Kiffin planning full offensive install as scheduled season nears

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                                                       Lane Kiffin (Photo: Bruce Newman, 247Sports)

To say Lane Kiffin will be entering his first season at the helm of the Ole Miss Rebels with one hand tied behind his back would be more than an understatement.

The spread of the COVID-19 virus has turned the world of college football upside down and the uncertainty the pandemic has created seems to be the only sure thing. Right now, the Rebels are set to open their season on Sun., Sept. 6, versus the Baylor Bears at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas, but that match-up has teetered on perilous for a few weeks now.

Meanwhile, Kiffin and the Rebels do the only thing they can do. And that's blocking out the notion of the very real possibility that this season may not be played at all and continue to work toward that teetering Sept. 6, date with Baylor.

Ole Miss began the second phase of the NCAA's new summertime workout guidelines last week, bringing the full team and coaching staff tgether for the first time since the pandemic became prevalent in March.

"I don't waste a lot of time on things I can't control," Kiffin said. "It's not like we're going to get asked, 'Hey, do we want to play?' That's way above us. Obviously, we do want to play.

"We'd like to play normal and have a full schedule. I think these other conference, saying they are only going to do conference-only and stuff...that's created some issues. In my opinion, it was probably too early to call that, because we don't know...just like we didn't know months ago. No one thought that this would still be going on. So, we don't know that this might not be going on two years from now. Whatever they tell us, we can do. We'll be ready to roll."

Hired in Decemeber, Kiffin and his staff have yet to be afforded the opportunity to evaluate their players. The plug was pulled on what was to be his first spring practice as the Rebels' head coach.

"You probably know our roster a lot better than I do from covering the games and everything," Kiffin related. "Not having spring practice, we don't know that much. We've watched film, obviously, and cut up guys from last year and stuff, but these are totally different offensive and defensive schemes. We're going to have to learn a lot on the fly, I think."

"...This has, obviously, been a very strange time. We're just trying to maximize the situation that we're in. It was good this week to get back and have the players around. Still, everyone is acting like it's practice, but it's not practice, it's basically conditioning workouts. We're still not allowed to use a ball."

If nothing changes, and it likely will, Ole Miss is set to open fall camp on Aug. 7.

Noted as an "offensive genius," Kiffin, however, plans to have all the ingredients in the soup prior to kickoff. There are no plans to limit the playbook," he said.

"We're going to go just like we normally would, with our normal installs, just like we would had this hadn't happened. I think we'll be fine with that. I don't think you have to limit your playbook. Kids miss spring all the time. They get an injury or they're incoming freshmen so they're not there, and they're fine. They have good freshmen years, they bounce back from an injury. Two of our guys have been playing baseball and would have missed it anyway."

SOURCE: Johnson, David. "Kiffin planning full offensive install as scheduled season nears." OMSpirt - 247Sports.com, 19 July 2020, https://247sports.com/college/ole-miss/Article/Ole-Miss-head-coach-Lane-Kiffin-planning-full-offensive-install-as-scheduled-season-approaches-149313772/