Bye week has 'good timing' for Ole Miss to allow Jaxson Dart and Tre Harris to be ready for Auburn
If anyone had asked Lane Kiffin his thoughts on Ole Miss having its bye week this coming weekend prior to Saturday’s game against Arkansas he would have not preferred it.
Kiffin’s Rebels had momentum and playing well, in his eyes, coming off the bounce-back win over LSU following the loss to Alabama. Then Ole Miss knocked off the Razorbacks for a second straight Southeastern Conference victory.
But now the season comes to a halt with the Rebels bye week taking place right in the exact middle of their schedule. Six games have been played and Ole Miss is sitting at 5-1 (2-1 SEC) with six more to go, starting in two weeks.
When Kiffin was asked after Saturday’s win about his thoughts of the bye week and the message to his players he changed his attitude towards it occurring next Saturday. Both quarterback Jaxson Dart and wide receiver Tre Harris got banged up in the game and now have nearly 14 days to get as close to 100 percent as possible.
For Dart it is the first kind of visible injury on the season for him, coming on the second play of the game against Arkansas. Harris was playing in his third game back from a leg injury that required an in-season procedure following the Tulane game.
Though when followed on both Dart and Harris’ status nearly 24 hours later Kiffin was optimistic that both of his star players on offense will be ready to go for Auburn on October 21.
“He’ll be fine,” Kiffin said of Dart during his Zoom media availability on Sunday and echoed the same for Harris later in the press conference.
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“I think this is really good timing for a bye with Tre,” Kiffin added. “I would anticipate by the time we play (again) he’ll be fine.”
There is no science to where a bye falls on a schedule and Ole Miss has seen its take place up and down the schedule in recent years.
Last season Ole Miss played nine games before getting a week off, which was ahead of its November 12 showdown with Alabama. In 2021 it occurred after the first three games of the season and also ahead of its game against the Crimson Tide.
When it comes to an opinion of a sweet spot for a team’s bye to land on the schedule the answer is akin to an ‘eye of the beholder’ philosophy. Every coach is going to have a different answer — most commonly saying when it happens that particular year they are asked — and Kiffin has his.
“It all depends. There’s so many variables,” Kiffin said. “You don’t know. How is your schedule early? Obviously injuries. We’re halfway through the season. We’re 5-1. We lost to Alabama and I’ve been very critical of our performance in that game and I think people were very critical of us in that game.
“I try to remind myself, as much as I wanted or expected to win that game, that’s as hard of a place to play over the last, what, six years or something like that. …That’s a pretty hard place to play in this conference. So, I think it’s a good reminder to be 5-1 and to be ahead at halftime in that game. Obviously, we’re not pleased with it but kind of a refreshing reminder when we took so much heat for losing that game.”
