Kiffin: No advantage to working at Alabama for Ole Miss this week

Lane Kiffin spent three years as the offensive coordinator for Nick Saban (2014-16). On Saturday, as the new head coach at Ole Miss, he will try to do what no other former Saban assistant has done - beat him. (Ole Miss Media Relations)

By TIM GAYLE

Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin knows a lot about Alabama’s football team. Kiffin helped recruit several of the older offensive players when he was an offensive coordinator under Nick Saban and he went up against Alabama’s defense every day in practice. That should give him an advantage, right?

“All these people would say that it’s an advantage because I worked with him,” Kiffin said. “I don’t really understand that. He’s 20-0 against coaches that worked for him. If you working for him gives you an advantage, you’re not a very good gambler because 20-0 is a pretty strong record.”

Kiffin is the next former assistant to take on Saban’s second-ranked Crimson Tide when Alabama visits Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on Saturday at 5 p.m. Kickoff is on ESPN.

Alabama enters the game as a 24-point favorite, perhaps because Ole Miss ranks last in America in total defense and next to last in scoring defense.

“We don’t get off blocks and don’t play with good leverage up front, it makes for a record-breaking day like that,” Kiffin said. “We’ve got a challenge here. I’m sure that they’re going to want to run the ball after seeing that film, even though they’ve become a pass-first team now. I would expect them to try and get the running game going this week.”

Kiffin calls the Tide “pass-first” but every opposing coach gears up to stop the run first and the Tide simply counters the strategy with its playmakers at receiver. But Ole Miss will answer the challenge with a tandem of its own in quarterback Matt Corral and receiver Elijah Moore.

“There are a lot of good quarterbacks in our league and Matt certainly is one of them,” Saban said. “I mean, he’s played really, really well in the first two games. You know, he hurts people with his feet, he extends plays, he makes a lot of explosive plays, is very accurate with the ball, does a great job of sort of executing their offense, you know, with the RPOs and the reads that he makes.”

Moore, he added, “is a very good player, he’s very quick, very explosive, very sudden, has a burst. He’s hard to tackle … and he’s hard to cover. It’s going to be a matchup that we have to pay a lot of attention to in this game.”

Statistically, Saturday’s game promises to be a shootout. Alabama has the third-rated scoring offense in America and the fifth-best passing offense, while Ole Miss will counter with the No. 4 passing offense and No. 5 total offense.

Alabama quarterback Mac Jones ranks first in America in pass efficiency at 222.10, slowly gaining attention as he tries to emerge from the shadow of his predecessor, Tua Tagovailoa. 

“We were there when we recruited Mac,” Kiffin said. “I always thought the cool thing about Mac was everybody said, ‘Why would you go there with Tua?’ And he didn’t care. He was very competitive but really confident in himself. Awesome family. Glad he’s doing well.”

Corral is third in pass efficiency at 2111.90, ranks 22nd nationally in passing yards (Jones is 24th) and third in passing yards per game (Jones is fourth). 

Moore is tops in America in receiving yards per game (159.5), just ahead of Alabama receiver Jaylen Waddle (138.0). Interestingly enough, the newest Tide receiver, John Metchie, leads the nation in yards per reception at 31.86.

“We’ve got to limit explosive plays, keep the ball in front of us,” Kiffin said. “Now they have another receiver I’ve never even heard of that went for 150, that runs by everybody. I thought there were two, now there’s three. We got to find a way. No one else has found a way for a while.”

While Kiffin is still in the rebuilding stages in his first year as the Mississippi coach, Saban would like to correct Alabama’s defensive deficiencies. A unit that was once considered one of America’s best currently ranks 30th nationally in total defense, unable to get off the field on third down.

“I think mental errors led to several explosive plays where we didn’t have somebody covered,” Saban said. “It’s not just the secondary, sometimes it was the linebackers making mental errors as well. But we need to get better. I think we played better in this game than we did in the first game, so hopefully we’ll continue to make progress. I think it’ll be really important that we play really well against this team this week because this is the most explosive team we’ve played against thus far.”

Kiffin called the Tide the “No. 1 team in the country coming in, in my opinion. The premier program in the country, no offense to Clemson. Those are the two premier programs that are operating on the highest level over the last 10 years, and this one's doing it in the SEC, which is a little bit harder. We’ll have our hands full. I think this is probably the best team Coach has had.”

Alabama only has 10 losses to Ole Miss in school history, but half of those came in the last 40 years, including one in 1988 where the Tide failed to complete a pass and angry fans allegedly threw a brick through the office window of head coach Bill Curry; one in 2001 and another in 2003 at the hands of Ole Miss quarterback Eli Manning; and games in 2014 and 2015 when Kiffin was the offensive coordinator at Alabama.

“Ole Miss has been a team that’s created lots of problems for us in the past, ruined a couple of (perfect) seasons for us, so we’ve certainly need to have the proper respect for this team,” Saban said. “If we don’t, with the number of points that they’ve scored, 42 and 35, in the first two weeks…

“We need to have the proper respect for what we’re going to have to do to go on the road and play well to have success.”

After all, Ole Miss has an advantage. Their head coach knows all there is to know about Saban.

“Everybody says, ‘They know him.’ Well, he knows the assistants,” Kiffin said. “I think it goes both ways. Except for Ole Miss those two times and a few Iron Bowls, he’s 100 percent against everybody else, really, until you get to Clemson in the playoffs. He’s 100 percent against a lot of coaches and schools.”