Lane Kiffin explains offseason addition of new Ole Miss DC Pete Golding

Early in SEC Media Days Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin brought up the biggest hire of the Rebels’ offseason bringing in Pete Golding as the team’s defensive coordinator. Golding has spent the last five seasons as Alabama‘s defensive coordinator and inside linebackers coach and will assume the same role for Ole Miss this upcoming season.

“Pete Golding coming in on defense, we’re really excited about that change and what he brings,” Kiffin said. “To bring him over from Alabama, have known Pete and people that work with him for a long time. He’s ahead of the game, very intelligent, really great recruiter as well.”

Alabama’s defenses have been stout under Golding’s leadership, something that Ole Miss could use. The Rebels did improve from 2021 to 2022, but still have room for more improvement as they gave up 24.2 points and 379.8 yards per game last season.

Improving that unit won’t be easy, as Ole Miss’ entire roster and coaching staff saw a lot of turnover this offseason, but Kiffin made it clear that the defensive side of the ball will be a big area of emphasis heading into the season.

“So there’s some transition there, a lot of new coaches and players and some that missed spring like Cedric Johnson who’s here today who missed the spring,” Kiffin said. “So this fall will be really important for us in all areas, but especially on defense, of putting that all together to play good defense.”

Kiffin only brought back four coaches from last years staff and had 26 players leave the program through the transfer portal.

There’s no doubt that there’s been a lot of changes this offseason in Oxford, and hopefully Ole Miss can adapt, adjust, and specifically get their defense on the same page in short order behind Golding.

Pete Golding was Kiffin’s real top recruit

Kiffin spoke more on Golding with the ‘SEC Now’ crew at media days, further elaborating on his hiring process and what he’ll bring to a defense that struggled particularly at the end of last season giving up 34.5 points per game in the final four games (all losses).

“Yeah that was like the number one coaches portal guy, we have the player portal, we got him to go in the portal,” Kiffin joked. “That was really neat to have a chance to get Pete, he’s got a background in the SEC, in the area of recruiting also besides just being a brilliant mind in the game. It’s been awesome to work with him already, knew a lot of people that have worked with him and talked so well about him so brining him in is really big. And we have a really big challenge of a new system and a lot of new players on that side of the ball trying to fix the issues we had down the stretch