Ole Miss seeing chemistry beginning to form with new faces and old at end of fall camp
All offseason, summer and fall camp one thing has been on Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin’s mind and it might not be what most would assume.
Bringing in one of the nation’s top transfer classes after hitting the transfer portal hard in the offseason, Ole Miss has a roster with over 44 percent new players who were not here in 2021.
That stat is what has caused Kiffin to be concerned with creating chemistry and the right mix for the 2022 team with so many new faces.
With the final couple days of fall camp remaining before Ole Miss hits the first game week of the season on Monday the optimism is high with Kiffin that he and his staff and found that right mix and fit.
Though, there are still growing pains.
“I think they’ve done really well with that,” Kiffin said after Friday’s practice. “Again, though, everything’s new. We go to ‘Fast Friday’ and doing call outs to people and they got no idea what we’re doing. I’m reminding (coaches) how many (it is their) first year here. That’s going to be a continuing process in just how we do things.”
The challenge of having so many new faces take the field this fall was something Kiffin saw on the horizon last year.
With seniors who have exhausted their eligibility — COVID years and otherwise — and others who saw the promise of an NFL career and left early, Ole Miss was going to look very different in 2022.
The offense is the side of the ball where it looks like a near complete make over. Only the offensive line group is mostly fully intact for another season.
But from the quarterback situation to a running back room needing more bodies and a re-tooled receivers group, there were enough faces to cause concern of how quickly could the offense gel.
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Malik Heath is one of the more recent newcomers, arriving in Oxford just last month. The former Mississippi State receiver has settled in nicely and primed to be one of the starters come next Saturday.
“I think (the chemistry) has progressed really easy,” Heath said. “Because, we just want to win. Everybody just wants to win and be great.”
Related: Fall Camp Insider: Ole Miss CB Deantre Prince has set himself up for a good senior season
No matter what anyone says, Ole Miss is one guinea pig for others to see if building off the portal can lead to success, or not.
Ole Miss will be the center of this test case of a season after seeing how well it fared in the transfer portal.
Landing around 20 players from the portal, and a large chunk of them expected to be starters or key contributors, Ole Miss will prove or not prove how vital hitting the portal hard can lead to short term success.
For programs who might want to get that instant gratification, or just a jump start, Ole Miss’ results could be very interesting to them.
“I wouldn’t say I look at it that way, but I’m sure it will be viewed as that,” Kiffin said. “I have said before that people will take whatever those few schools are that signed the most portal guys, and it’s a copycat league, world, sport. So, I would venture, yes. Those teams, whoever that is, (Southern California), us, those who sign the most portal guys do poorly (then) people will say, ‘Oh, we’re not going to use the portal as much.’ If we do really well then people are going to say, ‘Hey, lets do that.'”
