[MUSIC] All right, back on the show, one of our favorites, Michael Katz from the DJ journal Huge Week for Ole Miss, because they traveled to LSU in a game that we've all basically had circled as a make or break game for Ole Miss. But before we get to that, Michael, I gotta ask you, how's your snapping skills? And you're clapping, as Lane would call it, are you capable of taking a snap in Ole Miss offense? Apparently, it's quite simple. If you ask him, they don't have a cadence as I learned after the game Saturday. And he gave us a very good example of how to clap, and he looked at me and said, "Even you could do it." So, you know, if they have tryouts, you know, we'll see if I have time in between some stories. It's just a big, well, he didn't have a cadence, he just claps, so he liked Ole Miss. It's not that hard, you can do it. [LAUGHTER] He's clapping, there you go. But it was a big... Yeah, well, I mean, that was just such a big win last week. I mean, I don't think it could be overstated that basically the season was on the line. I mean, not really, because they could still beat LSU. They could still turn around and beat Georgia, but that would seem very improbable. Losing to Kentucky and South Carolina back to back weeks and all the pressure of the playoff. But do you feel like last week was more the Ole Miss team that you were expecting prior to them falling to Kentucky? Yeah, I mean, I think that's the team. It's a lot closer to the team that we saw in the first four weeks against the inferior competition. And obviously, the offense looked a little bit off at times against South Carolina, part of that. The South Carolina did some good things and they've got some talent. The other part is Trae Harris got hurt. And I think that really threw things off just in terms of what they want to do. But if you're just looking at the things that we know Ole Miss, or we thought Ole Miss was going to be strong at, it was the defensive line. And it was going to be a plethora of receivers. And Juice Wells had a nice game. He had the one fumble out. That was a touch back. I'm sure he probably wanted back, given it was at South Carolina. I think they were trying to get him a touchdown pretty bad. But the receiving core outside of Trae Harris, it's been a little bit up and down this year. And we saw some signs of that this week. The running game looked like it got back on track. And then that defensive line just made life so hard for sellers and that offense. They were living on the other side of the line of scrimmage. And when Ole Miss can do that, I think that they are really, really hard to beat. So that was not the case against Kentucky. They got beat up front on both sides of the ball. And we saw what happened. So like you said, I hate to be like the dramatic season-saving type guy about a game like that. But it was really hard to see a path forward if they lost that game and went into LSU 0-2 in the SEC. That seemed like it was going to be really, really hard to come back from. So they responded about as well as you could have asked. And we were just talking to our fair. Clearly, Kiffin was having fun post-game with you. And it's gone viral him watching the end of the Alabama game. And another thing that went viral is his Judas Wells shirt. I mean, all that stuff to say, I think they felt it. I mean, I'm speaking for him. But I think they felt the weight come off their shoulders after that performance. Do you think that's fair? Yeah. And I think we also, you know, what this program has been built on is it's a lot of Lane, Kiffin Swagger, right? It's a lot of him doing things and saying things. And he protects his team and he never throws them under the bus, but it's him saying things online or saying things during press conferences and doing stuff like that. And I know it pisses some people off, but like that's just, it's really helped this program. It's why people like this program. And you know, after that loss, Lane was really quiet. There were no tweets. There was nothing. He was very reserved, you know, after the game and that next week. I think they needed to get their swagger back a little bit. And I think that we saw like the normal Ole Miss Lane Kiffin team. And again, by the way, that Judas Welsh shirt went really hard. That was, I actually hadn't seen it until I was sitting at the press conference on Monday. And I saw and I was like, wait, does that say what I think it said in a zoomed in? And I was like, that shirt is extremely, like extremely metal. That's, that's incredible stuff. So do you think it's fair to say that, that Kentucky loss could be the turning point? Again, there's a lot, a lot of games to play. But let's say they make the playoff, which is not a stretch, but they're going to have to play really well to get there. If that happens, you think that Kentucky game will be a defining moment of