Lane Kiffin grades the performance of his Ole Miss QBs following first scrimmage of training camp
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Ole Miss held its first scrimmage of training camp over the weekend and according to Lane Kiffin, the offense is ahead of the defense thus far during the early days of his tenure running the Rebel football program.
“It was good to get into the stadium. There was good and bad like any first scrimmage – we didn’t tackle, but everything else was scrimmage format,” Kiffin said during his Monday media availability. “The offense probably outplayed the defense. Now, we have a number of defensive players out – for multiple reasons – so, that didn’t help. But it was good to see, the quarterbacks did some good things.”
Naturally, one of the first questions asked of Kiffin had to do with the ongoing quarterback competition at Ole Miss between Matt Corral and John Rhys Plumlee.
Corral started last season as the starter but after suffering an injury, Plumlee came in and sparked the offense to a level not previously experienced under former coordinator Rich Rodriguez. Plumlee held on to the starting role the rest of the season but Corral continued to play more and more as he continued to heal late in the season.
Of course, last season’s results won’t matter now that Kiffin has been hired in Oxford, and the way the first-year Ole Miss coach tells it, Corral had the better scrimmage over the weekend.
” I thought Matt played extremely well. Hit some big plays, was really accurate,” Kiffin said of his QBs. “John had a little more up and down (performance). Did some really good things, (but) fumbled once for a big turnover. But both of them did some things to excite us.”
Kiffin was then asked a follow-up question on whether Plumlee was getting looks at another position.
While it’s against his policy to comment on such moves, the coach broke his own advice to set the record straight after being asked this question.
“We don’t get into schematical/personnel questions but I can tell you that we’re not — so, I really broke my own rule,” Kiffin continued.
“No. That’s the last thing you want to do right now. He’s in a quarterback competition, if you do that, it’ll take away from his development as a quarterback, and he’s still really young. So he’s just playing quarterback.”
While it’s still early in camp, it would appear Corral has the early advantage in the camp battle to earn the right to be the first starting quarterback of the Kiffin era.
Photo credit: Ole Miss Football
A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Michael Wayne Bratton oversees the news coverage for Saturday Down South. Michael previously worked for FOX Sports and NFL.com
