RECAP: Ole Miss wins the 80th TaxSlayer Gator Bowl

In his final career collegiate game, quarterback Jaxson Dart won Gator Bowl MVP, tallying nearly 450 yards and four touchdowns.

In a crisp Jacksonville night, the Ole Miss Rebels were out to prove a point. When the dust finally settled at the conclusion of the game, it’s fair to say their point was made. The Rebels dominated a Duke roster that had lost their two starting quarterbacks to the transfer portal, among others on their team. Ole Miss jumped out to an early 14-0 lead and never looked back, winning 52-20.

There were a couple primary storylines going into the Gator Bowl, one of them being the Rebels just falling short of the College Football Playoff, among with other three-loss SEC teams Alabama and South Carolina. It was certainly no secret how Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin felt about the snub, speaking on it directly to the committee on social media. However, after both aforementioned teams lost their respective bowl games, Kiffin saw their bowl game as an opportunity to show the nation what they were missing.

“I know our guys talked a lot over the course of the month, especially the last week, about making a statement,” said Kiffin. “They had the feeling that they were left out of the playoffs. So, they really wanted to make a statement against an ACC team that had two teams in the playoffs.”

The other main story going into their bowl game was the large percentage of their roster that chose to opt-in and play their final game, despite it being a non-playoff bowl. In the era of the transfer portal, it has become much more difficult for something like that to occur. Yet, Ole Miss ran out multiple senior or draft-eligible stars such as Trey Amos, Walter Nolen, Ulysses Bentley IV, Jordan Watkins, and the most notable, Jaxson Dart.

Throughout the week, all those players and more mentioned that it was never a question of whether they were going to play the bowl game or not. Dart said it was never in doubt in his mind, and ended up playing the entirety of the bowl game, minus the final play. It’s fair to say he put together a final performance to be remembered. He tallied nearly 450 total yards and four touchdowns. He ran the ball and lowered his shoulder to take hits, he made incredible off-balance throws, and he even went off script to deliver one final 67-yard touchdown pass to Jordan Watkins. As a result, he was awarded the Gator Bowl MVP, as he walked off the field in an Ole Miss jersey for the final time knowing he left everything he had out there.

“I told my teammates, my coaches, my mom before the game, that I’m going to leave everything I had out on that field. I play the way that I play it. I don’t really play looking ahead to the future, I’m just there for the moment and I’m going to compete,” said Dart. “I think you have a lot of pride when you play this game. You have a lot of pride that you carry when you wear this jersey. We feel like Oxford has given more to us than we’ve given to them. I think it was the same for everybody, we didn’t have to convince anybody to play. Everybody was on the same page. You grow up as a little kid and you want to play college football, and when you’re a kid, you never think about sitting out of a game. So, that was never a thought.”

The 32-point margin of victory will certainly give Kiffin and others some talking points when looking back at this season and ahead to the next, as the Rebels continue to work the transfer portal and revamp their roster headed into the 2025 season.