For Lane Kiffin, there’s good news and bad news as he heads into October.

The good news is that Saturday’s loss against Kentucky won’t define his 2024 season because the 12-team Playoff exists. There’s more grace than ever for disappointing regular-season losses like the one that Ole Miss suffered a month after it entered the season with its highest preseason ranking since the Richard Nixon administration.

The bad news is that Saturday’s game at South Carolina now looks much more daunting because of where Ole Miss struggled against Kentucky. And even in the 12-team Playoff era, it’s a must-win game in Columbia.

The latter feels more relevant for Ole Miss. Any notion that Kiffin’s squad can afford to put it on cruise control is exaggerated. Go ask 2022 Tennessee what it means to have Playoff hopes on the line in Columbia. That 2022 Tennessee squad didn’t have to face Kyle Kennard and Dylan Stewart, both of whom are every bit as capable of dominating the Ole Miss offensive line as Kentucky did.

That’s the big-picture problem for Ole Miss. For all the offseason discussion about the transfer portal upgrades on the defensive line making the difference in a potential Playoff push, the first 2 games of SEC play could potentially illustrate an overlooked kryptonite.

That Ole Miss offensive line is a problem. And not in a good way.

We might’ve overlooked the fact that in those 2 games against Alabama and Georgia last year, that unit struggled mightily. The Tide held Ole Miss to 56 rushing yards while Georgia held Quinshon Judkins and Jaxson Dart to a combined 95 yards on 30 carries. In both games, Dart spent the majority of that matchup running for his life. Against Deone Walker and that Kentucky front, Dart endured a similar fate.

Would anyone be surprised if that South Carolina pass rush repeated that?

The Gamecocks are averaging 7 tackles for loss per game, half of which have come via sacks. Kennard is tied for the SEC lead with 5.5 sacks and Stewart only trails Ryan Williams and Jeremiah Smith for the most Herschel Walker “my God, a freshman” moments of 2024 (that stat is unofficial).

Yeah, that’s a triple protection going up in smoke against an 18-year-old. No big deal. Stewart and Kennard are ranked No. 7 and No. 15, respectively, in PFF pass-rushing grade among edge-rushers.

One would think that means we’ll see a ton of tight end Caden Prieskorn in pass protection, which isn’t ideal considering he’s Dart’s most trusted non-Tre Harris target. That’s not how Ole Miss would prefer to run its offense. Prieskorn has just 10 snaps in pass protection this season. He’s had more snaps in the slot (79) than inline (77), and he’s often been asked to operate out of the backfield in a “superback” type of role.

Alternatively, we could see Henry Parrish’s efforts used more in pass protection. That’s not ideal, either. The obvious drawback of not having a championship-level offensive line in matchups like this is that keeping Dart upright likely includes taking away some of his weapons.

LSU didn’t bat 1.000 in Columbia, but it also let the South Carolina defensive line take over. Why? The Tigers have 2 first-round prospects at the tackle spots. They got to Garrett Nussmeier twice and hurried him into some fast decisions, but it was clear why that group is No. 5 in FBS having allowed just 2 sacks in 5 games.

With all due respect to Ole Miss, it doesn’t have Will Campbell and Emery Jones Jr. anchoring its offensive line. And after how well Walker fared as the interior disruptor of Kentucky’s defensive line, it’s also fair to wonder if Ole Miss has the bodies on the inside to slow down the experienced Tonka Hemingway and TJ Sanders.

On the road, that task is daunting. Everything about this matchup is more daunting than it was in the preseason. Maybe that’s because we saw what it took for LSU to win at South Carolina — some would say that was strictly the byproduct of poor officiating — or because we know what the Gamecocks did to a Kentucky team that just went into Oxford and won.

All of that is relevant context for the task at hand. Ole Miss’ season was always going to be defined by how it navigated a seemingly favorable path to the Playoff. The talent level at Ole Miss has arguably never been higher, and the SEC schedule set up extremely well without Texas, Alabama, Tennessee and Mizzou, but instead with 4 SEC teams who missed out on bowl berths last year.

One of those was South Carolina. The Gamecocks won’t be treated like a team fresh off a losing season. We can play the results and say that Kentucky wasn’t treated like a team that could win in Oxford, or we can acknowledge that Ole Miss was deficient in a key area and it lost a down-to-the-wire game.

Even if another letdown loss wouldn’t eliminate Ole Miss from the 12-team Playoff era, starting 0-2 in SEC play would force reality to sink in. Running the table in conference play to get to 10-2 overall would feel like a pipe dream, especially with a trip to LSU and a home showdown against Georgia on the way.

That’s staring Kiffin in the face on Saturday at Williams-Brice Stadium. Anything less than a bounce-back showing and that Playoff grace will be short-lived.

That’d be nothing but bad news.