Zach Berry, senior recruiting analyst for Ole Miss Spirit & On3 Sports, tells McElroy & Cubelic how Ole Miss is preparing for the season and what he's learned about the team during fall camp
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Welcome back in McElroy and Kubelik in the morning. Bears 21, Texans 17 last night in NFL preseason action. 718 a.m. Friday, August 2nd, right here on Jocks 94.5. Davis Mills 10 of 13, 102 yards, touchdown, no picks.

I thought Brett Rippon looked good last night. 11-13, 166, three touchdowns, no interceptions. He's had a nice little career, Rippon has. I thought he threw the ball well. He's been up there a minute. Had a good little run. Colin Johnson also for the Bears out of Texas. 6'6", had three catches, 56 yards, two touchdowns. How about Byron Cowart with a sack and two tackles for loss last night? The five-star? That's him. Where did he finish up? UCF?

Maryland? I thought it was Maryland. Yeah, you're right. It's Maryland. Yeah, I don't think he went anywhere else after that. But nonetheless, in the league. Oh, yeah. The Bears are going to have some weapons, too. They obviously addressed that in the draft. But I don't know how much you can take away from it. It's cool to see John Metchie get a catch last night for the Texans and him be back. My guy Cade Stover, two for 26 last night for Houston as well. How good is Cade Stover's career going to be? So good.

It's going to be so good. He's going to be so underappreciated, but he'll be up there for 12 years. He's going to be the guy CJ Stroud says, don't cut him. Make sure he's there. And he's going to be a war daddy on special teams, just a complete tone setter. He'll have a captaincy on his chest here in about, I don't know, a year. He's going to have a great career. Yeah.

So we I don't know what you can really take away from it as far as exactly what you get from that game last night. Maybe that some of the backup quarterback situations for these two teams might be decent. It was called early because of weather, but tough to really gauge which direction either one of these franchises is going to be able to go this year. But it was good to just actually watch some live tackle football.

The Bears are going to be good. The more I think to it, and look, I'm not picking them to win the NFC North, but I do think when you look at last year, the Lions caught lightning in a bottle. I think the Lions are going to be good, but I would not be that surprised if they come back to earth a little bit. You know Minnesota's going to be down.

With their quarterback situation, I mean, they're starting Sam Darnold, for crying out loud, as their guy. And people think, well, Cousins, you know, Cousins isn't anything special. All right, Cousins is good, dude. Super productive. Green Bay, I think, has a game changer in Jordan Love. And I think they're just getting started. They're going to be around for a while. I mean, we're going to fast forward here. And the Bears were good last year. I mean, they were solid last year in spite of...

of a quarterback that was very inconsistent throwing the football. Terrific athlete, incredible with the ball in his hands. I mean, Justin Fields, one of the most dynamic quarterbacks we've seen. But the more I kind of look at the NFC North, we might very well fast forward to the end of the season. That's the best division in football.

I mean, you have four teams that could legitimately win the league if somehow J.J. McCarthy gets thrust in and becomes a pretty good player early. Then you have four teams that could win the division and teams, I think, that could, if their quarterbacks play well, win games in the postseason.

Absolutely. So preseason football underway, even though it was cut short last night. It was good to kind of just see some actual football gives you some hope that we're here, that we made it and not going to get any more this weekend. Yeah, you have to wait until next Thursday, a week from last night. You'll get Carolina at New England, Detroit at New York and NFL preseason action. That's what's going to be next. Might be next on some people's list to call ABS systems, Greg, and see what they can do for them.

Well, they're going to make sure that your company is running smoothly. They have a bunch of different ways that they can accelerate things and improve things, whether it's handling and working on your Ricoh, Toshiba, Lexmark printers, you name that, they'll get that taken care of. But they've now added ABS Pure Water, which is a division of ABS Systems. And ABS Pure Water, they have the chewable ice, they have filtered water, hot, cold, ambient water.

It's really terrific. It's the best-in-class product from Waterlogic. They also have all the way up to industrial-size units that deliver hundreds of pounds of ice per day. So call ABS Business Systems today at 205-588-5077, or you can start the conversation at absimage.com. All right. Ole Miss, the team that we're going to talk about today as far as will they make the college football playoff, we're going to do that with one team each and every day. However, I want to get just a little bit of an update of this team actually being on the field. Yeah.

What that looked like and maybe some of the questions that we've got answered a little bit early here in fall practice. Zach Berry covers Ole Miss for the On3 Sports Network at Zach underscore Berry. You can follow him on Twitter. He joins us now on the Buyers Right Hotline.

