Transcript: Lane Kiffin’s Weekly Monday Press Conference as Rebels look ahead to Arkansas

OXFORD, Miss. – Ole Miss head football coach Lane Kiffin met with the media Monday to turn the page from last Saturday’s thriller victory over No. 12 LSU and preview this Saturday’s home contest against the Arkansas Razorbacks. Kickoff is set for 6:30 p.m. CT at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium and on SEC Network. A transcript can be found below.

Opening Statement:
“I’m excited about playing at home again. Hopefully, we’ll have the same type of crowd that we did last week. Similar game time. This is a very challenging opponent. I know that they’ve lost a few in a row, but they took LSU down to the wire at LSU and they’ve given us a lot of problems. They were up 42-7 or something at half last year. This is a really big challenge for us to play really well and contain these guys. You saw what they did to us last year, what they did to us three years ago. Excited for this challenge before we get into the bye-week.”

On keeping the team level after the big game against LSU:
“I’m sure for two days they heard how great they were from outside of here. We made sure they saw they made a lot of mistakes in that game, in all three phases. Way too many penalties, poor decisions, and selfish decisions on some penalties because players are frustrated. That can’t happen, so we have a lot to work on.”

On Arkansas QB KJ Jefferson:
“I think he gets bigger every year. I mean, this guy is so hard to bring down, and so challenging to play against. He always brings his great game against us also. We’ve got to tackle really well, got to cover because he makes so many plays out of rhythm by scrambling, and he has really good vision downfield and good accuracy.”

On Ulysses Bentley IV:
“He’s a really good player that does things right. He’s really consistent, and practices that way. The way he ran on that [43-yard touchdown] run is the way he runs every day in practice. It’s awesome to see somebody like that doing so well. Over seven yards a carry. He’s a great kid.”

On beating LSU:
“That was really exciting for it to end that way. Obviously, I wish we would’ve ended it earlier and not left them any time on the clock or caught the interception when he threw it to us, but maybe everything happens for a reason. That made it very dramatic and exciting, something that I don’t think anybody involved with our program will ever forget.”

On the team blocking out the media and focusing on football:
“I think that we didn’t play well in a lot of areas: special teams penalties, defensive disaster. That allows us to really make sure that we’ve got a lot of work to do. Had some offensive penalties in the game, some misreads, and some runs that would’ve been even bigger. The good part is that we didn’t play great as a team. Sometimes you do play great, and then it’s kind of hard to get their attention. I think we got a lot of attention this morning on the tape.”

On using last year’s game against Arkansas as motivation:
“Not really bulletin board material. I just use it as saying, ‘It doesn’t matter what happened last year.’ With Arkansas playing against Ole Miss, it doesn’t matter what they’ve done before. If I remember correctly, I think the week before us they lost to Liberty. Didn’t move the ball very well [against Liberty], and then they came out against us and looked like a top-five team in the country. It doesn’t matter what’s happened before. So, I did use that game as evidence of how these guys come to play against us.”

On what makes a Sam Pittman-coached team:
“Very tough, very physical. They run the ball well for the most part. They’ve got their running back now, so I’m sure they’ll have more success running it now than they did earlier in the year. To me, his team usually plays like how he is. O-line coach mentality, really tough and physical.”

On what he’s seen from Jaxson Dart so far versus his preseason expectations:
“I think Jaxson’s played really well. I think that we didn’t have a lot of help for him with everybody not being healthy at Alabama. I think he’s done a really good job. Threw the ball well and was really competitive on Saturday. Probably would change two of those deeper throws that are a little bit underthrown that ended up being incompletions. He played great, and his mentality of how he played and jumping over the guy as the last guy of the third quarter, it’s awesome for your team.”

On challenging the defense this week:
“Yeah, that’s what we did this morning. Just use that as an example. The offense didn’t play very well two weeks ago, then had a really good week of practice and played a lot better, so just did the same thing for the defense today.”

On using the offense’s performance as an example in the future:
“It’s exciting to know they’re all there. [Caden] Prieskorn having an injury and then surgery, Tre [Harris] having an injury and then surgery, Zakhari [Franklin] having surgery, to know they’re all there, that’s the first time really. Against Alabama, Tre really shouldn’t have even gone in, he just played a couple of plays, and then Prieskorn hadn’t played at all for us. To see them, all the pieces in there together, was exciting Saturday. That’s kind of what we had pictured it looking like in the offseason watching them practice.”