the season? I think so. I mean, again, like you said, there's so much football left. But, you know, say they beat LSU this weekend and they go into the by week six and one, you're feeling pretty good about things going forward. Obviously, you have some tough games left. But, you know, if you were looking at the season before at the, at the start of the season, you said, okay, you know, there might be a loss somewhere in there before the by week. You didn't think it would be Kentucky, but you thought it might be LSU. But if you switch out LSU for Kentucky, you end up even. So I think they're probably feeling pretty good if they can do that. You know, Walter Nolan, really, we talked to him on, I think it was Monday, and he said like, basically like they needed this, like they needed the wake up call. You know, it's easy to sleep walk through those first four games when you're really not tested. And we saw moments where they looked vulnerable, right? The penalties. But, you know, it doesn't matter when you're up by 40 what happens there. But eventually you knew some of those things were going to come back to bite them. And they did against Kentucky. You know, they gave up three first downs via penalty. Some of them in really, really, really bad situations, they were undisciplined in coverage, especially on that late past, Barry and Brown on fours and seven from inside the 20. And that just, that can't happen. And they all know that. And so I think that loss, you know, obviously, you never want to lose a game. And I'm sure they would have loved to have won that game 2017. But I think that it gave them a chance to sort of evaluate the thing is that they need to be perfect at because they were not perfect. And they hadn't been perfect. And it just happened to bite them this game. And so I think that it was a good opportunity for them to sort of evaluate the things that they need to get better at. And again, it wasn't perfect against South Carolina. But that was a dominant win and sort of win, I think they needed. And I certainly think the perception is, for maybe people that have not been following the team as closely as you, that Ole Miss is, you know, all offense. But I think it is a fair question to ask, Michael, who's, which side of the ball has been better this season? Is it the offense? Or is it the defense? You know, I mean, honestly, you know, if you're looking at the first few games, yeah, they were averaging like 77 points a game. You knew that wasn't going to last when the competition got better. You know, they played two SEC games in the offense has been a little bit up and down. And that wasn't, that's not a surprise. The SEC is filled with talented defensive players. But the defense has just, it plays well against everyone. You know, again, that defensive front is just so dominant. And, you know, they didn't even have Prince William on me Ellen last weekend. And they still had six sacks and were just absolutely dominant. Walter Nolan at times looks like the best defensive lineman in the country. I mean, he is just a game-breaker. Jared Ivy is great. Suntarian Perkins has looked great these last few weeks. He was SEC defensive player of the week after the South Carolina game. I think that like, again, you score 27 points, you know, that's solid. It's not Ole Miss standard. But when you can focus, when you can rely on your defense, you don't have to worry about only scoring 27 because South Carolina literally couldn't do anything. I mean, three points. And, you know, that game was, you know, you hate to say that game was over in the first quarter. But, you know, they blocked the punt or sorry, they snuffed out the fake punt and then they recovered a fumble and it turned then to 14 points and it was 14 nothing just like that. And you said, you know, I remember thinking to myself, I was like, oh, this game might be done because their defense is just going to come. They can just, they can rush the passer. They, they are in control here. So, long story short, I think there are going to be games when it's the defense is going to win them games. And I think that's why you go out and get the pieces they did because I think Lane realizes that you can't always count on Jackson to throw for 350 yards. You can't always count on the runners to, you know, get 200 yards. There are going to be games when you got to depend on that defense. And it really seems like they have the pieces to really be able to do that consistently. Yeah. Do you believe this team's got the leadership and in the toughness, tenacity, whatever, whatever cliche words I can use to, to say that they can go into Tiger Stadium and win that game. If, if say they get down early or they need a late drive to win it or or maybe a, maybe just to a goal line stay in to win it. So, like, do you think they have the, that leadership to, to get that done? You