Lane Kiffin is Confident Ole Miss Football Can Reload in 2025 and Beyond

Ole Miss Rebels head coach Lane Kiffin is confident his team can rebuild quickly after a successful run the last few seasons.

Mississippi Rebels head coach Lane Kiffin is interviewed after the game while holding the Ash Verlander Champions Trophy of the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025 at EverBank Stadium in Jacksonville, Fla. Ole Miss defeated Duke 52-20. [Corey Perrine/Florida Times-Union] / Corey Perrine/Florida Times-Union / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The Ole Miss Rebels have claimed back-to-back 10-win seasons for the first time since 1959-60, but with so many players departing for the NFL Draft this offseason, can the program continue to climb in the years ahead?

Lane Kiffin thinks so, and he points to some recent success in "reloading" rather than "rebuilding" as evidence of that.

Following the 2021 season, quarterback Matt Corral departed Ole Miss to pursue his professional career. In came Jaxson Dart to take over his signal caller duties, and even though the Rebels went 8-5 that season, Dart would pilot Ole Miss to these last two 10-plus-win campaigns and continue the momentum that was established under Corral with a 10-win year in 2021.

"Probably wouldn't have been so confident if we hadn't done some of this before," Kiffin said following Ole Miss' win in the Gator Bowl. "I feel like when Matt Corral left, a lot of people thought we were going to have this downswing, and that was just kind of a Matt Corral thing."

Kiffin also believes that even though last year's Ole Miss team won 11 games compared to just 10 this year, the 2024 Rebels were a better roster than the one that took the field in 2023. He thinks there is still plenty of room to grow after this recent run.

"Our team this year was a better team," Kiffin said. "We lost three one-score games. ... The team before went 4-0 in one-score games. We were actually a better team, as you look at 10 double-digit wins. That doesn't happen very often. My point is that we can keep getting better, just continuing to add players, add pieces and keeping our staff together too."

Ole Miss will likely be turning the keys of its offense over to a young Austin Simmons who has been Dart's understudy this season. Simmons has shown flashes of success in his limited opportunities on the field, including piloting a crucial scoring drive against the Georgia Bulldogs early in the game that helped the Rebels go on to claim the upset win in Oxford back in November.

If Simmons can keep Dart's momentum going, Kiffin may be right. The 2025 season and beyond could continue the program's growth.