Ole Miss has more to ‘guard against’ this year from preseas…...

Lane Kiffin stood on the stage inside the SJB Pavilion nearly five years ago and spoke of the football program not being good but great during his introduction as the newest head coach at Ole Miss.
Fast forward to his fifth season in Oxford — his longest-tenured head coaching job — and that next step from good to great is just outside the doorstep of the Olivia and Archie Manning Athletics Performance Center.
In a perfect world Kiffin does his best ‘Hodor’ impression (for you Game of Thrones fans) and is successful at keeping the outside noise and preseason hype at bay over the next three-plus months.
Monday’s release of the Associated Press’ Preseason Top 25 makes that job a little more difficult. For the first time since Archie Manning was still wearing the Red and Blue the Rebels are a Top 10 team entering a season at No. 6.
Arguably the highest of expectations and anticipation in 54 years is here and it was the reason Kiffin was hired in the first place.
But now that the dog is close to catching the car, the inevitable ‘now what?’ has arrived yet.
“I don’t know that I necessarily feel that,” Kiffin said on Monday when asked if this season is the most pressure since arriving at Ole Miss. “This is going to sound like coach speak, because I think I apply more pressure on myself than any outside source. I really do.
“You talk about last season, the two things that come to my mind are our two losses. I should’ve done a better job at those. I do get concerned. I talk about it to players constantly because it does come at them nonstop nowadays, because of phones. That’s a big concern of mine.”
Kiffin is not worried about the season affecting himself but understands the Ole Miss locker room is susceptible to the noise.
Referencing Kiffin’s phone comment, that is a factor for every top college football program to battle. But the Rebels, for the most part, are new to being one of the big boys in contention before the season gets started.
Then there are the individual player expectations such as Jaxson Dart and the Heisman Trophy hype or all the end of season award watchlists that Kiffin himself called “crap” on Monday.
“We talk about it all the time. Whether it’s individual, ‘This guy is supposed to be the No. 2 receiver or he’s on this watchlist and all that crap that doesn’t mean anything,'” Kiffin added. “Another dangerous one is these mock drafts that are usually totally inaccurate. I’m trying to work on those things all the time with these guys because now there’s more of it than we’ve ever had here, for sure. …It’s a lot to guard against.”
Ole Miss is set to have one of its highest number of players selected in a draft class come next April in the NFL Draft. ESPN put out a list earlier this month of the teams with the highest number of potential draft picks and the Rebels were slotted with a projected 10 players.
Though if every other player has the approach sophomore receiver Cayden Lee is taking then Kiffin should have an easier job than he expects in blocking out the outside noise.
“At the end it’s just all talk as Lane Kiffin likes to say, ‘rat poison,'” Lee said on Monday. “So, you don’t feed into it too much but it’s definitely talk inside the building. It’s just everybody’s standards raised another level and our goal is a national championship at the end of the day. So we just have to keep working to get there.”
The post Ole Miss has more to ‘guard against’ this year from preseason rankings to individual expectations appeared first on On3.

Welcome to Billionaire Club Co LLC, your gateway to a brand-new social media experience! Sign up today and dive into over 10,000 fresh daily articles and videos curated just for your enjoyment. Enjoy the ad free experience, unlimited content interactions, and get that coveted blue check verification—all for just $1 a month!

Source link

What's your thought on the article, write a comment

0 Comments

Sign In to perform this Activity

Account Frozen

Ads