The one thing that impressed me out of Ole Miss yesterday was the fact that Noel Mazzone obviously realized (where Cutcliffe didn't) that Spurlock is a much better passer rolling out than standing in the pocket. When OM rolled Spurlock out, he was pretty dead-on with his passes. He struggled mightly throwing from inside the pocket.
As far as defense goes, aside from bottling Williams up, what did OM do on defense?
This was the situation: everyone in the world knew that Williams was/is the key to Memphis' offense this season. After the starting QB went down on the third play of their first series, the Tigers were forced to play with a redshirt freshman QB who doesn't even completely know the offense (sound familiar????). Tommy West said after the game that they were forced to only be able to use part of their offensive gameplan against Ole Miss because Hudgens simply didn't know the whole gameplan (he hadn't received the reps necessary to execute it). Memphis employees a no-huddle offense and the QB looks to the sideline while at the line of scrimmage to get the play-call from the staff. There were times where he completely misread their calls and put Memphis in the wrong play - ie, running to the opposite side of where the staff wanted the play to go. Memphis lost four starters on the OL from last season, their QB and 4 of their top 5 WRs. All of this, and with the game on the line, Memphis marched right down the field in less than a minute and were poised to score when the redshirt freshman QB - who hadn't even figured to play in this game - made a poor choice and a poor throw that was intercepted in the endzone. I truly believe that if Memphis had just put the ball in Williams hands (via handoff or pass), the Tigers would have scored and won the game.
Memphis was actually even considering playing Maurice Avery - one of their top receivers - as their 2nd QB. That's how unsure they were about Hudgens. And this guy looked like a veteran against Ole Miss' defense.
The Ole Miss defensive gameplan (by their own admission) was to completely key on Williams and make the rest of the team beat them. Well, with 11 guys keying on him, a QB making the wrong play calls at the line of scrimmage, and an OL that is below average at best (Williams was getting hit as soon as he got the ball in the backfield), Williams still managed to gain 85 yards and had around 20 yards receiving.
I just was not impressed with the Ole Miss defense yesterday. Personally, I was more impressed with Spurlock's ability to throw on those rollouts than I was with their defense.
