Lane Kiffin and Ole Miss had a rough day Saturday in Bryant-Denny Stadium.

Alabama flexed on the Rebels and dominated from start to finish 42-21. Ole Miss’ high-powered offense was stymied. Matt Corral was held to just 213 yards passing, and Ole Miss’ offense mounted just 78 rushing yards. Nick Saban’s defense held Ole Miss to just 291 total yards.

Kiffin knew Ole Miss had to play perfect in order to pull the upset, and things just didn’t go the Rebels way from the opening kickoff.

Following Ole Miss loss to Alabama, Kiffin was asked about the Crimson Tide:

Opening Statement
“You’ve got to do everything right to give yourself a chance (against Alabama), and obviously we didn’t.”

On going for it on 4th down so many times
“One hundred percent you go for it. That’s the other way. A lot of people don’t do it because it’s scared money. When you’re at the blackjack table and you have $5, it’s easy. Put a couple thousand out there and now you get scared. I said we weren’t going to do that. We’re going to follow the analytics, follow the book and not get scared because we’re in Alabama and not have confidence in our players and punt. You can punt and then they’ll score. They scored on every possession but one in the first half. I know it looks bad when it doesn’t work but when you punt it away, it just takes longer for them to score.”

On it being just one game
“It’s disappointing, but it’s one game. It never defines a season. (Alabama) is a great team, and we struggled with them on offense, obviously, especially up front. I guess 31 (Alabama linebacker Will Anderson) has got another year, but he should go be the first pick in the draft.”

How Alabama’s defense was so disruptive to Ole Miss offense
“They played a lot of odd fronts and four-I’s. That’s hard up front when you do that. I can tell you how it is. We got dominated up front. That ain’t hard to see…Matt didn’t have very much time and negative runs from guys in the backfield. That’s not us doing a very good job, and it’s also credit to a really good defense.

“I thought about it toward the end of the game, Coach Saban said a year ago, he felt like afterwards it was like every call was like the right call that we had and everything went our way. I felt like that today for them defensively, like we go speed option on fourth down and No. 10 makes a great play…Credit them for showing up and making a lot of plays.”

Talent gap vs. Alabama
“I think that’s always an issue with Alabama. They sign the best players everywhere in the country, but they always sign the best in the front. You’re going to have to do unique things, no different than when Ole Miss did beat Alabama. They had Nkemdiche and moved the front and made a lot of plays. It’s always going to be a little uphill battle that way. It’s just how it is, and you’ve got to scheme around it.”

On the Rebels defense and Alabama’s offense moving the ball
“This probably going to sound crazy, but they moved the ball a lot better a year ago…a lot faster…than they did this year. It just took them longer this year. I actually made them work to get the rushing yards, even though it ended up being a lot. I don’t think it’s a game where you say, all of a sudden you say, hey, we need to change what we’re doing on defense. That’s not really the storyline of the game. The storyline of the game is they did a great job on defense, great players, made great adjustments with the coaches, and we didn’t.”

You can watch Kiffin’s postgame comments below: