Kiffin's Rebs Dump Tech
Visitors From Oxford Join the Growing List of Teams That Dominate Yellow Jackets, 42-0
If it had been a fight, they would have stopped it a few minutes into the 3rd quarter. That’s all it took to see that Tech had no new ideas or new energy needed to fight back from a 21-0 halftime deficit that felt even bigger than it sounds. Actually you could have made a case that the “fight” would have been stopped much earlier, as one contestant threw only a few token.punches and offered only listless defense. Ole Miss continued to land haymakers, disguised in plain sight here as off- tackle runs that reliably went for 7 or 8 or 12 yards a pop. By the end of the 3rd quarter , it was 42-0 and neither team mustered a score from there– Kiffin’s crew primarily out of deference, Collins’ Tech team out of continued widespread offensive ineffectiveness.
For the game, the Rebels had 62 runs for over 320 yards. As Kiffin later said, those sound like Georgia Tech numbers from just a few years ago. It looked like a long drill.
As has been the trend lately against big boy schools of the Power 5 , the final stats are of only middling interest.
Collins himself was unusually subdued in his post game remarks, saying he could think of no real positives from this game. Several of his players added some context. Charlie Thomas and Myles Sims noted that the team came out flat and the rapid tempo used by Ole Miss threw them off. The defense wasn’t ready– often literally– when the plays began. Meanwhile RB Dontae Smith echoed the notion that the team lacked energy. And he was unable to shed light on the curious fact that, though he was Tech’s leading rusher the week before against Western Carolina, he was little-used in this game, garnering only 5 carries total. Smith referred that question to his coaching staff.
In the big picture, this performance only heightened the unpleasant mix of hard frustration and growing apathy among Tech faithful. Again in this game, there were all manner of mistakes and shortcomings, including another blocked punt, Tech’s 3rd allowed in three games this year. And on a later punt attempt, an Ole Miss defender broke contain and arrived plenty early enough to block the kick, but for an imprecise angle to the ball which left him short.
When asked about this play, Collins offered as how he wasn’t going to ” throw players under the bus” a phrase he repeated times three. At that level of repetition, this answers take on a sanctimonious tone, almost condescending. The lack of detail given on his answer to a serious question about a very serious problem is, in effect, dismissed. That type of communication does not bring light to the fan base who has grown weary of the weekly reassurances that things will get cleaned up.
There was ample evidence of the fans’ frustration— many thousands of empty seats on Tech’s home field on a beautiful Saturday afternoon against a quality opponent.
Along with the punting team’s issues, other sequences served to fuel critics of the coaching decisions. For an easy example, the crowd booed Collins’ decision to kill the final 24 seconds of the half following an interception. The likelihood was low that Tech could do anything productive with that little bit of time. But the customers wanted to sense some semblance of aggressiveness, some element of fight. They did not see it then. And they did not see it when the game restarted in the 3rd quarter. So they left.
It was more evidence that the casual fan base has pulled the emotional plug on the Collins regime at Tech. Who is listening?
Patrick Conarro
RamblinSports.com