What Lane Kiffin said about facing Jalen Milroe, Alabama defense

Ole Miss’ Lane Kiffin was the 12th head coach to appear on the SEC football coaches weekly media teleconference on Wednesday. During his 10-minute window with reporters, Kiffin was asked a number of questions about Alabama. Below is everything he said about the Crimson Tide ahead of Saturday’s Week 4 matchup in Tuscaloosa (2:30 p.m. CT on CBS).

“Sorry, I was late. Practice went over. It takes a lot of plays to try to play these guys. Guys are working hard. I think they’re in a good mindset. But trying to deal with a team that’s over 50 percent new – I don’t even know the numbers, but I doubt many of these players have even been in there – and we played at home more in front of 30,000, which half of that crowd of 30,000 was ours. So this is a different animal and just trying to get our players to focus on what they can control and not let the outside stuff matter.”

Kiffin on if the media overblows the importance of this game for Ole Miss…

“Yeah, I’d like to say we’re only playing one top team in the country that you could say is your Super Bowl, but last time I checked, we play a really good team after that, including LSU the following week, who is as hot as anybody in the country after watching them last week. So we’re gonna go into Georgia at some point – the top team with the longest winning streak in the country. So we’ve got a lot of challenges. It happens when you play in the West and your crossover is Georgia. So this isn’t about me. This is about us trying to prepare really well and play really well in a very hard place to play. We’re beat up on offense, so we just got to take one play, one series at a time and try to find a way to get first downs.”

Kiffin on how to turn playing multiple quarterbacks into an advantage…

“I think (Nick Saban) was very clear on who he’s going with, so I don’t see multiple quarterbacks playing. He’s already made this switch a couple times already. So knowing him, he’s going to stay this direction. So (Jalen Milroe) is a very challenging player, one we’re very familiar with, with our defensive coordinator being there and knowing him and watching him play not just this year but last year when he had played the A&M game versus a road team coming in there and took him down to the last play. So this is a very challenging quarterback to play against.”

Kiffin on coordinators coming in from other teams being an advantage…

“I think that’s overblown. … Coach beat whatever, 24 straight, whatever it was, former employers. So just being there and knowing the place, it doesn’t translate into winning or that would be very different. So I think way too much is made of that.”

Kiffin on if anybody can win the SEC West this season…

“I just think the playing field is all over the place in college football and the SEC, I think, because of the portal. And I think what you’re going to see is your guys, media, like predictions at the beginning of the year over time here last year to this year in coming years is probably going to be really off and hard to do because you’ve got all these new pieces that you don’t know how they’re gonna fit together. So I’m not worried about the West and it being wide open. We gotta go play Alabama, which has the best home-winning record over the last decade in the entire country, and we’ve got a number of injuries on offense. And I said it earlier in the week, I mean, we have one freshman linebacker that they went heavy after that we were able to get in (Suntarine) Perkins. Other than that, they took their 85 players and then we had to pick from the rest. So that tells you what type of challenge it is.”

Kiffin on the challenges of facing Alabama’s defense…

“Challenge always against Alabama on both sides, especially the defense for a lot of years. All the way back to being at Tennessee is the defensive personnel. I mean elite personnel, plenty of all-NFL players. They’ve got a defensive end nobody can block that’s fast as can be. And now they’re actually getting stronger because now they can, versus the old days, they can go pluck guys like Jaylen Key and find starters other places – and the linebacker from Georgia. So they’re even more challenging personnel than ever.”

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