Why Ole Miss can’t be overlooked as a College Football Playoff contender in 2025
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When Ole Miss splattered Duke in the Gator Bowl to end the 2024 season, head coach Lane Kiffin was free to talk his talk.
He’d been talking for a month at that point, about how Ole Miss was deserving of a spot in the 12-team College Football Playoff, about how the Rebels felt they were overlooked by the CFP selection committee. But before the bowl game, it was just talk. It would have meant nothing if Ole Miss went out and lost to what was a 9-3 ACC squad.
But the Rebels won 52-20.
They made a statement.
And Kiffin said during the trophy presentation that Ole Miss is “just getting started.”
Kiffin has key pieces to replace, but it would be foolish to write the Rebels off simply because of that. In 2025, Ole Miss could make another run at the College Football Playoff. Here’s why.
Ole Miss won its first 4 games last season by a combined score of 220-22. When the Rebels face-planted against Kentucky in Oxford last September, the defeat was a head-scratcher. It also made Ole Miss a nightmare for the selection committee to deal with. The only other losses the Rebels endured in 2024 were to a peaking Florida team on the road by 7 and to LSU on the road by 3 in overtime. They blasted South Carolina 27-3 on the road and hammered Georgia 28-10 at home.
None of the other Playoff contenders had a win that looked as good as the Rebels’ victory over Georgia. But none of the other Playoff contenders had a loss that looked as bad as the one to Kentucky.
Kentucky went 1-7 in SEC play. Alabama’s loss to Oklahoma was unsightly, but the Crimson Tide could at least claim it was on the road. Ole Miss lost at home to a Kentucky team that hadn’t won in Oxford since Mark Stoops was 11 years old.
The defeat put the Rebels neck and neck with Alabama, South Carolina, and SMU for the final Playoff spot.
Ole Miss had a plus-24.2 point differential last season — at least a touchdown better than Alabama, South Carolina, and SMU.
Ole Miss was 1 of only 2 teams in the country that ranked top 5 in yards per play and yards per play allowed. The other? The national champion. Kiffin’s Rebels outgained the opposition by 2.9 yards per play. Alabama (+1.6), South Carolina (+1.1), and SMU (+1.5) each had top-25 units on one side of the ball, but not both.
Ole Miss ranked seventh in the nation in Game on Paper’s opponent-adjusted net EPA per play metric. Alabama (12th), South Carolina (35th), and SMU (10th) were all lower.
(That metric, by the way, looks pretty predictive in retrospect. The top 4 teams were the 4 CFP semifinalists. Eight of the top 12 were Playoff participants, including all 7 of the at-large teams.)
Ole Miss ended the season second in Bill Connelly’s SP+ ratings. Alabama was fourth, South Carolina 14th, and SMU 12th. The Rebels ranked sixth in Sagarin, and they finished fourth in Kelley Ford’s power ratings.
By most model interpretations, Ole Miss was one of the very best teams in college football last season.
Whether the Rebels deserved a shot in the CFP is beside that point. You can make a compelling argument they would have fared better than other teams that got in. You can also make an airtight argument they weren’t deserving of a spot because of the loss to Kentucky.
But last year’s results also say something else: Kiffin’s go-to method of roster building works.
For years, building via the portal was chided as a lesser-than approach employed by programs that couldn’t compete on the high school trail. Even heading into the 2024 season, skeptics of Ole Miss pointed to the high number of portal acquisitions and questioned how they’d fit together in a cohesive way.
Pretty well, it turns out.
And Kiffin has shown this to be a true skill.
Of the 16 defenders who saw at least 300 snaps last season, 10 of them were first- or second-year Rebels who arrived via the transfer portal. The Rebels’ top snap-getter (Trey Amos) was a first-year Rebel. The team’s leading tackler (Chris Paul Jr.) was a first-year Rebel. The team’s leader in quarterback pressures (Princely Umanmielen) was a first-year Rebel. At this point, the Portal King deserves the benefit of the doubt. If winning in the portal is an art, Kiffin is college football’s Banksy.
