I keep hearing 1-8 vs top 10 on the road, 2-12 vs top 25….

Thought the same. He hasn’t had a team like this one with a defense like this.

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Without mentioning that he was at garbage programs like FAU and Ole Miss.

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Ole Miss certainly wasn’t garbage last year. Or 2024. And he was at Tennessee and USC as well. Certainly not garbage programs historically. It’d be interesting to know the favorites and spreads of the 9 top 10 games and the 14 top 25 ones. I doubt his teams was favored in that many, maybe none of the top 10.

But, I’ve watched him coach in big games, and you can sometimes tell the pressure gets to him especially late. (Ole Miss took a 35-26 lead into the 4th in Athens last year and were outscored 17-0 and lost 43-35). He will take wild risks, going for it on 4th down deep in their own territory. Some of those risks didn’t work out and wound up losing his teams some games.

Now, I get why he’s done that. He usually has the inferior team. And sometimes you have to gamble in games against better teams. He’d rather lose being (over) aggressive, giving his team what, in the moment, seems like the best chance of winning, than lose by being too conservative. So I don’t think I’d have been too angry if I was a fan of those teams and he took some gambles that didn’t pay off.

However, your point that he’s never had a defense like this, isn’t automatically a good thing when it comes to big decisions late in close games. If we find ourselves in one today—or whenever it eventually happens—does he become less risk averse, knowing he can lean on them? Or does he revert to what he knows and coach like he always has, typically with the inferior team. It’s one thing to intellectually understand something, but how will he handle it in the moment when the pressure arises? I think he’ll be fine. But it will be fascinating to see when it does happen. Hopefully that’s not today, though.