Last year is a closed book but Ole Miss players also using how it ended as motivation
Last year is last year and the 2022 campaign is one that the Ole Miss football team has closed the book on, but there are still some things to be learned from how it ended.
After the 7-0 start Ole Miss went on to lose five of its final six games, including the Texas Bowl loss to Texas Tech.
The Rebels were riding high and creeping up the polls as a consensus Top 10 team and also entered the College Football Playoff rankings as a Top 15 team. But then the trip to Baton Rouge and the 45-20 loss to LSU happened.
From there it was a road win at Texas A&M followed by three straight losses to Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi State to end the regular season.
A holiday trip to Houston that left little to be desired was how Ole Miss ended its once promising season and the third year under head coach Lane Kiffin.
“That’s something we live with everyday,” said defensive end Jared Ivey last week. “Something we talk about often. You want to forget and move on and focus on what’s next and next play but it’s good to process those feelings and try to use them to just going to the next season and go harder and just have more attention to detail and kind of just keep things together down the stretch.”
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Ole Miss got roughed up when the teeth of the 2022 schedule rolled around late October.
Not much good can be taken from how the Rebels performed down the stretch, at least as it pertains to on-the-field strategy.
But from a mental standpoint and taking things from specific moments in the final games is something younger players, including quarterback Jaxson Dart, are doing as they are now a season older and wiser.
“Obviously, there’s things that you can just learn from the experiences of us not finishing the way that we should’ve,” Dart said. “I would agree with (Ivey), you’ve just got to put that past us. A lot of us are going to have a really big opportunity for us to have a really good year. Personally, a lot of guys on our teams are going to have opportunities to make big names for themselves.
“I think it really helps with our coaching staff on the offensive side coming back and then we got (Ole Miss defensive coordinator) coach (Pete) Golding on the defensive side. I think all those are going to leap our performance. We got a lot of good guys. We learn from it but we put it behind us and we’re ready to roll.”
