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Stat Watch: Ole Miss

The advanced stats help us take a look at the Rebels.

By Jake Nazar
NCAA Football: Mississippi at Auburn John Reed-USA TODAY Sports

The stats last week told us that if there was a route for victory for LSU, it was probably stopping an Auburn offense that still had something to prove, especially through the air, and holding them to around 10-14 points. They ended up needing 27 to win. But the defense did dominate Auburn in the second half, and held Jarrett Stidham to six passing yards in the second half. Now we shift our focus to this week, where we’re finally incorporating just the stats from this year as we have a more complete picture, and the Ole Miss Rebels.

This Season:

A note on these stats: The offensive and defensive S&P+ marks are calculated as adjusted scoring averages and for the situational ratings, above 100 is good and below 100 is bad. Links to an explanation on the various stats here:

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/ncaa

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/fei

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/fplus

  • S&P+ Percentile: 57.3% (56th in FBS)
  • Offensive S&P+: 36.4 (20th in FBS)
  • Offensive Rushing S&P+: 104.4 (67th in FBS)
  • Offensive Passing S&P+: 152.0 (2nd in FBS)
  • Defensive S&P+: 32.6 (104th in FBS)
  • Defensive Rushing S&P+: 80.5 (118th in FBS)
  • Defensive Passing S&P+: 107.1 (48th in FBS)
  • FEI: -.142(107th in FBS)
  • F/+: -14.7% (81st in FBS)

It’d be very easy to just say Ole Miss is bad and LSU should win. Ole Miss is bad, and LSU should beat them. But that doesn’t make this a lay-up. The Rebels are still tremendous on offense, even without Swag Kelly and some of the other great talent of years past. Shea Patterson and AJ Brown are a tremendous QB and WR combo, and that’s helped Ole Miss to be the #2 passing offense in the country. That won’t be easy to stop and could cause LSU problems. However, LSU’s problems on defense have generally been with teams running the ball down their throat, and Ole Miss is not a great running team. Donte Jackson and Kevin Toliver also both had maybe the best games of their career last weekend. The LSU offense should be able to move the ball on a terrible defense. So LSU should win this game. But it could be tricky, and it is in Oxford at night. Plenty of strange things have happened there.