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The University of Mississippi Athletics
Lane Kiffin Weekly Press Conference
10/31/2022 | Football
OXFORD, Miss. – Ole Miss football head coach Lane Kiffin met with the media Monday to recap his team's 31-28 victory at Texas A&M and preview the coming bye week. A transcript can be found below.
Opening statement…
"Really excited we got a road win in a hard place to play. Really good timing for a bye. Sometimes they can come at a bad time, when you don't necessarily need them as much. We're playing with a lot of injured players that this will be very significant and hopefully, if we can get them back, can help us all over, but especially defensively. Like I tell the players, you want things to go perfect, but when they don't, other good things happen. Like I told them after the game, I wish we would've closed it out on offense twice when we had the ball and made some first downs and ran the clock out, but we didn't and put our defense in the situation there to have to win the game for us, which they did. That was great to see, and then very significant special teams play on that 60-yard punt that was able to milk some time off too that they didn't field. Very pleased. We've got a lot of work to do, a lot of improvement to do. But to be 8-1 at the bye. If you would've said at the beginning of the year, with so many brand-new players and the quarterback question. Obviously you'd love to be 9-0, but we lost a lot of people from last year, and there were a lot of questions coming in with all the portal guys and how they'd fit and all of that. We've got a lot of work to do to improve, but record-wise, that's pretty good considering all those things."
On getting healthy during the bye…
"On any open date, you still want to get some work done, maybe new schemes or things, but especially players who haven't played as much. It's so late in the season, so there's more about getting guys healthy, there's more people that you have to do that with, where if it's earlier in the year, you don't as much. There will be a lot of players not in practice and in the training room, trying to get back. Kind of like our common theme unfortunately every year, we're not rotating a lot on offense, especially in the skill, or line, but especially skill, which results in some huge play counts, whatever 82 or something for Jonathan Mingo the other day. So there's a lot of guys who need to get their bodies back."
On how recruiting has responded to the 8-1 start…
"We're 18-3 in regular season games over two years. They've been a lot of them, they've seen them on TV. That's a lot of wins and success. Usually winning impacts recruiting, at least it used to a lot. We've had very good reception from guys. They're interested in coming into a program that is winning and having a lot of fun doing that. Hopefully they'll overlook some other things."
On his pregame interaction with Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher…
"That was unusual. I've coached for a few years and always shake hands with the head coach before the game like I was taught. I stood out there for a while and he never came over, so I don't really know what the issue is. The media guys were there doing the game, so they said, don't feel bad, he blew them off the day before or something like that for their meetings. It is what it is. Can't control other people."
On Auburn firing head coach Bryan Harsin…
"We were in meetings, so I actually didn't know that. When you've been through something like that, you obviously have empathy for people. It is what it is in the profession. I'm not complaining, because this profession gets paid a lot of money, and it's part of it. When everybody roots for everybody to get fired and oh it's so great and everything, it's not just that person, it's a ton of people besides his family—a lot. Especially because the staffs have increased now where kids are uprooted from schools and all those things. I understand why fans root for it, I get it all, but there's a very personal side to it with a lot of adults, kids who, when something like that happens, are going be affected."
On the young players at the linebacker position…
"Some are playing on special teams. We do think that was a really good group signed. We knew that there were some number issues coming up so we think those guys will be really good players. It's a hard position to play right away. It takes time."
On Quinshon Judkins and Nick Broeker winning SEC weekly honors…
"When you play well and you win games and statistics look really well in an area like running, those are going to happen. Q, like I said, that was pretty cool on his 19th birthday to have 34 carries, which our staff was all complaining about all the injuries by them. They had nine defensive injuries that stopped the clock that they stayed down for a very long time, as we all saw. It's not like they jumped right up. Obviously, that's usually frustrating for us with tempo. Especially when eight of the nine return, a number of them the next play after sitting out a play. I said, hey guys, let's look at the positive. What they did let Q rest. So every time they had those injury timeouts, he got to rest and was able to carry the ball 34 times. I know it got some play about messing around with their DB and stuff. The game's emotional. I was having fun of them because he was another one of the amazing stories where he had been out the play before. The play was over and all of a sudden he looks to the sidelines and he went down, and he's back the next play, so I had been joking with him a little bit there. I have fun with that. Those kids like him have alpha personalities, 5-star. We communicated after and laughed about it."
On Zach Evans' performance at Texas A&M…
"I think this week off will be huge for Zach. I think a lot of that was adrenaline-based, where he was able to do that. He didn't have a knee brace on, then he felt it, came out, put his knee brace back on. Obviously, he had the one run where he would've always scored on that where he fell down. You can tell he's not fully healthy, but he pushed through and made some big plays. I think that sideline run, running the guy over, which we just showed to the team, was a lot for our sideline on the road game. As we mentioned to him before, there were some early in the year that weren't like that. Then that Vanderbilt game, he seemed to change."
On preparing for next week's game against Alabama…
"We'll start as soon as we leave here. We just met with the players and let them go, so we'll start on that ourselves with Alabama and work on it all week."
On if he addresses when his name coming up for job openings…
"I never do with the team, never have. Recruits, you deal with that all the time. I would guess any time that you've probably taken jobs and haven't been at one place forever, I bet every coach gets that. I get that all the time from recruits. That's just part of it. Recruiting is competitive. That gets used against us. We've been dealing with that for a long time. It'll be nothing new."
