Ole Miss Football completed its first month of the 2026 season with a 52-28 loss in Gainesville, Fla., last weekend, knocking the Rebels to 3-1 overall and 1-1 in SEC play. Expectations were abnormally high for first-year head coach Pete Golding. While he is one of six first-year coaches in the SEC, Golding was the only one in that group to inherit a program with more than seven wins in 2025.
Did Ole Miss meet expectations through September? The short answer is yes. It is hard to watch a team that made the College Football Playoff semifinal last year give up 302 rushing yards, lose by 24 points and still say that the Rebels met expectations through four games. In the case of the Rebels, though, a 3-1 start is near where most fans and media placed them before the season.
The season opener at a neutral site against ranked Louisville was a real test. Ole Miss was an underdog at home against LSU, and Gainesville is notoriously one of the most difficult places to play in college football.
Three out of four games that the Rebels played in September were ranked matchups, and only one of those games was played within the friendly confines of Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.
With a new head coach and many new staff members and players, a 2-1 record against ranked teams to start the year is not a disappointment, though the way the Rebels played to end September will certainly leave a bad taste in Rebel fans’ mouths.
Quarterback Trinidad Chambliss has carried the H6I5MEN moniker that Ole Miss adopted ahead of the season. Running back Kewan Lacy has missed significant time in every game this season, and he missed the Florida contest entirely.
In Lacy’s absence, Chambliss claims an even larger role. He has thrown for 1,222 yards and eight touchdowns. On the ground, he is responsible for 108 rushing yards and four scores.
Chambliss entered the season as a top Heisman contender. Up to this point in the season, he has done everything he can to remain in such a position, and even after the loss, he is firmly in the conversation. The dynamic quarterback is the biggest success of September for the Rebels.
The rest of the offense has also met expectations. There were a lot of questions heading into the season about new offensive coordinator John David Baker. Baker was tasked with replacing Charlie Weis Jr., the coordinator that helped bring the Rebels to the playoff semifinal last year.
While there have been some growing pains so far for Baker — such as the first half of the Louisville game, or the first half of the Florida game — he has coached well overall. Baker has been criticized for his conservative playcalling, but the Rebels are still 10th in the nation in passing yards this season.
Additionally, they average 35.5 points per game. With the difficulty of the schedule, it is unfair to look at those metrics and label Baker as disappointing.
Receivers Deuce Alexander, Traylon Ray and Horatio Fields serve alongside tight end Caleb Odom as Chambliss’s favorite targets. Alexander has shined in his new role as lead receiver, amassing 429 yards on 27 receptions. These pass-catchers have been solid options for Chambliss and have replaced last year’s production in a satisfactory manner.
On the other side of the ball, there are not many positives. Coming into the season, Ole Miss’ defense was expected by some to rival the 2024 squad as one of the best defenses in recent school history. With several highly touted transfers, returners and a defense-minded head coach, the buzz did not seem far-fetched.
The first four games of the season told a completely different story. Ole Miss currently sits at No. 115 in total defense, giving up 404.8 yards a game.
Rush defense, which plagued the Rebels in 2025, has been the biggest issue so far. Opposing teams average 194.8 rushing yards a game, which puts Ole Miss at 126th in the country. Against Florida, the Rebels let up over 300 rushing yards. The last time the Rebels let up over 300 rushing yards was a 52-17 loss to Georgia in 2023.
The secondary had rough outings at the beginning of the season against Louisville and Charlotte. Since then, the unit has played better in pass coverage.
In its three Power Four contests, Ole Miss gave up 38 points on average. Even though the offense is talented, it will be important for the defense to perform at a much better rate if the Rebels want to have success further into the season.
