What They Said | Ole Miss Football vs. Middle Tennessee State Postgame Quotes

OXFORD, Miss. — Ole Miss defeated Middle Tennessee State, 52-3, Saturday to move to 2-0 on the season.

Rebel quarterback Jaxson Dart broke the school and SEC record for consecutive completions in a single game as he went 24-for-24 at one point. Henry Parrish, Jr. ran all over the Blue Raiders, tallying 165 yards and four scores on just 14 carries. Trey Washington tied for the team lead with six tackles, joined by Chris Paul Jr. and TJ Dottery.

After the game, head coach Lane Kiffin, Dart, Parrish and Washington all spoke with media, as did MTSU’s head coach, Derek Mason.

Ole Miss Head Coach Lane Kiffin’s opening statement:

“Okay, good outcome. 52-3, so that’s a lot of people doing things right whenever you have that type of score. Not quite as good as the week before, you know, a little sloppier with eight penalties. But again, you play offense that way with eight drives, seven touchdowns, a field goal, no turnovers, no punts, you’re going to win a lot of games, so I thought that it was great.

“Like we talked about during the week to get the run game going. Henry Parrish was really explosive today with four touchdowns and eleven yards a carry. I thought Jaxson ought to credit him, and Charlie Weis, Joe Judge, a lot of people were involved in that. A lot of people do a lot of work all week long and Jaxson is up here all the time. I think when that happens it’s really good to see someone that’s put so much work into building this team, recruiting them, and his own work on himself and play perfect there until the end. I think at one point – was it 23 or 24 straight? It was really neat to see. It’s got to be some type of school record, I would think. I think Matt had one when we played Vanderbilt the first year or something. Again, a lot of people are doing things well. It’s hard to go 24-for-24 with no one around because you drop balls. So, really good protection, really good catching the ball to do that. Tre Harris, I thought, was as advertised. It was good to get Juice involved some.

“I thought in pass defense we were just sloppy and had too many people open and we did do a good job in red zone defense to overcome that. I don’t think I’m really pleased about how we played in the pass game on defense. Run game defense was good. I think the one’s until the end there, when the backups were in, we had ten yards rushing the whole day. So, a lot of good things we did to get to 2-0. I think we’re relatively healthy and actually looked good with one or two guys back that haven’t played yet as we go on the road next week to a tough opponent in the ACC.”

On the limited playing time for Bentley:

“Well, I think that we’ve got a lot of good running backs and Parrish played well in practice, so he started. It’s hard to beat 11.8 yards per carry and four touchdowns. And we wanted to get Matt [Jones] more involved after him having the best touchdown ratio in the country in the last couple years. So, it wasn’t really anything Bentley did wrong.”

On Cayden Lee:

“Cayden is great. Makes a lot of plays and does everything right, high culture guy. We’re fortunate to have a lot of those guys. And Jordan Watkins coming back and playing a little bit today, it was awesome to have those two guys because those guys can play. Jordan can play outside so he was playing with him and when those two guys are in you just know they are going to figure the plays out. They allow us to play really fast because they’re so savvy and unique players.”

On Henry Parrish and the depth at running back:

“I don’t know a lot about the depth that it says, but he’s a really good player. He was that way coming out of high school, was going to FAU until we came here. Did well here as a true freshman and glad he came back, obviously. He had a great summer, he got here late and his weight was down. Put a lot of good weight on and has worked really hard for this, that was great to see.

Ole Miss Safety Trey Washington

On the defensive play today:

“I think the defensive line played really well. They were able to stop the run and force the ball through the air. I think we can execute way better in our pass defense…We had the opportunity to get better this week and that’s what we did. I think this defense brings urgency and physicality to the ball. You consistently see eleven people playing hard and trying to take the guys head off with the ball.” 

On the difference in the defense compared to last season:

“I think urgency and physicality to the ball. Consistently when you turn on the film, you see 11 people playing hard and trying to take the guy’s head off with the ball.”