know, it's, it's tough. Again, like, Tiger Stadium at night. I've, I've never been to a night game there. I was there in 2022 in the afternoon and that place was insane. And that was a, that was a weird game because Ole Miss was up like two scores in that game. And then Jackson, I believe got intercepted in the end zone. And then it just all fell apart and ended up losing by like 20. So, I don't think that, you know, they're going to be intimidated or anything like that. I do think I learned a lot about the leadership of the team this past week and how they responded. And, you know, we've known Jackson for a few years now. We've heard a lot about his leadership and how he's really sort of brought this team together. And, you know, talking to him after the game, I asked him, you know, what did you learn about your team this week? And he basically said, like, you know, we had every opportunity to turn on each other to point fingers. You know, he said after the, you know, he said after the game, the Kentucky game, you know, you can either, you can either stay down or you can get back up and we chose to get up. And so again, that is not going to help you in front of 102,000 people who want to see you lose, you know, who knows. But I do know that they're going to be confident, they're not going to be afraid of the moment. Will it be enough? Who knows? But I think that just in terms of the players they have, the veteran leadership, guys like Jackson, guys like JJ Piggys, guys like Jared Ivy, I think having guys like that is going to make it a lot easier to make that possible. And do you think Ole Miss can win this game without Trey Harris, without Princely, who just for transparency, we're recording this Wednesday afternoon. And the first availability report will come out this evening. So, you know, who knows, they may not even be on it, but I would be surprised if neither one of those guys are on it. Can they win this game without those marquee players? I think they could probably win it without Princely because I think the depth on that defensive line is really good. Again, I didn't know what that was going to look like last week and it looked really, really good without him. Again, Perkins stepped up in a big way. They have a lot of guys who can, you know, Princely is a special player that you can't replace him, but I think they have enough guys that they can replace that production. And I think they did that. You know, again, I know it's a little bit more difficult when you get hurt during the game because I think like your whole game playing changes on the fly and you weren't ready for that. But Trey Harris has been by far the biggest receiving option. He's got 52 catchers this year. The next closest guy has 18 on the team. He's got 570 something more yards than the next closest guy. And that's a good receiving core, but it's just been, it's been very concentrated on him and he's done a really good job. I'm really curious to see how the game plan changes if he doesn't play or if he's limited, just in terms of who do you focus on? Is it Juice as well as this game? Is it Jordan Watkins? Do you start throwing your tight ends a little bit more? So I think the game plan probably changes a lot if he is limited or doesn't play. You know, listen, we saw Trey Harris take that game over last year. I mean, he scored the game when you touchdown. He's a Louisiana kid. You know, he is dying to play in that game. And I know probably means a lot to him. So, you know, if he's not there, I think it's going to be really hard, not impossible, because I think that if anybody can scheme it, it's probably Lane Kiffin, and they have the talent to do it. But if we're looking at what the season has looked like so far, Trey is kind of a replaceable player. So will you be following Lane Kiffin to Gainesville? My real question is, does it get tiring to have to do this every year with Kiffin? Every year, man, last year was like the only one where it was kind of like, it's actually kind of quiet last year. You know, like, I remember there were someone asked him about the Texas A&M job. And I believe his quote was, we're not doing this again. Something to that extent. I was like, okay, well, we're getting in front of the things, but I mean, he'll Florida doesn't even have an opening and people are like, he's already agreed to pick up the next. I mean, that's the thing is like, they beat UCF last week and still, it's just like, whoa, he's going to love Gainesville and whatever. And like, God, I don't want to do this again. But, you know, I think that, like, you understand, you know, I know that, you know, the administration here understands like that's what you signed up for. You signed up for it. And you've won a lot of games because of that, the way that he coaches and the way that he holds himself. And I'm sure it can be distracting and