How did Ole Miss torch USC’s defense? ‘We knew what they were going’ to do, QB says
Ole Miss quarterback Matt Corral lit up South Carolina’s defense Saturday night, setting a school record with 513 yards and tossing as many touchdowns (four) as he had incomplete passes.
It was a performance so dominant and one-sided, it even featured Rebels coach Lane Kiffin launching his play sheet into the air in celebration of a 91-yard touchdown pass — before his receiver had even made it to the end zone.
For the Gamecocks, it marked the third time in a row that the opposing quarterback has torched their secondary — the starting quarterbacks for LSU, Texas A&M and Ole Miss combined for more than 1,000 yards on 61-of-79 passing, a 77.2% completion rate.
And making things even easier for Corral, he said after the game, was the fact that the Ole Miss offense knew what the USC defense was going to throw at them.
“We knew what they were going to be in before we even called a play. Knowing that really helps just cause we know what they’re going to do. We had the plays for what they were going to do and it worked out perfectly,” Corral told reporters. “And when they didn’t, when we had to adjust, we struggled a little bit in the beginning ... but the offensive line adjusted and we got it done.”
Corral didn’t specify how the Rebels had managed to break down South Carolina’s play-calling well enough to anticipate what was comin. Regardless of how they did it, the Rebels certainly got plenty of open looks for Corral. Junior receiver Elijah Moore went off 225 yards on 13 receptions, including that 91-yard score Kiffin was celebrating, and six other players caught a pass as well.
The coverage on that 91-yard pass was particularly egregious — there wasn’t a Gamecock defender within 10 yards of Moore as he waltzed untouched into the end zone. Afterward, Kiffin said Corral called an audible for a play after seeing a way to exploit the Gamecocks’ scheme.
“When you audible to a play, you see them in a coverage, they don’t check out and the players execute it and you beat them in a scheme and a matchup ... I just get really excited when it happens,” Kiffin said.
From the South Carolina sideline, coach Will Muschamp saw a broken coverage where his secondary fell into a trap.
“You don’t have a middle field safety because he takes a pump fake off the (X receiver), that’s disappointing, and that’s where you get hurt against this team,” Muschamp said of what went wrong.
For Corral, all he saw was a wide-open Moore — one of the most wide-open throws he’s had since coming to college, he said. That was a theme for the day.
“There was two times where he was just wide open. There was one, I think it was in the first half, he had a corner route, and it was man coverage, and did a little cut in and then broke out. Dude was nowhere to be found. The DB just did a complete turnaround, and I just didn’t want to mess up that throw,” Corral said.
