HATTIESBURG — There are only so many conclusions you can draw from a preseason scrimmage. Every good play for the offense is a bad play for the defense. Every sack raises a question about the offensive line. And when three quarterbacks are competing for one job, seemingly every throw gets treated like a referendum on who should start.
So instead of trying to declare winners and losers from Southern Miss’ final scrimmage of fall camp Saturday at Renasant Bank Stadium, it might be more useful to look at what we actually learned. The Golden Eagles spent nearly two hours working through different situations rather than simply playing a conventional scrimmage. There was backed-up work near the goal line, red-zone situations and special teams periods. Blake Anderson said afterward that the defense had the better afternoon, but there was more to Saturday than simply offense versus defense.
With fall camp now finished and Alcorn State coming to Hattiesburg on Sept. 5, here are five things that stood out to me from Southern Miss’ final scrimmage.
1. The quarterback competition might be telling us more about the offense than the quarterbacks
For most of August, Southern Miss’ quarterback battle has been presented as a three-man race between Ethan Hampton, Landry Lyddy and John White. That’s certainly true, but after two scrimmages, I’m starting to wonder if we’re asking the wrong question. Instead of simply asking who won the quarterback job, maybe the more important question is what Southern Miss actually needs its quarterback to do.
This doesn’t look like an offense that needs somebody to throw it 45 times and rescue the team every Saturday. Southern Miss appears to have enough pieces around the quarterback that the job may ultimately go to the player Anderson trusts most to keep the offense on schedule, protect the football and distribute it to the playmakers around him.
That’s what makes Hampton’s situation particularly interesting. Before injuring his throwing hand in the first scrimmage, Hampton completed all three of his passes for 34 yards and moved the offense down the field. Lyddy and White produced more yardage after Hampton left, but the offense also turned the football over. Anderson has repeatedly talked about how close this competition has been, and nothing from Fan Fest suggested somebody suddenly ran away with it.
Maybe that’s the takeaway. Southern Miss doesn’t necessarily need the quarterback with the prettiest stat line. It needs the quarterback who makes the fewest Saturdays unnecessarily difficult. On a team that appears capable of playing defense and has legitimate skill-position depth, boring quarterback play might actually be winning quarterback play.
2. Southern Miss’ defense might be further along than expected
Coming into camp, there were plenty of reasons to wonder what this defense would look like. There are new faces everywhere, a new staff installing its system and players learning to communicate with teammates they barely knew a few months ago. Yet through two scrimmages, the defense has consistently been one of the more encouraging developments of August.
In the first scrimmage, Southern Miss produced nine sacks and five turnovers. Tyler Lassiter was all over the field at linebacker, while the defensive front became increasingly disruptive as the afternoon went along. Then Saturday came around. Different scrimmage. Different situations. Same general feeling. Anderson’s first reaction afterward was that the defense had won the afternoon.
That’s important because this roster doesn’t look built for Southern Miss to simply overwhelm everybody offensively. There are going to be Saturdays when the offense sputters. There will probably be mistakes from whichever quarterback wins the job, and there will almost certainly be stretches early in the season when a roster filled with newcomers looks exactly like a roster filled with newcomers.
A defense capable of surviving those stretches changes the ceiling of this team. Maybe Southern Miss doesn’t have to score 35 points every week. Maybe 24 or 27 will be enough more often than we thought.
3. The biggest improvement might simply be having more playable bodies
This isn’t the most exciting takeaway from Fan Fest, but it could become one of the most important by November. Southern Miss looks deeper. I’m not saying this roster is suddenly loaded with future NFL Draft picks at every position or that Southern Miss has more depth than the best teams in the Sun Belt. It just feels like there are more guys who can actually play.
Throughout camp, coaches have continued rotating players at receiver, running back, linebacker and along both lines. Even during the first scrimmage, offensive and defensive linemen were moving between units as the staff searched for combinations. The linebacker room has been especially competitive, while the receiving corps has continued producing despite Davis Dalton dealing with a hamstring issue.
Eelijah Singleton’s 175 receiving yards in the first scrimmage were probably the best example. Jaylen Himes added eight catches for 81 yards. Those numbers mattered, but what interested me more was what they represented. Southern Miss didn’t have to rely on one receiver to make everything work.
That’s something we’ve seen hurt this program in recent seasons. An injury to the wrong player could completely change what Southern Miss was capable of doing. This roster feels different. There are more players who look capable of taking meaningful snaps without the entire offense or defense having to change around them.
That isn’t something that generates much excitement at a preseason scrimage. It becomes a much bigger deal when you get into late October and November and nobody in college football is completely healthy anymore.
4. Saturday showed why Blake Anderson wanted so much live football during camp
Southern Miss has an unusual roster. This isn’t a veteran team returning mostly intact and adding a handful of transfers around the edges. It’s closer to a football team that had to be assembled over the offseason. That’s why Anderson’s approach to fall camp has been interesting.
Anderson said Saturday that Southern Miss went through more live situations during this camp than teams he’s coached in previous years, largely because so many players are new. That tells you what the coaching staff believes this team needs most. Reps. And not just the kind you get running plays against scout-team looks.
Saturday wasn’t designed to produce a pretty box score for the people sitting in Renasant Bank Stadium. Southern Miss worked backed up against its own goal line, red-zone situations and special teams. A week earlier, the Golden Eagles had played a much more traditional open-field scrimmage. Anderson deliberately made the second one different.
The biggest concern with a roster featuring this much turnover isn’t necessarily talent. Southern Miss has talent. It’s what happens on third-and-7 when somebody shifts late, the quarterback changes something at the line and five different players have to make the same decision at the same time. It’s whether everyone knows where to line up when the offense is backed up against its own goal line. It’s whether a receiver recognizes the same coverage as his quarterback.
You can’t completely recreate Sept. 5 in August, but you can make practice uncomfortable. Saturday looked less like Southern Miss trying to discover who can make plays and more like a coaching staff trying to discover who it can trust when things aren’t going smoothly.
5. Southern Miss might be a little better than its preseason reputation
I’m not ready to predict Southern Miss will win the Sun Belt based on a couple of August scrimmages. I’m also not ready to make sweeping conclusions based on teammates tackling teammates. But I do think something has changed since the beginning of camp.
Southern Miss was picked fifth in the Sun Belt West, and there were understandable reasons for it. The Golden Eagles lost a ton from last year’s team. There’s a new head coach, a quarterback competition and a roster filled with players who weren’t here a year ago. On paper, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical.
Watching this team develop gives you a slightly different feeling. The quarterback situation hasn’t been settled publicly, but there are three legitimate options. The receiving corps has produced multiple playmakers even without Dalton being completely healthy. The linebacker room looks deep. The defensive front has been disruptive. The offensive line, perhaps the biggest unknown entering camp, has at least shown signs of developing workable combinations.
None of that guarantees anything. Fan Fest didn’t suddenly turn Southern Miss into the favorite to win the conference. What Saturday did reinforce is the idea that this roster might be more competitive than people expected when those preseason predictions came out.
This doesn’t feel like a team that needs absolutely everything to go perfectly to win football games. Maybe that’s the biggest difference. A year ago, Southern Miss had stars you could easily identify. This year’s team might ultimately be defined by something less glamorous: options.
Options at quarterback. Options at receiver. Options at linebacker. Options when somebody gets hurt.
We’ll find out soon enough whether those options are good enough. But after watching how this team has developed through fall camp, I feel more comfortable saying this: Southern Miss looks better than preseason rank number 5 in the SBC West.
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