frustrating sometimes. But, you know, so far, it's been worth the occasional, you know, crazy news cycle. You know, obviously, 2022 Egg Bowl week was among the craziest weeks of my life with the whole Auburn thing unfolding. But, yeah, you know, it's part of the part of covering Lane Kiffin. And I'll say this, I never, I'm never short of stories. And it's great for business. Yeah. And speaking of that, did you get a kick out of his comments about Hugh Fries, you know, trying to steal all his coaches and NAL guy and things of that nature? Yeah, so I actually, I hadn't been listening to the, the practical, I was having like food shopping or something. And I got a text from somebody that was like, Lane Kiffin just said Hugh Fries tried to steal their NAL head guy. And I was like, oh, no, we didn't say that. No, no, so like, I went back and I was just like, okay, what did he actually say? It turns out he said, like, you know, he would try to take our, you know, whatever it was. I was like, okay, he didn't actually do that. Okay, good. I don't, I don't, I don't need the claims out there. But you know, you know, listen, you know, depending on who you ask, which I think was after the Georgia Southern game, you know, Lane was asked that, you know, Lane talked about trusting his quarterback and, and, and how, when things go wrong, it's on him. Well, you know what happened earlier, I believe it was that day, or maybe the week before, Auburn had some issues with the quarterback and, and Hugh Fries says some things that made some people angry about that. It seemed like he was putting a lot on the quarterback and the second lane said it, you're like, okay, I don't think this is an accident. This is, this is what he does. He, he pokes the bear. He's, he's sometimes subtle about it. Sometimes not when he says things like they would try to steal all our guys. But again, that's, it's part of the show. Yeah. All right. Last thing for Michael, really appreciate your time. I know you, you covered this at the DJ journal. That's why I really wanted to ask you. What in the world does hottie tottie mean? You know, somehow I wrote 2,500 words on it. And I still don't know. And that's, that's part of, that's part of the charm. It's, it's literally, it's a nonsensical phrase that means like everything to a lot of people here. And, um, yeah, there's like college footballs filled with a lot of like nonsensical, like sayings, right? But usually you can point like to where they came from, like the fight song or, uh, you know, a coach said something in like 1920 something and it caught on like whatever. There's like no mention of hottie tottie anywhere. It's not the fight song. It's, it's, you know, so it depending on who you ask, it's from like Virginia Tech's military band or something. Um, and they just sort of like caught on. Um, but I think like because it is, is nonsensical and I think people are confused by it. Uh, I think that's why they love it so much. You're like, I remember hearing it for the first time. And I was like, what are these? Like these are words, like these are, you know, I was like flim flam bim bam. What is, what is that? Like, I don't, that's, that's, I don't know. I've never heard that in my life. Um, but I think that like, I think they enjoy that it's theirs and it's unique and, uh, that probably pisses opposing fan bases. Like, Matt, you're in South Carolina and you're down 27 to three and you hear that as a fan at South Carolina from the Ole Miss section. It's gotta be pretty frustrating because not only are you losing, but you probably have no idea what it means. Right. Hey, well, uh, before you go, can you remind, um, our audience, how can they follow you and how can they find your work? Yeah. So you can find my work at djournal.com and, uh, I am on X Twitter, whatever we want to call it at, uh, at Michael L. Katz, K-A-T-Z. Uh, I might have to log off there tonight if the Dodgers lose. Um, I might need a social media breather. And by that, I mean like seven hours. Uh, because I, you know, I need it. That's, I, I, I, I need the tweets. I need the memes. Um, but yeah, you can find me on there. Uh, a good mixture of, uh, of Ole Miss sports and other random musings. And it's gotta be good covering Ole Miss because it distracts you from the disaster that is Southern Cal football. You know, they beat LSU in that first game and I was like, man, maybe this is the year. And then I get back to my hotel room after they lose the set after Ole Miss beat South Carolina. And I'm watching on my, on my computer on the big 10 network, uh, them lose to mini frickin soda. And I'm just like, okay, well, they have a good, they have a funny way of humbling me, don't they? [laughter] [silence] [silence] [silence] [silence] [silence] [silence] [silence] [silence] [silence] [silence] [silence] [silence] [silence] [silence] [BLANK_AUDIO]
