Lane Kiffin playfully calls out Nick Saban for his humility, Ole Miss rat poison

Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin is never afraid to use social media, even to poke fun at his old boss and Alabama head coach Nick Saban.

He did so once again Friday, calling back to Saban’s famous term of “rat poison” with a tongue-in-cheek post.

Kiffin posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, to a story from ESPN that has a social headline of “‘Test of your humility’: Saban challenges self, Tide.” The story includes the following quote from Saban, which he said this week.

'Test of your humility': Saban challenges self, Tide https://t.co/xvcN5StHCw

. "I don't know if we've got a good enough team to beat Ole Miss”. 🤦‍♂️. Don’t 🐀 ☠️ us. 🐐

— Lane Kiffin (@Lane_Kiffin) September 22, 2023

“We’ll respond. We’ve got a better team than the way we played last week,” Saban said. “I don’t know if we’ve got a good enough team to beat Ole Miss or anybody else we play, but we’ve got a better team than we played last week. Texas has a damn good team, probably one of the best five teams in the country and we were ahead of them in the fourth quarter.

“I like this team. I like this group. They’ve worked hard. They’ve got a good attitude about things. We just got to execute better and pay better attention to detail, and we’ve got some areas on our team that need to play better.”

Kiffin pulled out the line “I don’t know if we’ve got a good enough team to beat Ole Miss” and posted the following: (Face palm emoji) Don’t (rat emoji)(skull and crossbones emoji) us. (Goat emoji).

While it was Saban who first used the term in a press conference back in 2017, Kiffin has been the phrase’s biggest proponent for the past half-decade.

Especially since taking over the Rebels, it feels like Kiffin always uses the phrase at least in the leadup to the Alabama game.

He explained in 2021 why he loves the phrase so much.

“He did not [use it],” Kiffin said in response to a question asking if he heard that phrase while he was working as the offensive coordinator for the Crimson Tide for three seasons from 2014-2016. “That was new. Somebody must have given it to him after I left. So I just think it’s really good, especially the way he explained it. It’s like drinking rat poison. That’s pretty good.”