Pat McAfee Says 'This Feels Like the Year' For Ole Miss, Lane Kiffin

Is this the season where the Ole Miss Rebels are able to break through and compete in the College Football Playoff?

Dec 30, 2023; Atlanta, GA, USA; Mississippi Rebels head coach Lane Kiffin shown at the end of the game against the Penn State Nittany Lions during the second half at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports / Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

There is still a week until the No. 6 Ole Miss Rebels open the 2024 college football season. There is even more time until the solidification of the College Football Playoff field, but on the initial installment of ESPN's College Gameday, the Rebels were still gathering postseason hype.

Analyst Pat McAfee has not hidden his optimism about Ole Miss this offseason after returning a ton of talent from an 11-win team a year ago and adding new pieces from the transfer portal. In fact, he put the Rebels as the five-seed in his playoff projections that aired on Gameday this weekend.

McAfee stated on Saturday prior to the Week 0 college football games that if Ole Miss has ever been poised for a playoff run, it's this season.

"How about Lane Kiffin this year?" McAfee said. "This feels like the Ole Miss year. It feels like this is the year for Ole Miss and for Lane Kiffin to kind of do it. Two transfers on the defensive line too from Texas A&M and Florida, so they beef up that entire thing. Is this the year for Ole Miss? But to your point, schedule: not easy at all."

No schedule within the Southeastern Conference is easy, but Ole Miss' could without a doubt be more difficult than it is on paper. The Rebels open with four very winnable non-conference games, and their toughest SEC contests appear to be a road trip to LSU and home dates against Oklahoma and Georgia.

Those are not cakewalks, and neither is a trip to Columbia to face the South Carolina Gamecocks (or any other league game, for that matter), but the Rebels have the added benefit of not playing teams like Alabama and Texas this season, both of whom are expected to be in the conference championship hunt late in the year.

The transfer portal additions, especially in the trenches, are expected to be the biggest differences for Ole Miss this season. The Rebels won 11 games in 2023 for the first time in school history, but they lost to both Alabama and Georgia last year thanks to what former Tide head coach Nick Saban referred to as mismatches up front.

Walter Nolen and Princely Umanmielen are the two transfers that McAfee referenced on Saturday, but the offensive line received just as big an upgrade this offseason. The Rebels added names like Nate Kalepo and Julius Buelow from the Washington Huskies as well as Gerquan Scott and Diego Pounds who are expected to shore up the offensive front for Kiffin during the fall.

If Ole Miss can have its returning playmakers and new faces gel, this very well could be "the year" for Kiffin and company.