Five keys for the Rebels against Baylor in the Sugar Bowl

Ole Miss and Baylor are set for a Sugar Bowl battle at 7:45 p.m. on Saturday. The Rebels (10-2) are trying to win 11 games for the first time in school history, while the Bears can follow up a Big 12 title with an access bowl victory.

Here are five things I’ll be thinking about as I walk into the Superdome on Saturday evening (probably not literally as the top of mind concern will be beer selection, but you get the point of this exercise).

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The strength of the Bears defense is undoubtedly their down linemen. They have two or three guys that are very difficult to block. This is a team that ranked second in the Big 12 in sacks.

If Baylor is able to stifle Ole Miss offensively, I think it is because they are able to pressure Matt Corral without blitzing and are successfully stopping the Ole Miss running game. There is opportunity for Corral to be the difference maker in the running game for Ole Miss and I think the Rebels will need him to carry it somewhere between 8-12 times.

Baylor blitzes with linebackers a lot and when it becomes a numbers game in the box, Corral becomes the one guy that can end up unaccounted for. I think he can also punish the Bears for being overly aggressive in that capacity. Having four weeks to rest that ankle sure helps, too.

Tempo will be a big factor in this game and I think Ole Miss will play as fast as it can for as much of the game as possible. Think of the first half of Texas A&M game if you’re trying to get a picture of what that looks like.

Dave Aranda is good at confusing opposing quarterbacks and is very malleable in terms of doing different things to stop a specific scheme. The equalizer to that is tempo. If Baylor cannot substitute the personnel it needs into the game in specific situations, it makes whatever it has planned from a schematic standpoint for a particular down much harder to do.

[Related: Corral, Lebby return out of love, respect]

The faster Ole Miss goes, the more base defensive concepts Baylor will have to stick with and the fewer looks it will be able to show. That’s the general thought process behind that, at least. It’s not always that simple.

I think Ole Miss goes fast for pretty much the entire game. As we’ve talked about all year, that’s a bit of a double-edged sword. Going fast means potentially running three unsuccessful plays fast and having Bad Boy Mac Brown punt the football back to an offense that wants to run the ball and control the clock.

The Rebels are going to have to be better on third down in this game than they have been at some points throughout the year. It’s a fascinating dynamic.

I’ll be watching the edges when Baylor is on offense. The Bears have two terrific tackles and the crux of their running game hinges on a lot of outside zone running concepts.

I am not schematic savant and I am never going to pretend like I know something I don’t, but this would lead me to believe Sam Williams and Cedric Johnson will need to be good in the running game in additional to being the formidable pass rushing duo they formed this year.

I am curious to see how D.J. Durkin plans to attack this and how he uses Jake Springer and the linebackers around the line of scrimmage.

Scoring opportunities will be absolutely crucial for both teams. Here’s some dynamite analysis that will hopefully land me on First Take with Stephen A. Smith one day soon: the team that scores more touchdowns and kicks fewer field goals in the red zone will win this game.

Yes, groundbreaking stuff, I know.

But I think it’s pretty simple in that sense. I think both teams will move the ball well between the 20s, albeit in different manners, but how each team fares in the red zone will likely decide this game. Baylor runs it well, but decision making from Gerry Bohanon will be amplified when the field shrinks.

We all know the adventure Ole Miss has had in the red zone at times this year. Being fully healthy will help the Rebels, but the same can be said for the Bears. Bohanon will be 100 percent after a hamstring injury sidelined him for the team’s last two games, and running back Abram Smith will also be healthier than he was at any point during the second half of the season.

Smith is an interesting story. He’s like the reverse Mark Robinson. He played linebacker up until spring ball when a suggestion from an analyst to offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes put him on the offensive side of the ball. Grimes was complaining during a meeting that the team didn’t have what it needed to execute its running scheme and lacked a heavy-hitting, downhill running back.

The assistant coach pointed out Smith was a standout running back in high school. Nine months later, he ran for 1,200 yards and helped the Bears win the Big 12. Anyway, red zone is key in this one.

If the offensive line is able to block Baylor’s defensive line, there will be opportunity for advantageous matchups in Baylor’s secondary.

The Bears play a lot of man coverage with two-high safeties. Kiffin and Lebby are as good as anyone in the country at creating mismatches on the perimeter. That is good news for Dontario Drummond. Is it also good news for someone like a Jerrion Ealy or Jonathan Mingo?

I am curious to see who Ole Miss outlines as a mismatch early on. My guess is it’s Drummond being fed the ball in a variety of ways, as we’ve seen so often throughout the year.

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