Lane Kiffin calls out Texas A&M for abnormally high stoppages for injury substitutions

It wouldn’t be fair to say that teams commonly fake injuries to slow down up-tempo offenses, but it does happen. Sometimes, it can be pretty obvious. Players might look to the sideline before going down or might pop up and return a play later. It’s an issue that college football wants to correct, though it’s difficult to do. It’s also an issue that Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin knows about all too well.

As someone who runs a tempo offense, Lane Kiffin sees teams look for reasons to stop or slow down the game against his teams all the time. That includes Texas A&M on Saturday, where Kiffin felt there was an abnormal amount of stoppages for injuries.

“I mean, I’m not gonna get very far into it, but you guys saw whatever it was,” Lane Kiffin said. “It was eight, I think, defensive injury timeouts–all on defense.”

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“So, you know, whatever. It is what it is. There’s a way around the rule, and I’m not gonna say they did it but I mean what are the analytics of that happening and then seeing the players like a play or two later back out there?”

As Lane Kiffin pointed out, there is a loophole in the rule. It’s impossible to prove a player isn’t injured and officials can’t ignore a player who goes down. So, you have to treat these like injuries. That also means that those players only need to miss one play, while buying the rest of the defense a chance to regroup. It’s not in the spirit of the game, but it does happen.

There has been some talk about trying to change the rule around injuries in college football. During the summer, the NCAA created a process for reporting suspicious instances to the national coordinator of officials. However, that’s really all that changed. Rumors that players would need to leave the game for a series, instead of a play, never came to fruition.

Lane Kiffin said beating Jimbo Fisher was personal

This past offseason, Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher made headlines for his public feud with Alabama’s Nick Saban. It stemmed from a comment that Saban made, regarding how Texas A&M was using NIL to recruit. Saban wasn’t alone, though, as other coaches like Lane Kiffin, fairly or unfairly, called out the Aggies too.

Jimbo Fisher fired back then, calling them clowns. Lane Kiffin took that personally, as he explained after the game.

“Yeah, I don’t give you coach-speak, so yeah, that’s real. Someone attacks you personally, calls you and your buddy Coach Saban both clowns, you take that personal. So, glad we won,” Lane Kiffin said. “I guess I can be a clown for Halloween then.”

In his on-field comments following the game, Lane Kiffin also jokingly wondered if Jimbo Fisher had a joker costume for him to wear this Halloween.

The two teams won’t meet on the field again until 2023. Until then, according to Paul Finebaum, this is now the biggest feud in college football.