Lane Kiffin reveals spring improvements he's witnessed from veteran QB Jaxson Dart

Ole Miss brought in competition for quarterback Jaxson Dart this offseason in the form of transfers Spencer Sanders and Walker Howard.

Some quarterbacks might have taken offense to their head coach bringing in stiff competition via the transfer portal. But Dart has accepted the challenge and understood the reasons needed to improve the talent in the room didn’t necessarily reflect him and his talent.

Rebels head coach Lane Kiffin talked after his team’s spring game about how Dart has gotten better during the spring practice season.

“I think that are some really cool offensive things you saw today and that we’ve seen the last couple of Saturdays,” Kiffin said. “I’m really excited about Jaxson’s improvement and development. That happens a lot of times. We say in year one to year two big improvement happens at positions and quarterbacks. This really was your one for him a year ago. He played a little bit out west and in a very different system that really doesn’t translate at all to our system or to a lot of college football. He was kind of starting over. I’ve been very pleased to have a lot of improvement there.”

Dart transferred to Ole Miss from USC last season as one of the top transfer quarterbacks in the cycle.

In his first season with the Rebels, Dart started 13 games for Ole Miss. He threw 226 completions out of 362 attempts for 2,974 passing yards, 20 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. He also rushed for 614 yards on the season.

It was a very good first season. But his two backup quarterbacks Luke Altmyer and Kinkead Dent both entered the NCAA Transfer Portal, leaving the Rebels fairly empty in the quarterbacks room.

There are three other quarterbacks in the room besides Dart, Sanders and Howard. Two of them are redshirt freshman walk-ons in Braden Waterman and Davin Wydner. The other is another freshman named Jett Miller.

With that being said, it made sense that Kiffin went to the portal to find some more talent to add to the room.

“That position was very depleted. We basically at one point were really down to just Jaxson as far as the quarterback,” Kiffin said earlier in the week. “We ended up having two leave and replaced them with two really good players. So I’m excited that we did that. And this next window, we’ll do that at some other positions, too.”