ole Miss' metamorphosis over the offseason didn't just come on defense. Kiffin noted that three of the starting offensive linemen in the win over Georgia, including the entire left side of Diego Pounds (6-foot-6, 340 pounds) and Nate Kalepo (6-6, 335), came via the portal. Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart, after leaving the game for a while early with an ankle injury, had a clean pocket much of the game and repeatedly found open receivers down the middle of the field.

It was a game plan that was hatched before the season even began.

"We had Georgia practices, so we could put in certain schemes just for them, both sides of the ball," Kiffin said. "We'd go over their pressures hundreds of times to pick them up and get guys open.

"That loss last year stuck with all of us, but the important thing was what we were going to do about it."

Kiffin dismissed the narrative that Ole Miss just went out and bought a team in the portal. He also heard the restlessness among the media and fans earlier in the season, after a home loss to Kentucky and an overtime loss at LSU, that the season was quickly becoming a disappointment.

"Every team in the top 10 has gone out and paid a lot of money for good players. That's where we are in college football now," Kiffin said. "But you can't buy culture. It's like a blended family. You all follow the same rules and all buy in even though you all came from different parents. It's the same with our team. You've got to have the right pieces and right coaches to motivate the players and get them to play together and take lesser roles sometimes."

Jones said he and Kiffin and the rest of the Ole Miss staff went to work on this year's team before last season had even ended, meaning persuading the likes of Ivey and Pegues, receiver Tre Harris, kicker Caden Davis and Dart to come back for another season instead of turning pro.

"We were able to keep all the ones Lane wanted to keep," Jones said. "Retention was our first priority."

Running back Quinshon Judkins left for Ohio State, but Kiffin and the staff weren't willing to pony up to keep him. They preferred to spread out the money differently in the portal chase.

"We had a good roster last year, but what happened in the Georgia game was a wake-up call for all of us," Jones said. "And we spent money judiciously because we knew what kind of nucleus we had coming back. There were some good players we walked away from because some of the leaders on the team -- Dart, Harris and Pegues -- didn't have a good feel about them from a cultural fit, and we moved on."

Ole Miss' NIL expenditures for football increased by about 60% from 2023 to 2024, Jones said, and hovers somewhere in the range of $13 million for this year. Still, that's not in the top tier among college football programs, which includes the likes of Ohio State, Texas and Oregon. But Ole Miss did vault into a tier that includes, among others, Miami, Tennessee and Florida.

"The real numbers for all these schools aren't really out there, and a lot of the perennial powers are paying a lot of money too," Kiffin said. "What I feel good about is that we have the right mentality guys, guys who didn't come here for just a paycheck. These guys came here to be a part of a potential championship team.

"The thing that gets lost sometimes about us is that we won 11 games last year. Nobody was coming here to be a part of a rebuilding team."

It's the reason the Ole Miss players branded this season "The Last Dance," a takeoff from the Chicago Bulls' three-peat championship teams in the 1990s.

Granted, Ole Miss hasn't sniffed a championship since winning the SEC title in 1963, but the theme originated in Oxford when players like Dart, Harris and Pegues decided to hang around for another season and team up with newcomers like Umanmielen, Nolen, Paul and Amos to see whether they could carve out some Ole Miss history.

"They were all coming together one more year, and that's why they named it 'The Last Dance,'" Kiffin said.

One of the things Kiffin is most excited about is that his team should be as healthy as it's been all season entering the stretch run. Harris (groin) should be back against Florida on Nov. 23 after a bye week.

"We haven't had Tre for the last three games, and he's the best receiver in the country," Kiffin said of Harris, who still leads the SEC with 987 receiving yards.

Kiffin is also hopeful of getting running back Logan Diggs in the lineup. Diggs, a transfer from LSU, tore his ACL in the bowl game last year and has been unable to play this season. Diggs was at practice Tuesday. He's a big, physical back who would fit well into what Kiffin wants to continue to do with his offense. He also has extensive experience at LSU and Notre Dame.

"I always thought we might struggle at times at the beginning of the year because we had so many new players, and some of those guys like Juice [Antwane Wells Jr.] and Princely [Umanmielen] had offseason surgeries and weren't with us in the spring," Kiffin said. "I thought we might stumble early but would be really strong toward the end of the season."

Ole Miss (8-2, 4-2) still must face Florida on the road and Mississippi State at home to close out the regular season, and Kiffin's most daunting challenge now might be bringing his team (and the Ole Miss community) back to earth. There was some talk of recognizing the football team at halftime of an Ole Miss basketball game after the win over Georgia, but Kiffin quickly squashed that idea.

"What do you say: 'Here's the Ole Miss football team that did what it was supposed to do'?" Kiffin quipped. "We won one game. We beat Georgia. That's what we expected to do. We're not having some parade."

Kiffin said he "channeled" his old boss, Nick Saban, in getting ready for Georgia last week.

"When somebody has success, you want to copy it," Kiffin said. "All week, I was saying, 'What would Coach [Saban] do? What would Coach do?' Because he owned Kirby [Smart], was 5-1 against him."

And after the breakthrough win, Kiffin reached out to Saban for some advice on how to get his team refocused on what lies ahead.

Saban's response was vintage: "People are infected with success when they think anything done in the past will have any impact on what happens in the future."

With the way the Rebels played against Georgia, the future for the Ole Miss football team is considerably brighter than it was a week ago.