Don’t mistake the Memphis team Ole Miss will face on Saturday for the one Ole Miss beat 24-3 last season.
Ole Miss will be the best team Memphis has faced so far this season, but the Tigers are greatly improved, especially on the offensive side of the ball where junior quarterback Paxton Lynch seems to be coming into his own.
Defensive coordinator Dave Wommack broke down what he’d seen from this year’s Memphis team, which averages 47 points and 541 yards per game on offense.
“They haven’t lost in a long time. They have a lot of confidence. I think they’re extremely well-coached. They don’t make a lot of mistakes,” Wommack said. “They don’t give you a lot of loss yardage plays. They kind of stay on track with what they’re trying to do. Fuente moved forward a little bit, got a little bit more offense than he has in the past, and he does it all out of just a couple personnels. They have the ability to go fast with tempo, so it’s a great challenge. We look forward to it.”
The key to the Memphis offense is quarterback Paxton Lynch, whom Wommack said was probably the best quarterback they’d faced this season. Lynch was held in check by the Rebels last season, going 13 for 31 passing for 81 yards and one interception.
“You have to put pressure on any quarterback you play,” Wommack said. “We were able to do that last year and shut him down, but this is a new year. We have to rise to the occasion.”
Wommack said he felt experience was what made Lynch so much better this season and said that Lynch is more mature now.
“I think he understands what they’re doing a lot better,” Wommack said. “(Lynch) has a thousand more game reps than he did a year ago, and just seems in control.”
You wouldn’t expect a 6-foot-7-inch passer to be mobile, but Wommack said the defense will have to key into his running ability on Saturday as well.
“They absolutely use him for running, so I think he has that extra element of him being able to run the ball, and once he gets going he’s pretty good, and they’ve put him in the right position at the right time,” Wommack said. “A lot of his runs are in short yardage, but he’ll scramble on you too so you have to keep an eye on him.”
Junior defensive end Fadol Brown said the Memphis offense was explosive and that the key to stopping them would be to execute on their own assignments, explicating where the focus needed to be.
“Focusing specifically on us and not them, I mean guys getting out of gaps is when you have problems,” Brown said. “Over-aggressiveness, just knowing when to be aggressive and when not to be.”
With senior middle linebacker C.J. Johnson out for the foreseeable future, junior college transfer Terry Caldwell stepped into the starting lineup last week and will start against Memphis as well.
“I thought Terry, for his first start, was outstanding,” Wommacks said. “He did some great things, had a couple of issues like everybody has in every game, but I thought he flew to the ball, had a sack, and his production was way up.”
“He’s making the right calls,” Brown said. “He’s shown confidence. He’s doing pretty good. He’s stepped up.”
