Mississippi coach Hugh Freeze during the second half of an NCAA college football game against Southeast Missouri State, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2013, in Oxford, Miss. (AP Photo/Austin McAfee)
The bye week for any college football program is a slow time, but it always brings opportunities to make extra preparations for your next opponent and get players healthy.
That’s the case for Ole Miss during their second and final bye week of the season.
The bye week comes at a good time, as key players are battling back from injuries and two tough SEC opponents in Arkansas and Mississippi State remain on the schedule.
A bye week means more individual drills and competitions between the players for Ole Miss, something Hugh Freeze wanted to see from his players and felt good about Tuesday’s practice in the bye week.
“We got back to individuals, which I’m always a big fan of. I’m not crazy about getting away from that like we do in the season. It tends to scale back constantly so we did a good 30 minutes of that with all of our kids,” Freeze said after practice. “We started working on some of the game plan for Arkansas. We got some good work in one-on-ones. It was a good work day.”
When taking an early look at Arkansas, the first thing you’ll notice about the Razorbacks is their physical offensive line and their powerful running game.
Arkansas averages over 248 rushing yards per game, which is good for 17th in the country, and the offensive line is the heaviest not only in college football but even heavier than any offensive line in the NFL.
Freeze notices the strong play of both the offensive line and the running game and sees both as a great challenge.
“Good players, a physical offensive line, really good tailbacks, and they understand who they are,” Freeze said. “They do a good job of coaching that and scheming you and formations and the whole deal. At the end of the day, they have very good offensive lineman and good backs.”
When asked about injuries, Freeze talked about a “two-week plan,” where he rested guys that were injured against LSU and Auburn against Presbyterian last week and will rest those guys in practice during the bye week. Those players should be healed and rested enough to go for the Arkansas week.
“They’re doing more stuff in practice,” Freeze said. “I saw them running and getting lifts in and all of that stuff today. I’ll hold the out of practice this week and hopefully, will have them back by Sunday.”
The Ole Miss defense gave up a lot of rushing yards before the Presbyterian game, especially against LSU and Auburn. The defense gave up 264 rushing yards to LSU and 248 yards to Auburn in back-to-back weeks.
Freeze talked about what it meant for his team to go against two great rushing attacks.
“Those teams usually get their fare share of rushing yards. I think it’s just a product of playing in this conference,” Freeze said. “There were some things that we have to get corrected and do better in the next couple of weeks. I think it’s kind of hard to say because you are comparing two different animals.”
