OXFORD -- Sunday was a rough day for Matt Corral.

A day after throwing six interceptions and being part of a fumble at the 1-yard line in Ole Miss' 33-21 loss at Arkansas Saturday, the Rebels' sophomore quarterback was down in the dumps.

"Yesterday, I'm glad we didn't practice," Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said. "He was not good yesterday, as you would expect. He went through a rough day yesterday and embraced the suck. Yesterday sucked. We have to move forward and not let one game beat you twice."

Ole Miss, now 1-3, entertains Auburn Saturday at 11 a.m. at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, and Kiffin said the Rebels know Auburn defensive coordinator Kevin Steele and the Tigers' staff is going to borrow from Arkansas defensive coordinator's Barry Odom's plan.

"They pay the defensive coordinators a lot in this conference for a reason, so you know, you can't just get away with what you're doing," Kiffin said. "They're going to scheme you up. (Arkansas) did the same thing to Mississippi State (in a 21-14 win Oct. 3) and Kentucky did the same thing to State, too. So people will copycat it. We're going to have to run the ball better and work different things in the passing game."

Arkansas' scheme wasn't complicated, necessarily, but the Razorbacks executed it effectively. Arkansas dropped eight players into coverage, rushed just three and took away the deep ball from Corral. That led to several forced attempts downfield by Corral -- and trouble.

"They had six and it could've been eight (interceptions)," Kiffin said. "I think it was surprising to all of us with a team that had been through three games and turned the ball over once. The quarterback really hadn't thrown a ball near an interception. One tip all year and then to do that, I would've never guessed that. I don't think I've been a part of that before, so you have to learn from it.

"Obviously we should have been more patient with the run, not because of how they were playing. They were not going to let us throw the ball to beat them and it is what it is."

Kiffin said the Rebels should have run more Saturday. However, a lack of consistency by the offensive line early on negated that strategy.

"We put two tight ends in in the second half and they struggled with that defensively because they were outnumbered in there and we were able to run the ball," Kiffin said. "There are other formations and personnels you can go to to help with that, but when people do that and play boxes like that, you have to run them out of it or else you get long days."

Speaking of long days, that's what Sunday was for Corral and the Rebels' offense. It was all there on film, and it wasn't pretty.

It was a bad film. Sometimes you just get bad luck, balls are tipped and things like that. This was just he played really poorly. They did a great job of reading his eyes and he was trying to do no-look passes where he's trying to hold one guy off and the problem is he can't see the other guy when he's doing that. It's something you do every once in a while, especially when you're rolling out, but he got away with it the week before and I think he learned a lot from this."

Ole Miss wide receiver Elijah Moore, who has been Corral's top target all season, said Corral was "shaking it off" and staying positive.

For all of Corral's struggles Saturday, he wasn't alone.

"We didn't play well around him," Kiffin said. "Really for the first game, we had drops -- a number of them, significant. So, bad recipe."

"That was their gameplan. They were going to play back there. We had 10 third-and-4-plusses at the beginning. That's unheard of. They did a great job. They said they weren't going to pressure him. They were going to play deep and make him check the ball down, which he didn't do.

"It's really shocking we were even in the game, let alone have the ball with three minutes left with a chance to go win it. It's really crazy. A lot of that goes to our defense playing well and creating negative plays and them screwing up on offense similar to us at times with dropped passes. It's a game you wish you could have back, but you don't. You have to learn from it."

"A lot of stuff went wrong," Moore added. "It wasn't just Matt. It was the whole team. It was the whole group. As an offense, we didn't do what needed to be done. That's in the past and now we're on to the next."

Kiffin was asked Monday about why he didn't spell Corral in favor of last year's starter, John Rhys Plumlee.

"We obviously thought about John," Kiffin said. "It's easy to sit here and say now. Obviously, I didn't think he was going to keep throwing interceptions. We were in a one-score (game) and I was hoping he'd pull out of it and drive us down and win the game. Obviously, you'd play John if you knew after three, there were going to be three more. He got a lot of reps today and so we'll see."

Last week, at least three Ole Miss players were held out due to COVID-19 protocol issues. On Monday, Kiffin said the Rebels have had "some more" pop up in the last three days.

"It's becoming very challenging," Kiffin said, adding that the problems are happening predominantly to defensive players.

Kiffin said players are out due to positive tests and contact tracing.

"I still don't understand how if I get it and (Ole Miss media relations staffer) Adam (Kuffner, who was running Monday's Zoom call) is around me, I'm out for 10 days and Adam is out for 14 and can't test out of it. That's what's really difficult -- losing close contacts for 14 days that could continue to test negative.

"That, to me, is the part that's really frustrating because some schools have different rules. ...In some cases, I think School A is going to play a guy in that exact same situation while School B doesn't, and that's really frustrating."

Kiffin said he was more conscious of wearing his mask Saturday after a $100,000 fine was assessed to the school in the wake of Ole Miss' loss to Alabama on Oct. 10. The masks, Kiffin said, are "challenging because you're trying to communicate with people and not used to it. I think I did a much better job. We got a different kind of mask that was harder to take off instead of just sliding down and so I hope I did a better job. I don't really feel like losing $200 grand."