Can Florida reverse road blues against angry Ole Miss team?

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I’m obviously a Florida Gators fan, but I’m a fan of college football as well.

I remember growing up watching the Doug Flutie Hail Mary against Miami that happened when I was three years old but was played over and over every year. I watched Boston College taking down Notre Dame on a last second field goal right after they’d beaten Charlie Ward and FSU the week before. And I remember unranked Texas’ win over Nebraska in the first Big-12 Championship Game that allowed Steve Spurrier’s Gators team to get a rematch against FSU for the National Championship.

That’s what college football in November is supposed to be about. Upsets, mayhem, and championship implications every week. Instead, we get whatever this debacle is going to be in Oxford, Mississippi on Saturday as Florida fans attend with their heads on a swivel as angry – and potentially soon-to-be-spurned – Ole Miss fans prowl the Grove pissed off that a playoff team isn’t enough to get their head coach to sign an extension.

That is what the powers that be in college football have wrought.

As player procurement has become more and more critical (or at least, its criticality has been acknowledged), programs can’t wait to change their coaches because the schedule is mega-compressed. Early signing day for the 2026 recruiting class is December 4. The transfer portal is open from January 2 to January 16.

Somehow, all of that happens before the 2025 season ends with the national championship game on January 19.

Hence, we end up with Brian Kelly, Billy Napier, and a whole host of other coaches fired halfway through the season. And we end up with Jimmy Sexton being the most important figure in college football rather than any of the players or coaches.

You can’t wait if you want to get a jump on bringing in the next guy who’s going to turn your program around. But if you’re like Florida or LSU – targeting a current head coach at the FBS level – you’re likely waiting for that coach to either drop out of the playoff race (which probably makes them un-hirable to your fan base) or you have to snipe that coach before his team goes on its full playoff run.

It all feels dirty. I want Florida to get Lane Kiffin as much as the next Gators fan. He’s the guy that the program has clearly targeted and he does have a lot to like in his profile, the least of which is that he assures an 8-win floor for a team sitting at 3-6.

But there has to be a better solution to this problem than having the 2026 offseason start before the 2025 season ends.  But we all know the leadership of college football couldn’t find that solution if it bit them right in the ass.

Ole Miss Preview

On the field, this one isn’t even close. Unless Kiffin’s troops have given up because their leader already (allegedly) has one foot out the door, this one is going to get ugly relatively quickly.

On offense, the Rebels sport the 18th best offense in the country averaging 6.5 yards per play against FBS opponents. Florida sits at 96th in the same category (5.0 yards per play). On defense, Florida ranks 73rd in yards per play allowed against FBS opponents (5.6) while Ole Miss ranks 51st (5.2).

This Ole Miss team isn’t anywhere near as good as last year’s squad that Florida dispatched in The Swamp. By scoring margin, they would be lucky to be 8-2 and should more likely be 7-3 coming into this game. That’s reflected in their 4-1 record in close games.

But this Florida squad has earned its record, with its scoring margin suggesting 2.3 wins in its 8 FBS games. I know there’s been some discussion about Florida “being in every game” but the reality is that the Gators’ record is exactly where it should be given their on-field performance.

Perhaps more significantly, the Gators are 0-4 in their four true road games this year and have been outscored in those contests by more than 19 points per contest. Yes, the Kentucky game seemed to come out of nowhere after the close win against Mississippi State and the close loss against Georgia. But those close calls masked that the Gators’ closest game on the road this season is a 10-point loss to an LSU team that has since fired its coach and benched its starting QB.

D.J. Lagway has apparently looked great in practice according to interim head coach Billy Gonzales. Well, he’d better, because that’s really the only path Florida has to win in this one.

We saw how Florida struggled to get pressure against Kentucky and was then carved up by Cutter Boley, a guy who has played pretty well this year (QB rating of 140.1) but has been wildly inconsistent in 2025. Ole Miss QB Trinidad Chambliss is better (QB rating of 153.7) and also brings a dynamic Boley did not: his ability to run the ball.

Boley has run for 96 yards on 50 carries this season (1.9 yards per attempt). Chambliss has run 99 times for 434 yards (4.4 yards per attempt). That is why his Yards Above Replacement (YAR, my stat for QB evaluation) is 1.35 for his season thus far, with only one performance (on the road against Oklahoma) ranked just slightly below average.

Compare that to Lagway, who has a QB rating of 125.0 for the year and a YAR of -1.11. Even more damning is that Lagway has had a significantly negative YAR in seven of his nine starts. It’s hard to believe that he’s going to find something after getting pulled last week just in time to upset the Rebels again.

And it’s the “again” part of that sentence that also makes me lean heavily towards Ole Miss. You could think that this team might overlook a wounded 3-6 opponent. But the Gators cost this team a chance at a playoff birth just last season. Jaxson Dart may not be on the sideline, but there are definitely players who remember. Combine that with all the rumors swirling around their coach, and I can’t imagine the Rebels coming out flat in this one.

They’re not a perfect team. They’re not better than the team that lost to Florida last season. But Florida is way worse than they were last year, with much worse QB play, and they have been absolutely putrid on the road.

As always when I pick this way, I hope I’m wrong. But this one is going to get ugly.

Ole Miss (-11.5) wins easily, 42-10.

Picks this year: 5-4 (4-5 ATS)