Echoing what his coach Lane Kiffin has been saying since spring, Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart said Monday that the Rebels ' talent level compares to anyone's in college football.
And, yes, that means Georgia , Alabama and Texas . The Rebels are ranked in the top 10 of most early preseason polls and have won 10 or more games two of the past three seasons. This is easily the most anticipated season in Ole Miss since the Archie Manning era in the late 1960s.
"Yeah, absolutely, we match up, just from a talent perspective if you'd go guy by guy," Dart said. "But just because you have a talented roster doesn't make you a great team, and you see that in the SEC every year. There are teams who are predicted to have a great year in preseason and they don't live that out. So when you play in such a great conference like this, you really have to be on your toes because in any given week you could slip up and lose the game because you play against the best competition.
"Our job right now is to build that team regardless of what talent that we have. We need to come together as a team and have the urgency to do that."
Kiffin is well aware of the grandiose expectations. He doesn't bask in them ("rat poison," as he revels in calling them from his days with Nick Saban), but he's also not running from them. In particular, this Ole Miss team should be the best and deepest it has been on the offensive line and on defense under Kiffin.
"Based off performance, whether they've been with us or the portal guys who've performed other places, I think in all phases of the game as you look at it, it's the best roster we've had and there's more competition at some spots," Kiffin said. "We've had some good teams. I think we've had some really good players, but I think sometimes they weren't necessarily NFL-profile size, length and weight guys. We have more of those guys. Now, again, that doesn't mean we're going to be good. We've got to play really well and play together, but we look better."
Throughout the offseason, Dart said the players have kept what's important the focus, which is getting better every day, but he added that everybody on the team understands the stakes. The feeling among most Ole Miss fans is that anything other than a College Football Playoff appearance would be a disappointment.
"It's a big reason why I came back for this season and a reason why so many of the other guys who were on that same bubble [of leaving for the NFL] decided to come back," Dart said. "Ole Miss, I think, is at its peak as a football program right now. What Coach Kiffin has done here is tremendous, and I think there's just an overwhelming amount of confidence within the facility as well as from our community and our support system that we're going to have a great year."
Dart is entering his third season as Ole Miss' starter. He's the only returning Power 4 player who passed for more than 3,300 yards (3,364) and rushed for more than 380 yards (389) last season. Dart, who played through an injury much of last season, passed for 23 touchdowns and rushed for eight. He also cut down on his turnovers.
A big part of Kiffin's confidence in this team revolves around the way Dart has grown as a player, but the quarterback said Kiffin has helped him off the field as much as on it.
"He's helped me in all aspects, but if I had to dwindle it down to one, I'd say it's leadership," Dart said of Kiffin's mentorship. "He's shed so much wisdom and knowledge on me. At one point, he was the youngest head coach in the NFL and he's had experience at every level and has been successful at every level. He's had his own experiences where he's had to battle through adversity and been able to come out on the right side of things, and he's shed that on me. He's somebody that I can go to if it's a football- or a non-football-related question."
The irony of the Dart-Kiffin dynamic is that Kiffin said he wasn't very good at all with relationships earlier in his coaching career.
"You think you know so much at a certain age and you really don't know," Kiffin said. "I was looking at something from two years ago and said, 'That was so stupid.' When I was younger, I just knew X's and O's, but I didn't know how to lead a team. I just didn't know how to and certainly didn't know how to help players off the field at that age."
Many of Ole Miss' key players are from the transfer portal. Dart is one of those after starting his career at USC . He said Kiffin's ability to create the necessary bond in the locker room with new guys coming in every year is due in part to his often brutally honest authenticity.
"You see that with this team," Dart said. "You know you have to produce and work like you're in an NFL-style environment regardless of where you came from or what your NIL is or anything else. We're a super-mature group of players. We have so many guys on our team who've played a ton of football, who are going to push each other.
"And quite honestly, I feel like our expectations of ourselves are higher than anybody else's. We're not going to get too far ahead of ourselves."
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