No. 13 Missouri at No. 9 Ole Miss
Saturday, October 17, 2026
3:30 PM ET, Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, Oxford
Ole Miss is a 6-point home favorite with the total sitting at 59. My play is Missouri +6.
“It’s scary to know how good he is and how talented he is.” That was Pete Golding on Monday, talking about the quarterback Ole Miss moved on from. Austin Simmons opened 2025 as the Rebels’ starter, got hurt at Kentucky in Week 2, and watched Trinidad Chambliss take the job and never give it back. Now Simmons comes back to Oxford in Missouri colors, with receiver Cayden Lee and defensive back Chris Graves Jr. riding along, and the Rebels are laying nearly a touchdown. That’s too many.
The ratings don’t see a six-point gap. SP+, Bill Connelly’s efficiency-based power rating, actually ranks Missouri a few spots higher than Ole Miss and calls this game a coin flip, with the Rebels favored by less than half a point. Even ESPN’s matchup predictor only gives Ole Miss about 58%, well short of the two-in-three chance the moneyline implies. When the number and the ratings are this far apart, I want the points.
Good luck running on this Missouri front. Eli Drinkwitz’s defense is the reason the Tigers are 5-1. They blew out then-No. 8 Florida by four touchdowns and held Texas A&M to six points last week. Opponents are averaging 2.3 yards per carry against them, fourth-best in the country. Ole Miss already leans on the pass, and it’s about to lean harder. Chambliss can carry that load, but an offense with one dimension is a lot easier to plan for than one with two.
The Rebels’ defense is the soft spot. Ole Miss can score with anyone. The offense is top-ten in SP+ and hasn’t come away empty on a single red-zone trip all year. The defense is another story. It sits outside the top 50 in SP+ and in the bottom third nationally in expected points added per play allowed, which is a fancy way of saying offenses do real damage on a lot of snaps. Florida hung more than 50 on this group in Gainesville. That’s the unit Simmons gets to face, and he’s been sharp all season with 14 touchdown passes against one interception. Jamal Roberts gives him a workhorse back to lean on, too.
Mizzou owns the hidden yards. The Tigers almost never give the ball away, and they rank top-ten nationally in turnover margin while Ole Miss sits slightly in the red. Missouri also wins the field-position battle by a wide margin. And because the Rebels rank near the bottom of the country in time of possession, their defense spends a lot of afternoons on the field. A tired secondary against a quarterback who has seen Golding’s defense up close on the practice field is not a great combination for the home team.
The injury watch is on that secondary, too. Defensive back Edwin Joseph sprained an ankle at Vanderbilt, and Golding called him “the only concern right now from an injury standpoint.” Joseph was due for a second opinion Tuesday.
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Where this goes sideways. Ole Miss’s offense is not a mirage. If Chambliss gets rolling early and the Rebels keep cashing every red-zone trip, this turns into a shootout that Missouri’s defense can’t slow down. The Tigers’ own offense is a concern near the goal line: they score on just 75% of red-zone trips, one of the worst marks in the country, and the field-goal unit has been shaky. Settling for three, or getting nothing, is how a road dog loses a cover on the last drive. If Joseph is cleared, the Rebels’ back end also gets a lot sturdier.
To be clear, I’m not fading Ole Miss because I think it’s a fraud. I’m taking the points because six is a lot to lay against a team the ratings like just as much as the home side, with a quarterback who has a little extra motivation this week.
The Rebels probably win it, just not by enough: Ole Miss 31, Missouri 28.
The Pick: Missouri +6
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