This is your 3-2-1, a content item that appears weekly during the football seeason. While it will almost always be football focused, other topics may be included as needed.

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1 - Injuries remain key storyline on UM offense

We seem to lead this with injuries each week, but that’s how it’s going for Ole Miss these days.

The Rebels have gotten more banged up each week without much good news as far as players healing. Lane Kiffin said on the Wednesday SEC teleconference that nine of 11 offensive starters didn’t practice that day, and the run of nine straight games to end the season without a bye week continues to take a toll.

The two to practice were tackles Nick Broeker and Jeremy James, which the silver lining is that’s the one position that would experience the most fall off should injuries happen outside of quarterback.

“We’re a very injured group, especially offensively,” Kiffin said. “Never seen anything like this, so it does present a good challenge for us in game-planning and calling plays in games.

“Looked around, and we practiced two of the 11 starters that started the opener, a number of which are out for a while or for the season. That is very strange on one side of the ball. It is what it is. We’ve got to overcome those challenges and find a way to win.”

Corral is expected to play, but he may be without his top three receiving targets which was the case after Dontario Drummond suffered a hamstring injury against Auburn. Braylon Sanders has been a game time decision the past two weeks.

Guard Caleb Warren continues to try to play on his surgically repaired ankle, and fellow guard Ben Brown is out for the season with a torn bicep. Tight end Chase Rogers also remains out, though Casey Kelly’s return has been a major lift to the Rebels.

Kiffin said “two-to-three” players who were held out Wednesday are expected to play on Saturday.

2 - Willis has clear passing tendencies

Liberty quarterback Malik Willis is content to throw the majority of his passes close to the line of scrimmage before taking some shots down the field, emphasizing the need for Ole Miss to tackle well in space and then look back for and guard the deep ball.

Willis is 33-for-37 on throws behind the line of scrimmage and 64-for-78 on throws that travel1-10 yards beyond the line of scrimmage for 201 yards and 674 yards, respectively. He doesn’t have an interception in either of these ranges.

Willis only has 42 attempts this season in the 11-20 air-yard range and that’s where four of his six interceptions have come from.

The Atlanta native, who originally signed with Auburn, is 22-for-42 on deep balls, and his success rate is drastically skewed to the left side.

He’s 11-for-28 for 398 yards to the middle and right sides combined but 11-for-14 for 377 yards and three touchdowns with no interceptions to the left side.

3 - This game is somewhat just unlucky scheduling

This is a future reference thing because it’s done now, but the early-season bye week is debilitating for teams.

Kiffin has mentioned multiple times this season that he would have rather had the bye week now versus in the first month of the season. Ole Miss can’t choose which SEC teams it plays and when, but it can pick to some degree when it plays out-of-league games.

“I would like this to be some opponent that you had never heard of before that didn't have a first round draft pick quarterback, that would be nice, but it's basically like having another SEC game,” Kiffin said on Monday. “It is what it is.”

In Ole Miss’ defense, the agreement was set in 2017 when Liberty was still an FCS team about to transition to FBS. The Flames that season went 5-5 against an FCS schedule with losses to Saint Francis and Monmouth.

The Clarion Ledger reported this week Ole Miss could have bought its way out of this game for $1 million. Carter declined comment to the CL about whether that was considered.

In 2022, Ole Miss’ open date is November 5, following nine games to open the season, with the first four being all the nonconference opponents for the year.

"The Liberty game was signed a long time ago," Carter told the Clarion Ledger. "Now it's here and we're in game week. We're excited about it and we'll see how it all turns out on Saturday."

1 - Will Corral take another step toward being a high draft pick?

Saturday is another showcase game for Matt Corral, as he tries to play through a significant ankle injury and carry the Rebels despite a patchwork offensive roster around him, as previously mentioned.

Kiffin mentioned the interest in the game from an NFL scouting perspective, with Corral and Willis sharing the field in Oxford.

“I think someone walked in and said there's going to be 22 NFL teams here for the game including some general managers, so it speaks volumes about these two quarterbacks,” Kiffin said.

Corral doesn't have the same mobility from a few weeks ago because of the ankle, but NFL decision makers are aware of what he can do, and he has also earned points for his ability to play through pain and find ways to move the football through adversity.

Kiffin was frustrated with Corral’s interception in the end zone against Auburn, as it’s one of the few times this season he has forced a throw or tried to make something from a window that wasn’t there.

As the injury continue to mount, staying inside himself may be the biggest key for Ole Miss against the Flames.

Turnovers and frustration are the quickest ways to make this one tight in the second half, whereas a poised Corral can carry Ole Miss to a win and impress the professional football people at the same time.

2 - Can Ole Miss keep Willis' feet from being lethal?

Ole Miss has to pay attention to Willis, or he will make things happen with his feet.

With a running profile similar but more effective than Louisville’s Malik Cunningham, Willis can take off on designed runs or scrambles and eat up yardage down the field. Ole Miss employed a spy — Chance Campbell was the player most often — and kept Cunningham in check during the season opener.

Willis has 102 runs this season for 865 yards and nine touchdowns. Fifty three of his attempts have gone for first downs and 34 are for more than 10 yards. The 215-pounder also has 563 yards after contact and 55 missed tackles forced.

While scrambles on passing plays are the most dangerous thing to defend because of defenders focused on receivers down he field, leaving major lanes to scramble through, Liberty will also dial up designed runs.

Willis has 393 yards this season on scrambles and 472 yards on designed runs. He’s rushed — not counting sacks — at least nine times in five of the nine games this season.

Hugh Freeze returns to Oxford for the first time since his tenure ended, but I expect the story on Saturday to be much like it has been for the rest of the week.

There will likely be mostly polite cheers with a few boos mixed in during pregame introductions, but barring a Liberty win, the storyline will disintegrate as the game goes on and not be a major point of emphasis at any point following that.

Freeze returning as a visiting coach, in a way, puts a cap on the entire thing, though that’s the been the case for most people for a while now. The tenure has been analyzed to death and is a mixture of good and bad, with each fan’s opinion falling somewhere on the pendulum.

It’s a bigger deal this weekend for Freeze than Ole Miss. He gets a chance at an upset and to see friends and family and probably get a little bit of closure he didn’t even know he needed.

Ole Miss should win the game, move to 7-2 and start work on Texas A&M. If that’s the case, it’ll be a workmanlike execution through injuries and another sign that the Rebels have moved on from all the mess at the end of the Freeze era.

It’s a top-15 team with a huge game ahead and still an opportunity at a New Year’s Six bowl. The Freeze years taught Ole Miss a lot about itself in both directions, but it’s over, and after Saturday, they can be away for good.