Ole Miss Football: The gospel according to Matthew Luke

Matt Luke

Imagine the kinds of people in the world which can be counted on one or two hands, and nothing more.

Brash and flamboyant Amish citizens. Tuxedo-wearing advocates for the homeless. Honest Washington, D.C. politicians.

By Matt Zemek

Add to that group another very tiny assembly: People who thought Matt Luke would become Ole Miss’s permanent head football coach in 2018 after his interim 2017 season.

The wreckage left by Hugh Freeze’s successful-on-Saturdays, disastrous-in-general tenure in Oxford is still being assessed, and will be painfully felt in another bowl-less season. Sanctions, transfer-based departures from the program, and the other negative effects of NCAA violations have ravaged the Rebels, which would be damaging enough for any coach thrust into a crisis situation. Luke, though, had to cope with these limitations in the SEC West. Failure last season was easy to project; success was much harder to envision.

By any reasonable standard, Luke succeeded. Graded on a curve and adjusted for specific circumstances, he wildly exceeded expectations.

Ole Miss avoided a losing season. It frustrated SEC opponents which carried higher aspirations into the 2017 campaign. Luke didn’t merely inspire his players and prevent them from mentally checking out on the season, which was his foremost task; he scrambled to cobble together winning performances against Vanderbilt (which was supposed to be in a make-or-break year for Derek Mason), Mississippi State (coached by Dan Mullen and quarterbacked by Nick Fitzgerald), and Kentucky (a team which desperately wanted to take the next step in its evolution last year). Ole Miss survived not just on its effort, which was always there in 2017; the Rebels were able to execute well, and moreover, they did so in a year when Shea Patterson got injured.

That last detail shows why even though Ole Miss will find it very hard to repeat its 2017 magic, Luke has shown he can be trusted to make the most out of his NCAA-created circumstances.

When Patterson went down last year, Jordan Ta’amu stepped in and was prepared well by Luke and his offensive staff. It helped that Ole Miss had A.J. Brown — the best receiving A.J. in the SEC since Mr. Green at Georgia — but as great as receivers are, quarterbacks have to be good enough to make the right reads and put the ball in spots where receivers can do their work. Ta’amu became that quarterback, at least enough to deliver in crunch-time situations. Patterson’s injury was not a death-knell for the season.

As 2018 comes closer, Patterson is in Michigan, part of the transfer parade out of Oxford. Not having Patterson’s experience and dual-threat capabilities is a loss for the Rebels… but with Ta’amu having received meaningful tests last year — and passing a number of them — Luke has created a legitimate expectation that his under-resourced team can once again stay afloat.

No, dominance or high-end consistency shouldn’t be expected, but another 6-6 season — with the SEC West having improved its coaching fraternity relative to 2017 — would be tremendous for Ole Miss.

Sure, Jimbo Fisher, Chad Morris, and Joe Moorhead have joined the SEC West, but few coaches did more with less than Luke did last season. If Ole Miss can — as Steve Spurrier is fond of saying — “pitch it around the ballpark real good” and get just enough red-zone stops from its undermanned defense, the bowl ban in effect for 2018 will need to be applied.

Yet, winning six games would once again represent a statement of both quality and defiance, the kind of rebelliousness and resistance any Gospel reader would be proud of.

The Gospel according to Matthew Luke created a lot of true believers at the University of Mississippi last autumn. This fall, a coach and his players will try to affirm the faith of the congregation.

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