Everything Lane Kiffin said after Ole Miss lost to Florida

Ole Miss fell at Florida on Saturday and head coach Lane Kiffin answered questions about the loss with reporters after the game. Here’s everything he said after the Rebels lost to the Gators.

Opening statement: “I’m obviously very disappointed in the outcome today. Gave up a lot of missed opportunities.Go 0-3 in the red zone, you get no points out of it. Missed a field goal and you get stopped twice on fourth down. You don’t lose the turnover margin. Tough place to play against a team that, you know, played really good when that quarterback plays. Credit to him. It’s a really good player that made a lot of plays in the first half when we had him back there. So, I’m really disappointed in the outcome. Obviously, a lot was at stake. We didn’t come through. We missed opportunities. Red zone chances, ball in our hand, scored a touchdown, tied the game. We were wasting time.”

What about the drop passes? 

Lane Kiffin: “Yeah, it’s very unusual. I think somebody jinxed this week. I think somebody said Jordan’s analytics were 100% catch, catch percentage. As soon as they said that, I said I wish you hadn’t said that. I don’t know if that corner looked up, sun’s coming in that direction. So that’s a great play by Jaxson, a great throw. Obviously that should have been caught because we might have seen a much different storyline. Great game by Jaxson, he overcame adversity. It’s a tough place to play.” 

We saw a lot of Micah Davis back there running the ball. Can you just take us through that? 

Lane Kiffin: “Just trying to get a spark back there with some speed. We hadn’t had a lot of success in the run game in the last about month, so, I just tried something different.” 

Lane, on that deep ball that you used, that was picked off the first interception. Was that where Dart was supposed to go? I guess where we kind of seeing on that play? 

Lane Kiffin: “Yeah, very unusual by him. Obviously, we should take it back. Completely unusual to throw that ball in that situation. Usually really good at that. I said to him right before, we got plenty of time here, he had us take shots and we were really aggressive on it. Made a lot of really good plays today and I wish we would have caught the one because we might have a much different storyline right now.” 

Lane, I know against Georgia, you opted to kick field goals at times. And today you went for it with JJ. Just what were you seeing or what were you feeling? What was the reasoning for that today? 

Lane Kiffin: “Yeah, I think those were analytics, pretty easy decisions, you know, to settle for a field goal there when it’s less than two yards. J.J.’s percentage coming wasn’t great in those situations, made some other short yards ones today. It is what it is.” 

The wins this year were blowouts, the losses came in pretty close games, is there a common thread that you come in by kind of linking the losses or maybe explain why it might be that close games aren’t going the teams way? 

Lane Kiffin: “It’s football. It happens. The year before, it was the opposite, right? Sometimes the ball goes that way. We have opportunities to make plays. Situations. That’s a pretty easy story. They’re 2-2 in the red zone. We’re 0-3.  We outgain ‘em by 100 yards but we don’t win the turnover margin. So again, shows how irrelevant yards are compared to scoring in the red zone and turnovers.”

Lane, I know this is fresh, but how tough do you foresee kind of the next week being, as far as holding the team together and all that, especially after having a third loss?

Lane Kiffin: “Yeah, I mean, we’re just in today. It’s gonna be really challenging in just a day. We’ve got tomorrow. So a lot at stake here, a lot of disappointed players, coaches, in that locker room. When there’s the playoff line, you kind of know where that is a little bit. A third loss doesn’t get you there. It’s just a different world. Obviously, this is an important game but we’ve got tomorrow.”

It’s meaningless and hypothetical, but would you have gone for two had you scored a few.

Lane Kiffin: “You know, we go over all that stuff that analytics will tell you not, because you’re a heavy favorite. But, you know, we had the play ready to go. I thought about it. But I also, I don’t know if I would have. I probably wouldn’t have because our defense wasn’t playing very good, so probably wouldn’t have. 

Well, JJ got stopped a couple of times short which we haven’t really seen him get stopped like this season. Was that maybe because he was trying to go outside or kind of run off tackle? Was that the design of the play? How did that work out? 

Lane Kiffin: “Yeah, I mean, JJ is awesome… There’s a lot of great things about that. You know, sometimes he goes on his own.The guy came off for a tackle, so I didn’t see the other one. He just kind of bounced. It’s worked for him too, so we’ve been very successful and we’ve had some today and we got stopped today.” 

You guys have been so good against the run for the most part this season. I think they had 120 rushing yards in the first half alone. What was the biggest difference today? 

Lane Kiffin: “Yeah, I was concerned about it. I think they have a really good offensive line. I think those backs are really good. We’ve been talking to other coaches that played them. You know, the one thing that stuck out is how hard those guys run. So that was a concern, probably the biggest concern coming in, mostly that they could, so we couldn’t make them one-dimensional. They ran really hard. 

With Trey going out in the first half, based on what you know, what you’ve learned from him, was that the same injury that he had been dealing with over the last month? 

Lane Kiffin: “Yeah, I mean, just a freak situation. He got hit right on the same injury, exactly right where it was, and then dropped the ball because of it. So obviously the injury happened and we don’t get the ball and missed the field goal there. A lot of bad breaks today. Unfortunately, didn’t go our way today.”