OXFORD — Jaxson Dart took the field in the final minutes Saturday night, making no attempt to dodge the magnitude of the moment.
Down 49-40 midway through the fourth quarter, Dart bought to himself that he was in the midst of “a legacy game.”
Dart directed a touchdown drive to pull the Rebels within two points and then watched as his defensive teammates made a stop and got the ball back with 2:36 left.
Almost two minutes later, Dart connected with Tre Harris on a 13-yard touchdown pass, giving Ole Miss a 55-49 win in a game that the Ole Miss quarterback called “one of the funnest moments of my life.”
“I just thought we had an overwhelming amount of confidence,” Dart said. “We were moving the ball all game long. I just think it was really cool, before we went out of the huddle over on the sideline, I just looked in everybody’s eyes and I could see how determined they were and focused and also just calm.”
The 20th-ranked Rebels, coming off a disappointing loss at Alabama a week earlier, kept their Southeastern Conference and national title hopes alive with Saturday’s win. More importantly, Dart said, they proved to themselves that they are resilient.
“It’s so important,” Dart said. “Just being able to know when we face adversity, we can overcome it the very next week, that’s so huge. I think it gives us a great direction and great confidence moving forward. …Guys being able to step up and make plays was huge. It says a lot about the culture we’ve built.
“I knew this team was different. I thought we had a great week of practice this week. We had a player meeting this weekend. We saw everything everybody put out about us after the (Alabama) game. We were more disappointed than anyone else was after that game. We just had to regain everyone’s focus. To see how close we were on the little things that made us lose the game last week, I thought we stepped it up this week in practice and fixed those errors and issues. …I was just so proud of how resilient our guys are. This was a game I’ll never forget, for sure.”
That self-confidence was tested earlier in the fourth quarter when Ole Miss, down 42-40, went for it on fourth-and-5 from its own 45. The Rebels’ conversion attempt failed, giving LSU the football. Five plays later, the Tigers were in the end zone.
“That was tough because we got the perfect look for what we wanted to do,” Dart said. “We got Tre on a one-on-one slant and he won and the defender just came off the edge freely and made a good play to knock it down. You definitely, when you have it right there and it slips away, get bugged. …I came running off the field and all the defense guys told me they got us, don’t worry about it, they got us. We just had to have faith in each other. There’s no other choice we had, just lean on each other and rely on the guy next to us to make a play and that’s what they did.”
From there, however, Ole Miss dominated. The Rebels drove the field and scored, got a stop and then drove the field for the game-winner.
“That’s exactly what I came here for,” Harris said, admitting that his injury early in the Tulane game earlier this month tested his patience. “It all worked out. It’s all God’s plan, at the end of the day. That’s all I did the last few weeks — pray for health and pray for a healthy recovery, and that’s exactly what happened.”