Ole Miss RB Henry Parrish, Jr. 

On his performance:

“I have to give all the credit to the boys up front. They lead the way. Just going by my details, based on my queues and making the runs go.”

On the challenge of the run game:

“Keeping our heads down and working, and not looking too far ahead and not looking too far back. Grinding everyday, putting work in day in and day out with my guys.

“On the off-season work paying off:

“It feels good. Knowing that I put in the work, day in and day out. I don’t complain, I work. I grind. I grind hard and you can see it on the field.”

Ole Miss QB Jaxson Dart

On Henry Parrish’s performance contributing to Jaxson’s run game:

“Coach Kiffin emphasized this week that we wanted to establish it. Get the big guys up front rolling with the running backs. I thought right out of the gate, we punched them in the mouth, and the guys did a great job of setting the tone for the rest of the game of winning the battle at the line of scrimmage, which allowed our running backs to split some holes and make some big runs and it was awesome to see.”

On staying focused in early games:

“I think the standard is the standard. I think we all have big dreams and aspirations for this year. For a lot of us it’s our last season and we want to take advantage of every opportunity we get regardless if it’s a game rep or practice rep. We always say practice how you play, so each rep is extremely important.”

Middle Tennessee State head coach Derek Mason

Opening Statement:

“Today we played a great football team. So first of all, I’ve got to give credit to Ole Miss. They’re good, physical, and talented all around. For our football team, I think we learned a lot about ourselves today. This is a game that has to be played and with that, there’s opportunities to get better. I wanted to see us withstand that first wave. There’s always that first eight to ten minutes of a game, especially for a non-ranked team playing a ranked team. You have to swim through it and I think we handled it well initially. We did not play a great first half but I’ll tell you I believe we got better today. There’s some things we learned here at Ole Miss that I think we can bring with us the rest of the way in a schedule that doesn’t get easier, but allows us to be really competitive. We’ll see how we come out of this one with injuries but we learned a lot about ourselves today.” 

On Ole Miss being competitive:

“First of all, you see why Jaxson Dart is as highly talented as he is. They have a great offensive line up front, they came into the game with the mindset of running the ball and they found balance early and kept us off schedule while they stayed on schedule and Jaxson Dart was able to manipulate our defense a little bit, run pass options, find his targets and stay efficient. That is a great offense for a football team and you can see why they score the way they do. They have enough weapons, can spread the defense out, they can run inside. Defensively, they presented us with some problems early. They put us in long third downs early and got Nick off the spot and we weren’t able to hold up in protection. This game gave our offensive line a lot of work and there’s a lot to clean up in our run game because we didn’t run the ball effectively and you have to do that to stay balanced, but hats off to Ole Miss. There’s a lot of work for us to do.” 

On flushing this game going into next week:

“I flushed it in the locker room quickly. I told the guys let’s not pout over what could have been.  The tape is the tape and we had an opportunity to compete and get to work. Now we have to watch the film and look at ways we can get better. Tomorrow is a slow day, and we have to flush today’s game fast and look to Western Kentucky. I told our guys our goals are intact. We play in the Conference USA and Ole Miss plays in the SEC. We want to compete and beat everyone we play. The reality is we have to look at the things we did and didn’t do today and we have to look to fix those things heading into conference play next week.”

MTSU Safety Brendon Harris

On the dynamic performance of Ole Miss:

“They had a dynamic offense. Good quarterback, offensive line and running backs. For us, it was about trying to go in and execute our game plan and just try and get off the field as much as we could.”

MTSU TE Holden Willis

On thoughts about today’s game:

“They run a few different schemes, have really good defensive backs and are really good up front. To run the ball, we had to be strong and to pass we had to rise up and protect. We knew exactly what was going to happen coming in, we just had to execute and get things fixed. This is a really good benchmark of where we stand as a team.”

Feature image credit: Karis Chambliss, The Rebel Walk