Jury Still Out on Pete Golding's New Ole Miss Defense Following Grove Bowl

The Rebels' defense was admittedly "watered down" purposefully during their spring game on Saturday.

OXFORD, Miss. -- The Ole Miss Rebels put up a lot of points in their annual Grove Bowl on Saturday with the red team coming out with a coach-aided 53-52 win at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.

The teams combined for over 1,000 yards of total offense on Saturday, but how much of that was offensive prowess, defensive ineptitude or a purposeful limitation on defensive play calling? 

"It's difficult to evaluate because we don't let the defense run a lot of defense," head coach Lane Kiffin said in Saturday's postgame media availability. "There's not a lot of scheme going on. 

"The offense didn't listen quite as well to those commands and ran a lot of trick plays. They were more competitive schematically with some things. I would not judge the yardage."

Why this design from Kiffin and his staff? In part, it's to keep the more complicated and "useful" packages off of film, but it's also for other reasons.

"Myself, I'd rather create a spring game with some excitement with recruits to see and people to watch," Kiffin said. "We did that today, not necessarily in the defense's advantage."

On one hand, the offense had a stellar day in the Grove Bowl with all three quarterbacks racking up plenty of yards and scores, but on the other, what do we take from Pete Golding's new defense?

In short, the jury is still very much out. History dictates that his schemes are successful at this level, but with injuries and a purposeful limitation on defensive play calling, Ole Miss fans will have to wait until September to see this set in work during meaningful action.

Of course, that may not be a bad thing. The games don't count until the fall, so this gives Golding and the defensive staff some time to continue to implement their packages over the summer.

Essentially, if you're an Ole Miss fan, you should not panic about the multitude of points allowed on Saturday. It was largely by design, and there is plenty of time before kickoff against Mercer to start the 2023 season.

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You can follow John Macon on Twitter at @JMakeGillespie.

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