Ole Miss Football: 3 takeaways from tough Sugar Bowl loss to Baylor

Baylor took advantage of Ole Miss football being down Matt Corral because of an injury to topple the Rebels in the Sugar Bowl. What’d we learn?

Matt Corral and Ole Miss football were expecting to play one of the best New Year’s Six games of the year on Saturday night, but a major injury caused him to miss the better part of three quarters to end the Sugar Bowl and the Rebels fell 21-7.

It was a disappointing end to a solid season, dropping Ole Miss to 10-3, but there’s so much to look forward to in 2022 and beyond under Lane Kiffin.

What’d we learn from the disappointing loss to finish the 2021 season?

3. Play-calling was way too conservative

When you watch a Lane Kiffin-coached team, you expect to see an offense taking risks and gaining yards in creative ways.

That wasn’t the case on Saturday night.

Jeff Lebby’s last game as Ole Miss offensive coordinator was one to forget even though he did lose his starting quarterback early on and had to face an elite defense. Still, his play-calling was pretty lackluster and we saw that on multiple second-and-long and third-and-intermediate plays. It felt like he had zero trust in his freshman quarterback to throw the ball even though he was on fire in the second half.

Lebby called a conservative game with run plays on second-and-20 and third-and-5 when the rushing attack wasn’t working against the Bears. Ole Miss ran the ball an astounding 54 times for 138 yards. He just refused to abandon what wasn’t working, and it was frustrating to watch.