Opening statement…
"Really excited we got a road win in a hard place to play. Really good timing for a bye. Sometimes they can come at a bad time, when you don't necessarily need them as much. We're playing with a lot of injured players that this will be very significant and hopefully, if we can get them back, can help us all over, but especially defensively. Like I tell the players, you want things to go perfect, but when they don't, other good things happen. Like I told them after the game, I wish we would've closed it out on offense twice when we had the ball and made some first downs and ran the clock out, but we didn't and put our defense in the situation there to have to win the game for us, which they did. That was great to see, and then very significant special teams play on that 60-yard punt that was able to milk some time off too that they didn't field. Very pleased. We've got a lot of work to do, a lot of improvement to do. But to be 8-1 at the bye. If you would've said at the beginning of the year, with so many brand-new players and the quarterback question. Obviously you'd love to be 9-0, but we lost a lot of people from last year, and there were a lot of questions coming in with all the portal guys and how they'd fit and all of that. We've got a lot of work to do to improve, but record-wise, that's pretty good considering all those things."
On getting healthy during the bye…
"On any open date, you still want to get some work done, maybe new schemes or things, but especially players who haven't played as much. It's so late in the season, so there's more about getting guys healthy, there's more people that you have to do that with, where if it's earlier in the year, you don't as much. There will be a lot of players not in practice and in the training room, trying to get back. Kind of like our common theme unfortunately every year, we're not rotating a lot on offense, especially in the skill, or line, but especially skill, which results in some huge play counts, whatever 82 or something for Jonathan Mingo the other day. So there's a lot of guys who need to get their bodies back."
On how recruiting has responded to the 8-1 start…
"We're 18-3 in regular season games over two years. They've been a lot of them, they've seen them on TV. That's a lot of wins and success. Usually winning impacts recruiting, at least it used to a lot. We've had very good reception from guys. They're interested in coming into a program that is winning and having a lot of fun doing that. Hopefully they'll overlook some other things."
On his pregame interaction with Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher…
"That was unusual. I've coached for a few years and always shake hands with the head coach before the game like I was taught. I stood out there for a while and he never came over, so I don't really know what the issue is. The media guys were there doing the game, so they said, don't feel bad, he blew them off the day before or something like that for their meetings. It is what it is. Can't control other people."
On Auburn firing head coach Bryan Harsin…
"We were in meetings, so I actually didn't know that. When you've been through something like that, you obviously have empathy for people. It is what it is in the profession. I'm not complaining, because this profession gets paid a lot of money, and it's part of it. When everybody roots for everybody to get fired and oh it's so great and everything, it's not just that person, it's a ton of people besides his family—a lot. Especially because the staffs have increased now where kids are uprooted from schools and all those things. I understand why fans root for it, I get it all, but there's a very personal side to it with a lot of adults, kids who, when something like that happens, are going be affected."
On the young players at the linebacker position…
"Some are playing on special teams. We do think that was a really good group signed. We knew that there were some number issues coming up so we think those guys will be really good players. It's a hard position to play right away. It takes time."
On Quinshon Judkins and Nick Broeker winning SEC weekly honors…
"When you play well and you win games and statistics look really well in an area like running, those are going to happen. Q, like I said, that was pretty cool on his 19th birthday to have 34 carries, which our staff was all complaining about all the injuries by them. They had nine defensive injuries that stopped the clock that they stayed down for a very long time, as we all saw. It's not like they jumped right up. Obviously, that's usually frustrating for us with tempo. Especially when eight of the nine return, a number of them the next play after sitting out a play. I said, hey guys, let's look at the positive. What they did let Q rest. So every time they had those injury timeouts, he got to rest and was able to carry the ball 34 times. I know it got some play about messing around with their DB and stuff. The game's emotional. I was having fun of them because he was another one of the amazing stories where he had been out the play before. The play was over and all of a sudden he looks to the sidelines and he went down, and he's back the next play, so I had been joking with him a little bit there. I have fun with that. Those kids like him have alpha personalities, 5-star. We communicated after and laughed about it."
On Zach Evans' performance at Texas A&M…
"I think this week off will be huge for Zach. I think a lot of that was adrenaline-based, where he was able to do that. He didn't have a knee brace on, then he felt it, came out, put his knee brace back on. Obviously, he had the one run where he would've always scored on that where he fell down. You can tell he's not fully healthy, but he pushed through and made some big plays. I think that sideline run, running the guy over, which we just showed to the team, was a lot for our sideline on the road game. As we mentioned to him before, there were some early in the year that weren't like that. Then that Vanderbilt game, he seemed to change."
On preparing for next week's game against Alabama…
"We'll start as soon as we leave here. We just met with the players and let them go, so we'll start on that ourselves with Alabama and work on it all week."
On if he addresses when his name coming up for job openings…
"I never do with the team, never have. Recruits, you deal with that all the time. I would guess any time that you've probably taken jobs and haven't been at one place forever, I bet every coach gets that. I get that all the time from recruits. That's just part of it. Recruiting is competitive. That gets used against us. We've been dealing with that for a long time. It'll be nothing new."
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