Before every pre-game warm up session, Woodrow Hamilton, Ole Miss defensive tackle, takes the field with a tool box in his hand. That small box symbolizes the mentality the defense will take to the field that day.
“Every weekend we tell each other ‘Okay, what’s in your tool box?’ to challenge each other,” Hamilton said. “I take it out because I try to be the most physical.”
In the Rebels’ last outing against Arkansas, that tool box appeared to be empty. The Ole Miss defense gave up over 600 yards of offense, including 163 on the ground in which Arkansas running back Alex Collins averaged over six yards per-rush.
The defensive line prepares to tackle at a practice earlier this season. (Photo by: Alice McKelvey)
The Landshark defense will need to quickly replenish that tool box this week if they hope to stop Leonard Fournette and the LSU rushing attack.
“He’s going to make some people miss. That’s what he does,” Hamilton said. “It’s going to take more than two or three hats around the ball. We’re really going to have to be the Landshark D that we are capable of being in order to stop him.”
Fournette may be the best running back in college football, and aside from an uncharacteristic performance at Alabama, he’s appeared to be the favorite to win the Heisman trophy for most of the season.
“He jukes people. He gets around people. He runs through people,” Hamilton said. “He’s a great back.”
In last year’s match-up, the offensive game plan for LSU was simple: run the ball downhill, and do it often. The Tigers ran for 264 yards against Ole Miss and had three backs that averaged five yards per-rush.
“I expect exactly that,” Hamilton said. “Every team that LSU plays, they must show everybody what the run game is like. They try to establish the run game, and it’s up to us to stop it.”
Hamilton said he knows what it’s like to play in this rivalry and knows it is going to be an extremely physical contest.
“It’s going to be a war. Every time we play LSU, they know it’s going to be a war,” Hamilton said. “They ought to know that it’s going to be a dog fight.”
Ole Miss hopes to take a full tool box to that fight.
After the way the Arkansas game ended, this team’s future is no longer in their control. Winning the next two games is in their control, and according to Hamilton, that’s exactly what they intend to do.
“Let’s not focus on the ‘what ifs’ and focus on what we can control. We can control this game,” Hamilton said. “We have the opportunity now to beat LSU. We have the opportunity to go next week and beat State and then we can see where we are.”
Ole Miss needs two wins and Auburn to beat Alabama to make it to the SEC Championship game, but without two wins, all of that talk is meaningless.
“‘What ifs’ don’t get you nowhere,” Hamilton said. “Let’s focus on what is the main goal for this week.”
That goal is a Rebel victory over LSU.
