Cedric Johnson explains Ole Miss' defensive slide in 2022

It was a tale of two halves for the 2022 Ole Miss defense but defensive end Cedric Johnson said it had nothing to do with the teams the Rebels faced. Instead, it was all about them and their inability to bounce back.

“I believe it was just staying in the right head space, just thinking we were too high up on things, thinking we were having such a good season,” Johnson said at SEC Media Days last week. “I don’t think we ran into any super tough opponents until later in the season. I believe we just finally hit someone hard, didn’t know how to shake back from it.”

Ole Miss started the 2022 season with an 7-0 record, including a high-profile victory over Kentucky. But the rest of the season saw the Rebels descended down the SEC West rankings.

They lost five of their final six — including a bowl game versus Texas Tech — to finish the season with an 8-5 record. After their Oct. 29 victory over Texas A&M, Ole Miss failed to win a game the rest of the year.

The Rebels defense had five of their six best defensive performances over the first five weeks of the year. The team’s 25.5 points per game average on the season ranked 57th in all of Division I college football.

It will be a new-look Ole Miss defense this year as the Rebels have a new defensive coordinator leading the charge this season in Pete Golding. The former defensive coordinator at Alabama, Golding was the leader of the defense for the Crimson Tide during their 2020 national championship season.

“Pete, I like him a lot,” said Johnson, who had 32 tackles last year with 4.5 tackles for loss and four sacks. “He’s funny. If you didn’t know, he’s a pretty funny guy. I really like him, how particular in detail he is in the defense. But he doesn’t stray away from at the end of the day we just playing ball, play the game you love, play hard, play fast, play physical. That will take care of the majority of our problems, take care of the majority of things. That’s the main thing. My role, I feel like I’m going to be moving a lot more, might be dropping back some, coming off the edge like I usually do. It’s going to be a lot more fun for me, just the D-line in general.”