Kewan Lacy landed on his left shoulder in the third quarter Saturday night, walked off, and never came back. He had nine carries for 43 yards and a 5-yard touchdown to that point. Ole Miss finished the 32-24 win over LSU with 25 carries for 63 yards, and its go-ahead touchdown came on a 13-play, 75-yard drive with Lacy on the sideline, capped by Trinidad Chambliss faking a handoff and running 14 yards to the left pylon. Golding said afterward that the X-ray was negative, but trainers padded the shoulder and he kept Lacy out anyway.
That was the SEC opener for both teams, No. 8 Ole Miss against No. 7 LSU, and some previews had leaned slightly toward LSU beforehand. The Rebels are 3-0 and 1-0 now, in front of 70,033 at Vaught-Hemingway, a stadium record, with Lane Kiffin booed on his first trip back to Oxford. Golding downplayed it, "I don't think anybody came here to beat LSU," he said, and it "wasn't our Super Bowl," before allowing, "Yes, is it sweet? Absolutely." Chambliss was less measured. The game "meant more than other games... emotions were really high," and he apologized for a remark he made in the heat of it. That emotional spike is exactly why the trip to Florida is the dangerous one.
Saturday at Florida, 3:30 p.m. ET on ABC
Ole Miss is the No. 4 team in the country and it is not favored. Florida opened around a 1.5-to-2.5-point favorite and the line moved to Florida -3.5, which prompted Jon Sumrall to ask, "Who's got us favored against these guys? There's a lot of good drugs out there, huh?" The model has Ole Miss winning 64% of the time, which is a real edge.
Golding is not pretending otherwise. Asked about the trip, he said his last memory of playing at Florida was being ranked No. 14 against a 5-5 team "and getting beat," and he warned his own team not to look past a Florida roster with elite SEC talent. That 2024 game at Ben Hill Griffin went 24-17 to a .500 Florida team and helped derail an Ole Miss season that had been built around one of the most talented rosters the program has had.
The reason to take that memory seriously is the second half against LSU. Chambliss was 21-of-27 for 248 yards and two touchdowns before halftime and 12-of-21 for 115 with an interception after it. "I didn't play my best ball in the second half," he said. "I wasn't comfortable in the pocket." Ole Miss did not score in the third quarter, LSU ran off 17 straight points to tie it, and Golding was blunt about the pattern. He said, "We talked about coming out in the third quarter, really sticking the dagger in them and finishing this thing the right way, and yet we didn't do it again." He added that "if you continue to let good football teams hang around, bad things happen." That was the second straight week he said a version of it, and a road crowd makes the third quarter louder, not quieter.
Which brings the week back to Lacy's shoulder. Golding said Lacy's shoulder injury "wasn't nearly as bad as we thought it was," based on the latest MRI, and he remains a game-time decision. It matters more against this opponent than any other. Lacy ran for 224 yards and three touchdowns against Florida in last year's meeting, a number Florida defensive coordinator Brad White brought up while previewing this game. If Lacy plays and carries a normal load, Ole Miss can shorten the game and keep Chambliss from having to throw 48 times again. If he can't, the ground game looks like it did Saturday, and Chambliss has to be as good after halftime as he was before it.
Defensively, the front is the unit that has to hold. Will Echoles and Blake Purchase had the two sacks against LSU, Ole Miss piled up eight tackles for loss, and Kam Franklin tipped the fourth-down pass that Jaylon Braxton intercepted in the end zone to end it. But LSU still ran 43 times for 172 yards, and Golding was candid that the plan was never about sacks. He said, "We were going to win this game based on scramble yards." Florida will test that same edge on the ground for four quarters.
The back end is worth watching for a personal reason too. Sharif Denson made his season debut against LSU after missing two games and finished with eight tackles, including a tackle for loss on his first series. Golding called him "kind of our bell cow back there" and said he "played really well tonight. We needed him." Golding also moved Edwin Joseph to corner and Braxton to safety because "I knew the game was going to kind of be won or lost in the slot on base downs," and his overall grade was honest. He said, "For the most part, I thought they did a really good job... It wasn't perfect." Denson spent the previous two seasons starting at Florida, where he put up 95 tackles, 6.5 for loss and two sacks before transferring in January. He goes back to Gainesville Saturday for the first time.
The stakes are straightforward. Win in the Swamp and Ole Miss's playoff odds sit around 64%, with SEC title-game odds near 36% and a first-round bye in play at 23%. Lose and those numbers fall to roughly 46%, 13% and 10%. That is the largest single swing on this team's board, and nothing else this weekend comes close.
Texas at Tennessee: root for Texas
Noon ET on ABC. No. 1 Texas wins this about 61% of the time, and a Texas win nudges Ole Miss's playoff odds up about 2.5 percentage points, roughly 59% with a Texas win versus 56% if Tennessee takes it. The mechanism is simple conference math. Tennessee is a direct competitor in the SEC standings, and a second early league loss for the Vols thins the field of teams the Rebels have to climb over. Ole Miss also plays at Texas in Week 8, so the Longhorns' form is worth a look regardless.
Oklahoma at Georgia: root for Oklahoma
3:30 p.m. ET on ESPN, kicking off opposite Ole Miss's own game, so it is a second-screen watch. Oklahoma winning in Athens is a long shot at about 18%, but it would be worth more than the Texas result if it happened. A Sooners upset puts Ole Miss's SEC title-game odds near 30% against roughly 27% if Georgia holds serve, a swing of about 2.7 points. Georgia is the team standing in the Rebels' path to Atlanta and comes to Oxford in Week 10. A loss now makes that November game worth more. Enjoy it if it happens; don't build the afternoon around it.
Full probabilities and the week's board are at the interactive guide, and the model is explained at methodology.