It’s been hectic lately. I’ve tried to answer questions on posts and have tried to keep the blog current while I’ve been working on football.
I greatly appreciate Pete Boone for running a two-day coaching search. The last one went 15 days, and we were chasing rabbits everywhere. I have now seen both extremes.
I think it’s a good hire for Ole Miss. Will it work? You can never answer that in advance, but the odds are much more favorable than they were three years ago with a career assistant who’d never been a coordinator.
The thing that struck me the most yesterday was how the players were responding to new-found freedom.
You could sense discontent in the program, but players were scared to death to freely express themselves. I don’t know if they had been threatened in any manner, but they had clearly gotten the message to watch what they say.
The focus turns now to assembling a staff. Houston Nutt has two qualified defensive coordinators from which to choose. He says he’ll meet with John Thompson, who worked with Nutt for two years, on Sunday. Reggie Herring, his current DC, is leading Arkansas in the interim process and has expressed interest in replacing Nutt.
Thompson, Hugh Freeze, Tony Hughes and Art Kehoe have expressed interested in staying at Ole Miss.
That’s a large number of holdovers for a nine-man staff. If any are retained, my odds would be on Thompson and Freeze, though Thompson’s status is surely clouded by Herring right now.
It’s hard to see both of them on staff, though Nutt has had co-defensive coordinators before. I don’t know if Thompson and Herring would be keen on that arrangement.
I saw a couple of players at the press conference. One of them was DL Jerrell Powe, who had a cast on his left wrist.
Peria Jerry, who was at a player’s press conference later Wednesday, said that was minor surgery to correct an old injury.
That’s injury information that no one would have shared under Ed.
One popular requested player who did not attend the press conference was transfer QB Jevan Snead. He was attending rehab after what Orgeron had earlier described as minor knee surgery. Orgeron said at the time that he expected Snead to be ready for spring drills.
– PA
