After Ole Miss Football’s playoff success last season, many fans may forget that Pete Golding is still a first-year head coach. He coached three solid games in the CFP, despite having a squad that did not play particularly well for parts of the games against Georgia and Miami. Golding is off to a great start to his head coaching tenure, but the growing pains are evident.
In less than a year as a head coach, Golding has five wins over ranked opponents. He has certainly proved he can be an elite coach in the SEC. Last season, he outcoached Georgia head coach Kirby Smart in the Sugar Bowl and led Ole Miss to a second-half comeback.
Golding masterfully retained players, brought in strong portal talent and boosted the Rebel recruiting game in his first couple months as head coach. He is 100% the man for the job here in Oxford.
Ole Miss had high expectations coming into this season, especially for a team with a first-year head coach. Golding has done well, but we should all remember this is his first time leading a DI program.
One of Golding’s most head-scratching moments as a head coach came in Week 8 against Texas. With Ole Miss down by seven with six-and-a-half minutes left, Golding elected to kick a 58-yard field goal on fourth-and-10. The kick was blocked, and the Longhorns went on to score a field goal to go up by 10.
“It was going to be four-down (territory). We were trying to get half (the yardage on third down), and then we didn’t,” Golding said in a press conference on Monday, Oct. 26. “We decided to kick it because of where we were at. We’d already played 74 snaps on defense to that point.”
Hindsight is 20/20, and making that kick would have certainly changed a lot, but attempting the kick would not have kept the defense off the field. Make or miss, the defense still had to go back out there.
Instead of trying to pin the Longhorns with a punt, where they would at best start at the 20-yard line, the Longhorns got the ball at their own 41-yard line.
Crucially, star defensive tackle Will Echoles left the game around this time due to dehydration. He went to the locker room to get an IV before returning to the game. This is a decent concern because this Ole Miss defense is supposed to have significant depth, yet its star player was burnt out in a crucial moment.
“It’s different when (Echoles is) not in there. We have to do a better job of managing his early reps because we do have a lot of good players that we are rotating in there,” Golding said. “I just felt like we got in a rhythm in that third quarter and didn’t want to get out of it. He went all out and then we lost him there for a couple drives.”
That is a major question going into Week 9: Why, amid all this defensive line depth, is Echoles not able to go when it matters most? Golding has Jamarious Brown, Jehiem Oatis, Michai Boireau and Andrew Maddox to hold down the line. Plus, he has Kam Franklin, Jonathan Maldonado, Jordan Renaud, Suntarine Perkins and Blake Purchase off the edge.
In the offseason, Golding was adamant about getting portal players to add to the defensive line depth. Running out of steam was a 2025 issue that Golding addressed, but because of mismanagement, it was a problem in Week 8. Golding said so himself on Monday.
“We have to do a little better job from a consistent rotation standpoint up front to make sure we’re not losing our better players late in games,” Golding said.
To Golding’s credit, the Rebel offense was inefficient for most of the game, allowing Texas to string together long possessions. The Longhorns had the ball for nearly 35 minutes and ran 72 plays, while the Rebels had the ball for just over 25 minutes and ran 81 plays.
Usage of the running backs is another concern. Kewan Lacy has been injured in every game this season and will not play in Week 9. Despite missing numerous quarters, Lacy still leads the team in carries with 78. Makhi Frazier is second with 51, then Trinidad Chambliss with 41 and JT Lindsey with 25.
All those running backs from the portal were supposed to bring various skill sets to Oxford, and Rebel fans have hardly seen them. That will have to change this Saturday.
Golding can absolutely learn from prior mistakes and avoid them in the future, but it needs to start now. The Rebels have to win out to make the playoffs. Mismanaging players will not lead to the glory Ole Miss seeks.
