Mark Ingram played in plenty of these huge matchups as a star running back at Alabama, so he’s very familiar with the high stakes that will be hanging in the balance when No. 7 Ole Miss travels to Austin to face No. 19 Texas on Saturday night.
Yes, there will be plenty at stake in the ranked SEC showdown featuring 2 of the most high-profile quarterbacks in the country. It’ll be Ole Miss’s Trinidad Chambliss facing off with Texas’s Arch Manning, but it’ll also be a battle of 2 teams right now going in opposite directions.
While the Rebels are rolling at 5-1 overall, 3-1 in the SEC and with that top-10 ranking, it’s been a long couple weeks for the host team in this matchup. Texas has gone from being No. 1 in the country to that No. 19 ranking after losses to teams in Oklahoma and Florida who were both unranked at the time.
Both setbacks were by the same 27-24 score, and now the 4-2 Horns will be trying to pick up the pieces in primetime on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET, ABC) as they also try to avoid falling to 1-3 in the SEC.
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So, does Ingram believe it’s Ole Miss’s spot to keep rolling in Week 8, or is this the spot that Texas says enough is enough and gets a huge victory over a top-10 team?
He broke it all down on The Triple Option podcast:
“I’m looking at Ole Miss here. Is Ole Miss being slept on? You know, they might have the best quarterback in the country. Now, they go on the road, a Texas team that was playing desperate. Life comes at you fast. They were just ranked No. 1, now they lost back-to-back games and the potential to get even worse,” Ingram said. “Colin Simmons, ankle injury, their best defensive player. This thing could be spiraling out of control. I think it’s gonna be a close game early.
“I trust this (Ole Miss) offense. I think they’re going to be able to score more points than Texas. And I feel like Ole Miss goes into Texas and wins the game.”
While Ingram is going one way with the Week 8 matchup in Austin, here is what the Kalshi market is currently saying about which team, Ole Miss or Texas, has the edge in potentially coming out of a big spot with a big win:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
