Lane Kiffin explains fourth down decisions in bowl game

In Ole Miss’ loss to Texas Tech in the Texas Bowl, Lane Kiffin was incredibly aggressive on fourth down. He went for it on his own side of the 50-yard line multiple times, including from the 11-yard line. It didn’t work, though, and the Rebels struggled, going just two for seven on fourth down.

After the game, Lane Kiffin tried to explain the thought process in going for it on fourth down so frequently.

“I mean, I didn’t want to do it,” Lane Kiffin said. “Marty [Biagi] wanted to do it, and so–that was a joke.”

“So, we run through those things. They have a look, we have two blockers out there for them, and, you know, those things are always hit or miss. I mean, not hit or miss schematically, but sometimes you don’t have the right scheme. We had enough guys for them and went to make the cut, and the guy made a good play and slipped before he could get behind him. So, something that we had worked all month on. A really good player in [Dayton] Wade,” Lane Kiffin explained the fake punt in the first half.

Lane Kiffin also pointed to a mixture of analytics and circumstances that led to his aggression with fourth downs. Because he expected Texas Tech to score a lot and move the ball no matter where they started from, he wanted to try and steal possessions.

“Also, what goes into those is you cannot predict how games are going. You can just be educated. Analytics in games would tell you what or you talk to coaches in their conference, like, hey, this is gonna be a high-scoring game. They’ve got a great offense and we’ve struggled late, in the second half of the season, on defense. They’ve given up a lot of yards, not as many points, but a lot of yards. So, you know, going in it was you’re going to have to steal some possessions and stuff, probably gonna take some risk,” Lane Kiffin said.

‘And, actually, those a lot of times didn’t go right into points. Sometimes, we’d stop them to field goals. Sometimes it’s easier to play on a short field, as crazy as that sounds, against an offense like us that builds on pushing the ball and tempo. So, obviously, that’s not the plan to not make it, but those are critical decisions and they didn’t work out.”

Ole Miss lost 42-25 and finished the season at 8-5. It was frustrating after a 7-0 start. However, even if Ole Miss hadn’t gone for it on fourth down so frequently, they likely wouldn’t have beaten Texas Tech.

“It was discouraging because they had a lot of similar fourth downs that they did a really good job of with some scheme runs to scheme us up.”

Lane Kiffin says changes are coming

The 2022 season ended with a frustrating four-game losing streak. Now, Lane Kiffin says that changes are on their way.

“I’m not in jumping to conclusions because you lose a game, but you guys have been around here, we’ve won 10 games and made changes. So we’ll look at everything in our program, I’m sure there’ll be some changes made in some areas,” Lane Kiffin said.

“Because I think the good thing about our fans they know about me, this is not acceptable, to however that makes us 8-5 and finish the season like that and come down here and do that. So there will be some changes made.”