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Lane Kiffin is cooking up something special in Oxford, Mississippi. After guiding Ole Miss football to the first 10-win regular season in school history, the Rebels coach had to watch his star quarterback, Matt Corral, depart for the NFL, as well as his two top running backs in Jerrion Ealy and Snoop Conner along with his two top receivers in Braylon Sanders and Dontario Drummond.
To remedy this, Kiffin turned to the transfer portal. In came Jaxson Dart from USC to compete with Luke Altmyer for the starting quarterback job, as well as his best friend and electrifyingly dynamic tight end Michael Trigg. The receiver group was bolstered by the arrival of Jaylon Robinson from UCF, Malik Heath from rival Mississippi State and Jordan Watkins from Louisville, while other additions were made across the rest of the roster, such as on the offensive line and across the entire defense.
In the backfield, Kiffin managed to bring in SMU's leading rusher from 2021, Ulysses Bentley IV, along with the player we're highlighting today as the Ole Miss football X-factor in 2022. That player arrived as the leading rusher from TCU a year ago, despite only appearing in six games.
2022 Ole Miss Football X-Factor
That player is Zach Evans.
Evans was a highly touted recruit coming out of high school and nearly chose Ole Miss then, but either way, he's partying in The Grove now. He brings with him 15 games of Power Five experience across two seasons, both of which he averaged an astonishing seven or more yards a carry. If he can even break four yards per attempt in the SEC, I'm sure Kiffin and his staff would be elated.
Ole Miss seems set up to be a ground heavy team, at least early on, and that's nothing new for a Rebels team that finished eighth in college football last season in rushing yards per game. The schedule for Ole Miss lines up nicely with this philosophy, since only half of the schedule for the Rebs finished in the top 50 last season in rushing yards per game allowed, and only three of them finished in the top 25.
Speaking of the schedule, the first seven games for Ole Miss are almost comically easy. They start the season out with a four-game slate of Troy, Central Arkansas, Georgia Tech and Tulsa, and only Georgia Tech is on the road. That should be plenty of time to figure out where the Rebs stand as far as the quarterback situation goes, but if not, no worries, the next few games should give us those answers. Kentucky at home is the first real test of the Rebs, followed by a trip to face an abysmal Vanderbilt team, a home game against an Auburn team in transition, and then a trip to face an LSU team that could very well finish a full 12-game season with fewer than eight wins for the first time since 1999.
While the back half of the schedule, which features games against Texas A&M, Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi State is much tougher, the Rebels could be walking into that final four game stretch a perfect 8-0, and the reason for that being the offense, and likely the ground game in specific.
The way Ole Miss football has used its running backs over the past two seasons under Lane Kiffin, of which in both seasons at least three running backs averaged at least 4.5 yards per carry on more than 50 attempts, would indicate that Zach Evans is due for a breakout campaign. There's enough depth in the room that he won't be asked to lead the line for 30 carries a game or anything, and come this time next fall we may be talking about him as one of the most promising rookie running backs in the NFL should he have a good enough season to declare for the 2023 NFL Draft.
