OXFORD — The Ole Miss Rebels have a lot of fight in them.
Anyone who has watched Ole Miss play since Hugh Freeze was hired to coach the Rebels can attest to that. The law of averages says that sooner or later, if your team gives all it has and works as hard as it can, the breaks will go your way and you will find a way to win a close game against a quality opponent.
The law of averages didn’t look down kindly on Ole Miss on Saturday night against No. 9 Texas A&M and reigning Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel. Instead, Josh Lambo kicked a 33-yard field goal at the buzzer to thwart the Rebels’ upset hopes and give the Aggies a 41-38 victory before a sellout crowd of 60,950 at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.
For the second-straight year, Ole Miss (3-3, 1-3 Southeastern Conference) proved to be a game opponent for Texas A&M. Last year, the Aggies needed a late touchdown pass from Manziel to escape Oxford with a 30-27 win. In the rematch, Manziel overcame an early injury to his left knee — on a play he wasn’t touched — to throw for 346 yards. He rushed for another 113 and two touchdowns to lead his team to another heart-stopping victory.
This game was exciting from the first play until the final play and had a little bit of everything. The telling factor was the Aggies’ ability to make big play after big play with the game on the line. “Johnny Football,” as Manziel is known worldwide, usually was at the epicenter of those big plays.
“It was a tough loss,” Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze said. “We had several opportunities to take control and we just didn’t make the plays, and they did. We have got to make the plays when the game is on the line, and we just didn’t do it.”
In a game with so many big plays, the Rebels had taken the lead 38-31 and seemed on the verge of pulling the upset. Facing a fourth-and-7 at the Ole Miss 45-yard line, Manziel seemed to be corralled for a loss that would have forced the Aggies to turn the ball over on downs. But Manziel, as he has done so many times in his 19-game Texas A&M career, scrambled for 13 yards to the Ole Miss 32 for a first down. Two plays later, the Aggies tied the score at 38 with 3 minutes, 7 seconds left to play.
On the ensuing drive, Ole Miss went three-and-out and gave the ball back to Texas A&M with 2:33 left. The Rebels dropped a couple of passes on the ill-fated drive that would have given them first downs and momentum to move the ball into position to kick a game-winning field goal.
“I don’t know if they are trying too hard and pressing, but we had some of those (drops) that hurt us. We have to convert those,” Freeze said.
On the final drive, Manziel converted three first downs, one via the pass and two via on runs, to put the Aggies in field goal range. At that point, the rebels didn’t have any timeouts and could do little to prevent Lambo from making the field goal. After positioning the ball in the middle of the field at the 15, Lambo split the uprights to lift the Aggies to the win.
“We had so many guys down on the defensive side there at the end that we could not go into some of our packages, so we were really limited on what we could do,” Freeze said. “I am so proud of our kids. It’s disappointing, and we have to get one of these to go our way. We will have to get them back for another difficult test next Saturday night (against LSU).”
When asked about the Rebels’ inability to win a close game, Freeze said, “I thought we had a plan that worked and gave us a chance. We want a chance in the fourth quarter to win. We had the ball with a chance to win. We didn’t get it done.”
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