Following a 9-4 Cotton Bowl season in '09, they went 4-8 last year with losses to Jacksonville St and Vandy and follow that up this season with a blowout loss to an improved, but still not good, Dores team this year. Has Nutt lost it? Has Mullen sucked the marrow from the state? How in the hell could they get this bad this fast?
They still have to have more better players than Vandy and Jacksonville St, though. I understand slippage. I don't understand falling off of a cliff.
If Ole Miss had a QB as good as Larry Smith or a WR as good as Jordan Matthews, they would consider themselves lucky.
Seems Nutt does best when he's got a great RB and a mobile or at least semi-mobile QB. Does he have either of those things presently?
Matt Jones wasn't that great of a QB either, but Nutt had some success with him. They probably need to go back to the drawing board, put an athlete at QB, and run a high school offense to try to salvage 6 wins out of this season.
I don't think there's anything he can do to save his ass at this point. Georgia, Bama, Auburn, LSU, and MSU look like definite losses...which would be 7 on the season. And they have trips to Fresno and Lexington, and host Lennon Creer's La Tech bulldogs. After what we've seen from them so far, it's hard to imagine them finishing better than 3-9.
Did Larry Smith get bionically enhanced over the summer or something? I haven't watched enough this year to know, but last year he was the lowest standard I can imagine.
The Right Reverend Nutt will get them up for some ridiculous upset win then they will lose to La. Tech.
Swirling rumors abound on the internets that Nutt will be fired and Pete Boone will resign. I won't go as far as to say Nutt shouldn't be fired, but what do Ole Miss fans expect their program to be like in a division that has Alabama, Auburn and a rejuvenated (and now dominant) LSU? I think winning 9 games and playing in the occasional Cotton Bowl should get one an automatic 5-year renewal. It ain't 1958 Ole Miss fans.
It's not unreasonable to expect to be consistently better than Vandy. And I think there's something to be said for identifying a downward trend and stopping it before your program is in a hole so deep you're struggling for years to break .500. That said, when your worst division rival is a Dan Mullen-led Mississippi State, that's a tough job to take. They need to make sure they can find someone willing before Nutt is canned.
In the last thirty years, Ole Miss has had 14 losing seasons, to 16 winning years. By comparison, Tennessee has had 4, three of those being in the last 5 years.
I think expectations are quite a bit lower than at UT. However, getting bulldozed by Vandy seems to drop below the mark.
Ole Miss was a top 3-4 SEC team throughout the 50s and 60s. I'm not sure they can ever get back to that point, but I do wonder what their realistic expectations are. Apparently the buyout for Nutt may be too much to overcome anyway.
