Ole Miss football dropped a crucial game for its College Football Playoff hopes last Saturday against Florida, but it still had work to do left this season. Lane Kiffin and the Rebels turned their attention to picking upon a win in one of the most heated rivalries in the sport, the Egg Bowl between Ole Miss and Mississippi State.
It wasn't always pretty, but Ole Miss was able to collect a 26-14 win in Oxford over its bitter rivals to finish the season 9-3. Now, Kiffin and company will have to wait and hope for a ton of chaos all over the country on Saturday to try to sneak into the back end of the 12 team playoff bracket.
During the game, quarterback Jaxson Dart etched his name in the Ole Miss record books. Dart passed legendary Ole Miss quarterback and longtime New York Giants starter Eli Manning for the most yards in school history, according to Pete Nakos of On3 Sports.
“Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart has passed Eli Manning as the all-time passing leader in school history,” Nakos reported on X, formerly Twitter. “He's thrown for 10,137 yards and counting.”
Dart wasn't asked to do a ton in a physical battle between two teams that don't like each other where the game was decided at the line of scrimmage for the most part. However, he protected the football and had a nice bounce back performance from a rough outing last week. For the game, Dart finished 14-for-24 with 143 yards and a touchdown. He also ran for 77 yards own 13 carries.
Can Ole Miss sneak into the CFP?
Ole Miss' resume is fairly strong as its regular season wraps up, but two terrible losses against Kentucky and Florida, two middling SEC teams, have hurt it enough to the point that Lane Kiffin and company will need a lot of help on Saturday.
Ole Miss still has a path to the playoff, but it's an unlikely one. In order for them to sneak in, a few things must happen. Number one on the list is that Alabama must lose to Auburn in the Iron Bowl, which would mark a massive upset down in Tuscaloosa. That alone is an unlikely result, but anything can happen in some of these heated rivalry games.
The other major domino that needs to go the Rebels' way is South Carolina defeating Clemson in Death Valley on Saturday morning. if that happens, South Carolina and Ole Miss would be directly compared to each other as both have three losses out of the same conference, and Clemson would be knocked out of the equation. In the case, Ole Miss' 27-3 road win against the Gamecocks would likely be heavily considered and would give it the nod.
Ole Miss would also benefit from an Indiana loss against Purdue, though that one seems especially unlikely. If Georgia were to lose to Georgia Tech, then the Rebels' win over Kirby Smart and the Bulldogs would come into play, but Georgia still has the advantage in terms of quality wins and would still have a chance to win the SEC next week.
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