Spring football is winding down at Ole Miss, and there are storylines aplenty heading into the April 8 Grove Bowl spring game.
Ole Miss may have been the best seven-loss team in the country in 2016. However, the Rebels started off on the wrong foot. Ole Miss lost five of their first eight games to ranked opponents before pulling even at 5-5 after a dramatic 29-28 win over No. 8 Texas A&M in College Station.
Even though the Rebels found themselves without their starting quarterback, a blue chip true freshman finally injected the team with some much-needed momentum, or so it seemed. The brutal schedule and injuries finally wore Ole Miss down. In the final two games of the season, the Rebels were then blown out by Vanderbilt and were humiliated 55-20 in the Egg Bowl against rival Mississippi State to finish 5-7.
The 2016 season marked the first time Ole Miss missed a bowl game since 2011, the year before Hugh Freeze came on as head coach. The Rebels were one of only two SEC teams to be left out of the bowl schedule last year.
Unfortunately, with an ongoing recruiting scandal making headlines, the 2017 Rebels won’t go bowling either. The school announced a self-imposed postseason ban in February.
Even without a postseason trip to Florida or New Orleans waiting, the fans that flock to Oxford to tailgate in chandelier-adorned tents should have just as much fun inside the stadium as they do in The Grove. The Rebels have one of the SEC’s most exciting playmaking quarterbacks and a new coordinator with a track record for guiding explosive offenses. There’s a new sheriff in town on defense as well, and plenty of new faces all around the depth chart.
As we look ahead to the Grove Bowl, and the 2017 season to follow, we explore five things to watch as spring practice comes to an end this week.