The 2025 recruiting class features another 5-star high school prospect and another top-5 transfer class. The group of incoming transfers is more than 2 dozen deep and brimming with potential standouts.
But the most important change is at quarterback, where Austin Simmons takes over for Jaxson Dart.
Replacing an all-time great is never an easy task — and Dart is an all-time program great — but Kiffin makes life easier for his quarterbacks and Simmons has been seasoning in the system for multiple years now.
In 5 seasons under Kiffin, the starting quarterback at Ole Miss has averaged 24 touchdown passes, a 67% completion rate, and 9.5 yards per pass attempt. Last season, according to Game on Paper, Ole Miss ranked in the 90th percentile or better in non-explosive EPA per play, passing EPA per play, yards per dropback, and passing success rate.
We saw Dart knocked by NFL analysts during the pre-draft process for playing in a QB-friendly system. It doesn’t make much sense to turn around and question the next guy taking over that system. The 6-4 Simmons has all the tools to run the operation, and his pressure-cooker series against Georgia last season showed a glimpse that he has been ready to operate the way he needs to.
Ole Miss is loaded at receiver after restocking the room via the portal. Linebacker is loaded. You can look at a few key positions and question how new faces in new places will fare, but there’s an interesting discussion to be had here.
Kiffin’s Rebels are a preseason No. 11 in Bill Connelly’s SP+ model. They are projected to have a top-10 defense and a top-10 special teams unit. That would suggest a relatively high floor, especially in the SEC.
They are 95th in returning production, according to Connelly’s tracking.
Compare that with Georgia — Connelly’s preseason No. 4. The Bulldogs are projected to have the fourth-ranked defense and the top-ranked special teams unit. They are 96th in returning production.
The Bulldogs must replace a multi-year starter at quarterback and plugged holes via the transfer portal. But what Georgia lost is rarely a cause for concern in Athens because of the value placed on high school recruiting — an area the Dawgs are consistently excellent in. ESPN’s FPI gives Georgia a 78.6% chance to make the CFP, and Connelly’s SP+ model ranks the Bulldogs’ schedule as the 13th-toughest in the country.
FPI gives Ole Miss a 30.7% chance to make the CFP. SP+ has the schedule ranked 23rd. And Ole Miss has been consistently excellent in the transfer portal. Is it time to recalibrate the thinking on how that approach influences winning?
Ole Miss went 1-for-10 on third downs, lost a turnover, committed 8 penalties, and was out-possessed 2:1 in its loss to Kentucky last season.
One game defined the season, and that game was a bit of a slop-fest that was neither indicative of Kentucky’s prowess nor Mississippi’s.
The Rebels play in Lexington in Week 2 this upcoming season. The rest of the road slate includes Georgia, Oklahoma, and Mississippi State. That’s it.
Ole Miss gets 8 home games. And, oh, by the way, only 5 FBS programs have fewer losses at home since 2021 than Ole Miss does. The Rebels are 25-3 in The Grove. Those 3 losses have been by a combined 11 points. LSU, South Carolina, and Florida all come to Oxford. If Kiffin were to pull off another unbeaten home stand — something he has done twice so far during his tenure — Ole Miss could theoretically lose both road games at Georgia and Oklahoma and still crack the CFP field.
Now, consider what happens to the Rebels’ ceiling if Simmons is as good or better than advertised. SP+ projects Ole Miss to have the No. 20 offense. Say, in reality, the Rebels have a top-15 offense to pair with a top-15 defense. They might play only 1 game all season as an underdog.
“I probably wouldn’t have been so confident if we hadn’t done some of this before. I feel like when Matt Corral left, I feel like a lot of people thought we’re going to have this downswing and that was just kind of a Matt Corral thing,” Kiffin said after the Gator Bowl victory last season.
“My point is we can keep getting better, just continuing to add players and add pieces and keeping our staff together, too, which has been very critical.”
Every member of Kiffin’s assistant staff in 2025 was with him in 2024. There are legitimate reasons to believe Ole Miss can continue winning at the same rate it has been over the last 4 years.
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
