Manning Ole Miss' shaky ship is a tough job

Feature | Notebook

The critics are waiting for Mississippi to be, well, Mississippi.

The Rebels' best SEC start in 40 years (5-0) is nice, but Eli Manning gets the feeling folks are waiting for them to return to form.

Ole Miss might be a much-improved team, but it's still the Eli Manning show.(Getty Images)

"We don't want to be looked at as one of the lower-class teams," Ole Miss' quarterback said. "We have been that in the past. We're trying to change that, be considered a physical football team, not an easy win for anybody. Now, I think other teams see we're going to be for real."

As the only undefeated team in SEC play, the No. 20 Rebels (7-2) are something of an anomaly.

For most of Manning's four seasons, the program has ridden his right arm to whatever success it had. Form seems to be holding. Manning is having the best season of his career and this week the Rebels' pass defense is the third-worst in the country.

But here are the Rebels, in control of their own destiny, playing SEC West rivals Auburn and LSU the next two weeks, basically to decide the division. It feels good just to be in contention this late in the season. Ole Miss hasn't been 5-0 in the league since 1963, the last time the Rebels won the SEC.

The only SEC West Division team never to play in the conference championship game is now on the brink of it.

"We had good players; I knew we had athletes," Manning said. "Maybe we didn't have as many stud athletes as Florida and some of these teams, but we've got players who can do good things. Our defense has finally stepped it up. That kind of helps our offense, we're not forced to score 40 points a game."

But the offense had to do exactly that Saturday, as Mississippi held on for a 43-40 victory over South Carolina. Manning threw for 391 yards and three touchdowns, moving his record in which Ole Miss has scored at least 40 points to 9-2.

In that game, Eli and Peyton passed BYU's Koy and Ty Detmer for most career touchdown passes by brothers 162-161.

It wasn't easy, Manning said, to even come back this season. The Rebels slumped badly last season, losing five in a row during a 7-6 season that was salvaged by an Independence Bowl victory over Nebraska.

But like his brother Peyton, Eli came back for his senior year, though under different circumstances. Peyton stated he loved college life so much, he wasn't quite ready to leave. Eli was on the brink of leaving if Ole Miss had lost that bowl game.

"Our situations were so much different," he said. "If Peyton would have left his junior year, he probably would have been the first pick in the draft, whereas I would have made it in the late first round, second round.

"He was also coming back to a team that was preseason No. 1. He knew they were going to be 10-1, 9-2 at worst. Whereas, I was coming off a 7-6 season. You never know if you're going to make a bowl game or what we're going to be like.

"I already had my college experience. I was redshirted. I was coming for a semester of football and improve my skills."

For the Manning family still looking for a championship of any kind, that is huge. The family image could use some burnishing. Eli is the good Manning right now, a Heisman front-runner in his senior year, while Peyton is involved in a legal battle with a former Tennessee trainer.

Eli's skills have improved to the point that he is considered the top quarterback available in next year's draft. He is on pace for a career year in passing yards (2,663 so far) and currently leads the SEC in passing yards per game, completions, touchdown passes and total offense.

"He's just taken it to another level," coach David Cutcliffe said. "I think he's just been tremendously consistent, whether it's throwing the ball, making decisions, or taking care of the ball. The running game has taken some of the pressure off of what was a one-dimensional offense."

It's still Manning's team, but it is a more complete Ole Miss. Tremaine Turner has rushed for a serviceable 512 yards. Manning's favorite receiver Chris Collins has 55 catches.

The defense is stepping up, sort of. It allowed 52 points in the first four SEC games before the second-half breakdown against the Gamecocks. Overall, it is allowing 51 more yards per game (398) than 2002, dropping from 41st nationally last year to 80th.

If nothing else, that shows how important Manning has been.

"I think I'm just playing smarter," Manning said. "One thing is we've got a running game -- we're doing well. We're not stuck in so many second-and-10s, third-and-10s as we were last year. ... Last year I got frustrated; we weren't running the ball well. Our offense just wasn't clicking like the year before.

"I thought about leaving early. Last year, during the stretch when we lost five games in a row, that's never easy on anybody. I wasn't having as much fun as I wanted to be having."

When Manning picked Ole Miss over other super powers, it was seen as a possible sea change in the SEC. From his apartment overlooking Oxford's town square, Manning can oversee the city like a power broker. He wasn't as powerful in the SEC, where he was only 14-10 as a starter coming into this season.

Now, the Rebels are a couple of dropped passes against Texas Tech and Memphis away from being undefeated.

"He put everything he had into this team," Cutcliffe said. "These are guys he's been going to school with for three or four years and developed relationships with. You'll never have this type of team relationship again. Professionally, it's just a little different. I think it's a great statement for college football and says a lot about the type of person Eli Manning is."

Like his brother at Tennessee, Eli is destined to become a part of Mississippi lore. It can be believed that another Oxford resident inspired Manning during the current run.

The Rebels were 2-2 when Manning boarded the bus for the road trip to Florida on Oct. 3. He opened John Grisham's new novel Bleachers about a former Mississippi high school quarterback star who comes home to bury is high school coach.

"On the bus and airplane I read the whole thing," Manning said.

Mississippi hasn't lost since.