Kellenberger: Injuries, miscues cost Ole Miss against LSU
BATON ROUGE – Hugh Freeze wanted just one more shot.
Maybe a freshman kicker was never going to make a 47-yard field goal with more than 102,321 screaming inside Tiger Stadium. Maybe the fate was sealed after a delay of game pushed that kick back five yards. Maybe it didn't matter after the previous drive ended with a quarterback sneak being stuffed on fourth down.
With nine seconds remaining on Saturday, quarterback Bo Wallace threw a pass toward receiver Cody Core near the front of the endzone — the last chance to save No. 3 Ole Miss' perfect season. A safety came over the top and intercepted the pass inside the 5, sealing a 10-7 LSU upset win.
"Difficult. Difficult," Freeze said. "… This league is brutal."
The Rebels still have a shot at achieving all its goals — the four-team College Football Playoff makes it possible. But instead of being one of the teams in the driver's seat when the first rankings are released on Tuesday, Ole Miss joins Alabama and Auburn in a pack of one-loss SEC West teams desperately trying to catch leader Mississippi State. The Rebels play No. 5 Auburn on Saturday.
Freeze said that kicker Gary Wunderlich is not as strong from the right hashmark, where the ball was spotted. Freeze said he gave Wallace two options: either throw the ball in the flats to get the ball to the left hashmark or throw it out-of-bounds. Obviously Wallace did not do either, ending easily his worst SEC game with his first turnover in conference play this season.
"I thought we were pretty clear," Freeze said.
Said Wallace: "One-on-one, I threw it up and he made a play on it."
Ole Miss ended the game without two of its defensive All-Americans — defensive tackle Robert Nkemdiche and safety Cody Prewitt — on the field because of unspecified injuries. It played part of the third quarter without left tackle Laremy Tunsil, which may have been the biggest loss of them all. Linebacker Denzel Nkemdiche hurt his ankle in the first half and may miss future games.
The Rebels prepared all week to be without center Ben Still (knee), and said they were comfortable with Robert Conyers getting his first start at the position. Conyers has proven himself to be a fine blocker and a mostly reliable snapper. But the converted tackle clearly struggled at doing both in concert, and LSU defensive coordinator John Chavis exposed it by routinely blitzing the A gap.
Things got worse in the third quarter, when Tunsil left the game with what was quickly described as a pulled right bicep. Normally, Ole Miss would move right tackle Fahn Cooper to left (which it did), and put Conyers into the game. But in this situation Ole Miss had to give redshirt freshman Daronte Bouldin the first significant snaps of his career. It could not have come at a worse time.
Suddenly, Wallace had little time to throw and was inconsistent with his delivery when he did (Wallace finished 14-for-33 passing for 176 yards). The running game that had done a solid job of getting the edge all night and picking up four or five yards a pop was now lucky to get back to the line of scrimmage. Ole Miss had four first downs total in the second half and none in the third quarter. In a game where three more points would have meant overtime and one more touchdown would have meant 8-0 and another huge game in Oxford, Ole Miss had nothing.
"It was totally different," running back Jaylen Walton said. "As far as the center position, Ben (Still) leads the field a lot better, but it was a hard game."
It's hard to really put into words how much Tunsil means to Ole Miss. Through the first 19 games of his college football career, he's allowed only two sacks — one each season. He makes the offensive lineman job look easy, whether he's asked to pick up an edge blitzer, take on a defensive end or sprint to the sideline to block on a screen pass. He's so good you occasionally wonder if he's bored in some way by this level of football, and teams are so concerned with him that they occasionally stop even trying to pass rush on him.
Ole Miss simply does not have a replacement for Tunsil, which is not a knock on the Rebels' recruiting because how do you adequately fill-in for someone so vital? But injuries do happen in this game, something Ole Miss has almost completely avoided to this point. Still is the first starter to miss a game due to health this season. During a season that theoretically could still end up being 15 games long now, they're bound to happen again.
And the Rebels, at least on one side of the ball, proved just how thin they could really be on Saturday. That's not a new revelation; Freeze has made it clear the offensive line depth worries him and has made it the biggest offseason recruiting priority.
After what happened on Saturday in Death Valley, everyone knows it.
Contact Hugh Kellenberger at (601) 961-7291 orFollow @HKellenbergerCL on Twitter.
Key Player
Leonard Fournette, LSU
Standout freshman was bruising, finishing with 113 yards on the ground.
Key Figure
0
Number of points Ole Miss scored in the second half.