Sunday Zoom Transcript: Lane Kiffin speaks on Georgia game, injuries, and recruiting
OXFORD, Miss. – Lane Kiffin spoke to the media in his regular Sunday zoom to analyze his thoughts on the Georgia game and more.
Opening Statement
Kiffin: “I thought yesterday was an awesome job for Ole Miss and everyone involved…pretty neat for all of our people to be a part of that. On the film…we did a lot of really good things. Really, really dominant defensive front performance. They’ve got two really, really good backs… those two are really special, so with that being said, we challenged them (the defensive line) before the game and said, ‘You were going to be the key to this game, and we need you guys to dominate to knock Georgia off,’ and they did exactly that, that was a very dominant performance. We made the decision to retool our roster (after the loss to UGA) and get bigger players and schematically spend a lot of offseason preparing for Georgia…now we’ve got to get healthy. We did that (beat Georgia) without Tre Harris, the top receiver in the country, and we’re going to have to find a way to run the ball better and get more production from the running back position.”
Media: What are your thoughts on the performance of the offensive line?
Kiffin: “They’ve done really good in the passing game, identification, and the physical part of it. We still lack movement at times in the run game. So they did a good job. That’s a really good defense that does a lot of things. I give a lot of credit to our coaches in the offseason game planning for Georgia and getting our players in position to make plays on fourth down or in the red zone.”
Media: Lane, we saw a consistent five players at offensive line, do you expect that to stay the same?
Kiffin: “It wasn’t a high play-count game, there weren’t a lot of long series, and now when guys get tired, we have the squirrel, and we just send him out there to help us so we don’t need as many subs. (Kiffin was laughing when he said that.) Jayden’s (Williams) been banged up, Jeremy James has been hurt a lot, so we ended up with not a lot of rotation in the game.”
Media: How does yesterday’s atmosphere impact recruiting?
Kiffin: “It does a lot… I kind of realized it after…I think we’re going to have a good 48 hours in recruiting also, potentially. I think it was very impactful… to see the atmosphere, like a kid said afterward, we know we can come to Ole Miss and beat one of the best teams in the country and be one of the best teams in the country.”
Media: Do you have any optimism about getting Logan Diggs back?
Kiffin: “I hope so, that would really be good. Physical, veteran running back like that, downhill runner, it would be really god timing for that to happen. I thought about that this morning waking up, this team right now is playing as well as anybody in the country, what would it look like with Tre (Harris) out there and Logan Diggs out there?”
Media: Thoughts on the effectiveness of Cayden Lee?
Kiffin: “He’s playing through injuries and has really done an amazing job. He’s beating some really good defensive backs man-to-man. This week will hopefully help him, he’s been unbelievable. He catches everything, runs routes out of motion for the backfield and everything.”
Media: This late in the season, do you dial it back over the bye week?
Kiffin: “No, we’re going to work hard. We’re going to practice. It doesn’t mean be violently physical. We’ve got to look at different schemes… look at things to continue to stay on top. I think that sometimes things happen and they seem terrible at the time, but they might be really good. I said it to our offensive staff, the Tre (Harris) injury has been good for the staff because they’ve had to be more creative with plays and ideas because you can’t just throw the ball to Tre. We need to keep that same idea in mind of being creative in all areas to try and see if there’s different things we can do.”
Heading into the bye week, stay tuned with The Rebel Walk for all of your Ole Miss sports coverage. Hotty Toddy!
