Did Early Season Losses Help Ole Miss Football Upset Georgia? Lane Kiffin Thinks So

Did Ole Miss' early season losses help the Rebels take down Georgia over the weekend?

Nov 9, 2024; Oxford, Mississippi, USA; Mississippi Rebels head coach Lane Kiffin reacts near the end of the game during the second half against the Georgia Bulldogs at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Petre Thomas-Imagn Images / Petre Thomas-Imagn Images

It's never fun for a head coach when his team loses a game in heartbreaking fashion, but is it possible that the Ole Miss Rebels' earlier losses this season helped set them up to take down the Georgia Bulldogs over the weekend?

Lane Kiffin thinks so. He said on Saturday after the game that his team has really been in a playoff mindset since its second loss of the year (vs. LSU) last month, and it's possible that focus helped them to slay the Georgia giant in Oxford.

"I told them really three weeks ago at the LSU game where we screwed up at the end, had control of the whole game and don't win, 'You basically just put yourselves in the playoffs,'" Kiffin said. "'You're going to have to win every week.'

"The playoffs, to me, were going to go through Georgia, if you were going to win it. It's a different system now: 12 teams are going to make it, and 11 are going to lose their last game. You're going to have to play them at some point. I told them they actually have home field advantage [on Saturday]."

Since the loss to LSU, Ole Miss has won three games in a row, taking down the Oklahoma Sooners and Arkansas Razorbacks before the massive win over Georgia. Defeating the Bulldogs is no small challenge (the Rebels and Alabama are the only two programs to beat Georgia since it lost to Florida during the 2020 season), but Ole Miss certainly seemed to play with an intensity that indicated its season was on the line on Saturday.

It came out on top as a result, and even though losses to Kentucky and LSU stung the Rebels at the time, they might look back on those moments as ones that actually propel them into the College Football Playoff, should they take care of business during the rest of the season.

"Like I told [the players], sometimes things happen, and you don't know why," Kiffin said. "That put our backs against the wall. A lot of people, when your back's against the wall fight a little different. Had we won those, they may have come into this game like, 'Hey, we can beat Georgia, but we don't really have to because we'll still be in the playoffs.'"

Ole Miss should still be in "playoff mode" over the next few weeks. The Rebels are on a bye this week before traveling to face the Florida Gators and hosting the Mississippi State Bulldogs to conclude the regular season, but they will need to win those games in order to feel good about earning a CFP berth.

If they're able to earn those two wins, it will signify a remarkable turnaround for a team whose playoff hopes were on life support in late October.