TRANSCRIPT: Everything Ole Miss Head Coach Lane Kiffin Said After Rebels’ Win at Wake Forest

WINSTON-SALEM, NC – Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin met with media after the Rebels’ 40-6 win over Wake Forest. Ole Miss moves to 3-0 and hosts Georgia Southern next Saturday at Vaught-Hemingway.

Here’s everything Coach Kiffin had to say after the win.

Lane Kiffin Opening Statement:

All right, so, good road win, 40-6, (over an) ACC opponent. That’s a really good outcome. Now, there’s some stuff in there, we were a little bit sloppy. I thought that Jaxson had two critical mistakes in the game, got a little bit lax there, and kind of playing down to the situation, which is something obviously we emphasize all the time that just because the score is going one way, you’ve still got to take care of the ball. I thought the snap over our head early was obviously a big momentum play, or else it seemed like we were kind of headed towards an early blowout. So, I’m excited the way the guys played. I thought we played really good run defense against a good offense. That team’s got good players and a good back, good quarterback, and receivers. So, too many penalties, too many holdings on defense, critical ones. That fourth down stop, I think, two turnovers called back, i think, with penalties. It’s good. If this would have been another whatever 60-point win or something, it probably wouldn’t have their attention. So it’s good for us to have stuff to clean up. They’ve done a great job here of winning a lot of games at home against a lot of ranked teams, so this was a big challenge for us. I thought our guys came motivated, (had) good energy early on. We talked to them during the week about this. You know, this is the last time they get to play these guys. They called over this week, and (Wake Forest Director of Athletics) John Currie said we’re not playing next year and bought out of the game. So, I thought that was a good message for our players that somebody wanted to pay money not to play them. It says a lot of where our program is right now.

Lane Kiffin on the Rebels’ dominant defensive front and how different it is for the Rebels this year as opposed to last:

Completely different than any time we’ve been here. Obviously since the Georgia game, that was a priority, the lines. I thought that showed up today. Again, we’re going to have better opponents, but, we’ve not been like that — and I think that’s a good offensive line, and I think they’re going to do good things this year on offense. Our scouting reports were high on their players on offense and their offensive line. So, I just thought our defensive line, really in warmups, you could tell this was a big-time game for them. Just really challenged them not to give in to the atmosphere that obviously was kind of dead today and play their game. I thought, by the way, our fans were great. So, they stayed till the end. It was awesome. So if we can have our road mentality at home…

Kiffin on the adversity in a game his team still won by 34 and what he learned about the Rebels in their first road game this season:

I think the way you said that is exactly right. And it’s probably what we needed to go on the road, have some adversity and still, like you said, win by 34 points. It says a lot about them that they’re really talented. That’s what it says. It says they’re really talented, that we can play sloppy, get penalties, turnovers and still win like that. It’s a really talented roster. Now we’ve got to not have the critical penalties on defense and the two turnovers, and really Jaxson’s penalty with the helmet probably cost us four points, and we’ve still got to go for it on fourth and one. But our analytics have been good on fourth and one, obviously with JJ (Pegues).

Lane on asking for a review on the play where Jaxson got a penalty:

I kind of thought there was potential targeting there, and then I called timeout so we could look at it longer. And then we did not challenge it just because the officials told me they’d looked at it and don’t think there was anything there with it. So they probably made the right call.

Lane on always taking the ball on the opening kickoff and never deferring:

I don’t even know if we won the toss. So we just don’t even discuss that because our players know we don’t defer. It’s not really what our program is about. So, I thought I heard coming out that they won and deferred, but whatever. We usually start with the ball. So I think that there’s only been two times we didn’t start with the ball since Golding’s been here, because we reviewed that yesterday. So, whatever that is 12, 13, 16 games. We’ve started with the ball, 14 of them — because Golding wants to start on defense. And so we have that conversation every Friday.

Lane Kiffin on Jared Ivey’s injury:

I really don’t know. His body language seems (as if it is) short term, but I don’t know.

Lane Kiffin on Jaxson Dart:

I didn’t like his interception and didn’t like his penalty. Those were critical plays. And I saw that coming on the interception, too. He just got too casual in the moment, that I can just make any throw and anything’s going to go my way. And it’s college football. You know, it’s an ACC team. You can’t do that. Actually, I said it into his helmet right after the play was over, I could see that coming. So, obviously I’ve got to remind him better, not to get lax like that.

Lane Kiffin on how important it was to come out on the first drive and score a touchdown, and then stop Wake Forest on their possession:

I thought the beginning of the game was huge. I get really nervous when we go on the road in a dead environment like this. You know, that (it could be) if you don’t start early, they get some momentum and, our guys are kind of going through the motions. So that did not seem to be the case. We started fast on defense and offense. I was really pleased with that. I think that fumbled snap really kind of screwed that momentum up, that maybe the game would have got lopsided quicker.

Lane Kiffin on the defense not giving up a TD in its first three games and on the ability to stop teams in the read zone:

I mean that sounds really good. So, three games without a touchdown — and at Ole Miss. So, we’ve come a long ways over there. A lot of credit to the defensive staff and our Collective. We have played really good red zone defense. We’ve kind of been bend in the middle some, and then really rose to the occasion there.

Lane Kiffin on Jaxson’s 13-yard TD run over the Wake Forest LB:

I didn’t really want to run him, but it was just they were dropping so deep in the three-man rush that there really wasn’t anywhere to throw it. So we went to the quarterback draw there, and that’s just who he is. So it’s hard to get him out of it. And I was okay with that. The game, I don’t know what the score was, but it felt like it was still a game at that point. So that was that was big.