The Ole Miss Rebels and the Mississippi State Bulldogs have rocketed to the top of the college football world, but will they be able to stay there? If there’s a skeptical position to take on both the Rebels and Bulldogs, there’s definitely one to be made, and it goes like this:
Their Track Record Is Not As Impressive As It Appears
The first thing to point out about both of these schools is that they’ve played teams that really haven’t been as good as a lot of analysts first thought they were. Ole Miss beat an Alabama team that has simply struggled to score in the SEC. Alabama scored only 17 points against Ole Miss on the Rebels’ home field, and right after that result, it was easy to think that Ole Miss had done something very special. However, Alabama’s offense then scored 14 the following week on the road against Arkansas.
If Arkansas could do a better job of playing defense against Alabama than Ole Miss, just how good are the Rebels? Ole Miss destroyed Texas A&M, but the Aggies looked really bad the week before against Mississippi State. It could simply be that Alabama and Texas A&M aren’t very good right now, and that Ole Miss and Mississippi State are being overrated as a result.
The same thing applies to LSU, a team that Mississippi State defeated on the road in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. LSU was ranked in the top 10 of the polls at the time Mississippi State beat the Tigers, but LSU has been exposed as a weak team in the succeeding few weeks. Mississippi State and Ole Miss are winning convincingly, but they’re not beating a team that is really good, and they’re not beating a team that’s playing its best. Sooner or later, an opponent is going to play very well, and that’s when Ole Miss and Mississippi State could face problems.
Alabama is not playing up to its usual level of dominance, but Alabama could be the kind of team that begins to click in the second half of the season, also at home more than on the road. Mississippi State has to play at Alabama this season and that could be a game the Bulldogs could lose.
As for Ole Miss, it’s true that the Rebels get their biggest and toughest games at home, but the Rebels, in addition to hosting Mississippi State, do have to play defending SEC champion Auburn, probably the toughest SEC West team other than the two Mississippi schools. Auburn committed a lot of turnovers against Mississippi State on a day when the Bulldogs also surrendered a number of turnovers as well. If Auburn plays its best game, Ole Miss might not be able to keep pace, even at home. The possibility of stumbles by both of these teams before the SEC title game is very real.
