Ole Miss hopes to build on defense’s historic performance against Furman

The Ole Miss offense made headlines in the Rebels’ 76-0 win over Furman on Saturday, but the defense showed out in a big way as well.

Pete Golding’s defense held the Paladins to just 176 total yards of offense, the fewest allowed in a game in Lane Kiffin’s tenure as the Rebels’ head coach. They also had 16 tackles for a loss, 12 of them were by newcomers.

While the schedule will only get tougher, it was surely a welcome sight for Kiffin to see his bolstered defense dominate. He’ll be looking for the same thing against Middle Tennessee this weekend.

“This is a really good quarterback. This is going to present new challenges. Our transfers made a lot of plays, they were all over the place on defense. So not that I actually want to play more snaps of defense from a 1’s standpoint because we’d love for the score to go like it did, but there’s a lot more football to be played and got to make sure they’re in shape,” Kiffin said.

“We take every week into our own hands,” Defensive tackle Walter Nolen said. “Only people that’s going to stop us up front is us. I wholeheartedly believe that. I feel like we’ve got one of the defensive lines if not in the country I know for sure in the SEC.”