How does Ole Miss decide its starting safeties? By a simple game of chance, of course
There is a one-in-three chance Tysheem Johnson, Isheem Young or Ladarius Tennison will be one of the starting safeties for No. 9 Ole Miss every Saturday.
This is not because all three are waiting to hear the final decision made by head coach Lane Kiffin or co-defensive coordinator Chris Partridge. No, it is because they are awaiting a decision that is made amongst themselves.
By a simple game of rock-paper-scissors does Ole Miss learn of its starting safety for each week. This of course was made public when Partridge spilled the beans of sorts to SEC Network’s Alyssa Lang ahead of Saturday’s game at Vanderbilt.
“This is why we don’t let assistant coaches talk to the media, because Partridge decided to tell the media how we do that.” Kiffin said jokingly during his Monday press conference.
“That was just something that we were in a situation with three really good players that basically play two spots and we play a lot of plays on defense because of our offensive tempo. It’s very hard for anybody to play the whole game and play really fast.”
The predicament Kiffin and Partridge found themselves in was due to the strong success in the transfer portal by getting Tennison from Auburn and Young from Iowa State.
Those two paired with the strong play of Johnson was going to create the issue it did for Ole Miss.
A self fulfilling prophecy, but a good problem to have.
With the numbers game not balancing out to the number of allotted spots at safety at the start of a game, Kiffin opted to take it out of his and his staff’s hands and put it in the players’
In essentially a ‘you guys figure it out’ type of approach, all three players figured out the perfect way to do it.
“I just said, ‘Well you can’t hold it against us, you know, about which one starts. Let them play rock-paper-scissors every week. They can only blame themselves.’ It’s a classic because then they argue and it becomes a best two-out-of-three. Gets them arguing with each other, not us.”
However the decision is made regarding which player gets the starting nod, the process is working out favorably.
All three players are among to the Top 7 tacklers on the Ole Miss defense with at least 23 each through six games. Johnson is in third with 36 tackles.
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Tennison is second on the defense in tackles for loss with 4.5 and Young has one of the four interceptions this season.
“It (started) pretty much before the season,” Tennison said on Monday. “We have three stud safeties. This kind of allows us to not, like, pretty much fight over who goes in. It pretty much varies (which) two will go in.”
Tennison showed his hand a little by admitting he’s “a rock guy,” which could hurt his strategy over the next six games.
With there being no set order or even a depth chart when it comes to the starting safety position it has not affected any kind of chemistry with the rest of the defense.
Entering this season there were questions of how not only the defense but the entire Ole Miss team would gel comprised of a roster that has nearly 50 percent new faces on it from a year ago.
Seems the easy answer to the question is to just play a good game of rock-paper-scissors to sort it out. Through six games it is hard for Ole Miss to mess with something that is not broken.
Watch Ladarius Tennison’s full post-practice interview from Monday below:
