Power ranking the SEC after week 5: #5 - Ole Miss
I’m not ready to completely give up on the Rebels quite yet. Yes, they lost an ugly game against Kentucky—one they should not have lost, by all accounts—but that was a low-margin-for-error performance by the Cats that worked to perfection against the Rebels.
Does this mean that the Rebs will simply crumble at any sign of difficulty going forward? Not necessarily. Maybe they learn from adversity and rip off another huge win streak headed into the Georgia game. But maybe this is a canary in the coal mine.
For me, the most concerning thing is the lack of ability to make the Wildcats respect the run game. We all knew that the rushing attack for the Rebels would take a step back when Quinshon Judkins left for Ohio State, but things looked fine on that front up until this one. It was shocking the disparity in efficiency we saw from the first four games to this one, however.
Ole Miss now faces a tough back to back road trip against South Carolina and LSU. Those are both teams that, on paper, they should handle, but as I mentioned early, it’s really hard to win both halves of a SEC road trip. I’ll be watching closely to see how they respond in Columbia this week.