A lot of questions with some new additions, Zach. Anything stick out to you about the first time Ole Miss hit the practice field with a new body and a new place or someone who might be able to offer a little bit more, a little less than what we were thinking? The first thing that jumped off once Ole Miss got on the field was Juice Wells. It appears that there are little to no questions about the foot. He looks healthy. He looks in good shape. I would think everyone would agree he looks a tad

tad bit more trimmed down. He looks a little bit better physically. So that's the one thing that jumps out. Everybody knows about Trey Harris, Jordan Watkins, Caden Breescorn, and then adding Juice Wells on the other side opposite Trey Harris. Presumably we'll open some things up. And then Walter Nolan absolutely looks the part. He has been

obviously a tremendous addition to the defensive line that brings back a lot of experience, a lot of physicality. Kiffin was pretty adamant about getting better in the trenches after the

in Athens, Georgia. He was pretty pointed with his comments after the game and almost did just that, adding Nolan. The only other, I guess, question mark would be Prince Lou Mami-Ellen. Just in a no-contact jersey at the moment, but he's going through drills. He's doing some light individual work. And I think once he is back fully healthy, ready to go, no black, no contact jersey, he will be a

a huge part of that defensive line. When you look at the offensive line, obviously some new faces filling in up there, um, Coleppo in particular from Washington. Uh, how did they feel like they've addressed that group? And, and what does it look like? Is Diego pounds in the lineup? Is Coleppo in the lineup? Like who, who's the starting five right now?

Yeah, Greg, that was honestly, I've had people ask me what questions I've had about Ole Miss going into this season, and you kind of look position group by position group. The offensive line is really the only question with the caveat of just how are they going to mesh all these different pieces, because they return a lot of experience from last year, they return several starters, and then you add in a guy like Jerquan Scott, who played a lot of football at Southern Miss, and then as

as the, as you mentioned, uh, Diego pounds, Coleppo, Buelo, um, Buelo went through, uh, day one. He was out there. He was in the mix. Uh, Coleppo is dealing with a bit of a, an,

an injury right now. I believe he's in concussion protocol. So he's not dressing. He's not involved in fall camp, but there's not much concern there as far as missing a lot of time. I think pounds is going to, is going to be in the mix eventually. I think he's kind of, you know, getting his sea legs, so to speak. He had a bit of a minor off season procedure. So he's working his way back from that, but yeah,

I think when I say it's a question mark, I think there's definitely some quotes around that or maybe an asterisk because there is a lot of experience and they added those big pieces through the portal. So I think John Garrison and Lane Kiffin are going to have to figure out which pieces work best together. We've already seen Scott working at center with –

With Caleb Warren moving over to guard, so Warren played a lot of center last year. So I think there's some versatile pieces that's going to allow them to experiment in fall camp and kind of see which puzzle works best. Zach, we're in concussion protocol the first day of practice. Is that accurate?

Yeah, what we heard was it was a minor car accident was what we were told. So yeah, nothing happened first day of fall camp. I was like, did you get hurt stretching? How does that happen? I've never heard of concussion protocol first day of camp. That's the first time. So thank goodness he's all right if it was an accident. Goodness gracious.

Yeah, yeah. He's fine. He was at practice day, too. But, yeah, they're just letting him ease into it. All right. Zach Berry with us. Covers Ole Miss for the On3 Sports Network at omspirit.com. Find his work there. The running back rotation. We all probably believe Ulysses Bentley going to be first in line. But do you have any better feel of sort of how the order is going to work out for this offense?

I Bentley is without question, in my opinion, number one, I believe he's probably number one on the depth chart. A lot of experience. I think Kiffin and Kevin Smith are very comfortable letting him be the number one guy. He knows the offense. Well, he's got a lot of reps.

But Kevin Smith, running back's coach, and Kiffin like to rotate. They like to keep people fresh. That's big. They talk about that in recruiting a lot where they're wanting to get more than one running back in each class because they want to have that rotation and to be fresh. I think Rashad Amos was a big pickup through the portal, a guy that at one point was –

committed to Mississippi State, then he was going to go to Colorado, then Ole Miss picks him up, played a lot of football at Miami of Ohio, and then Henry Parrish, I think he kind of lost in the shuffle with just the portal and everything going on, but he was very productive for Ole Miss when he was at Ole Miss, and he played with Kevin Smith. Kevin Smith leaves, goes to Miami, Henry Parrish follows him,

really good in the ACC. He didn't get talked about a lot. Now he's back at Ole Miss. I think he is going to bring a versatile piece. So I think it's probably a good, I don't really know if there's a two or three. Again, I think they're going to rotate, but I would say Bentley is number one just with the versatility. I think he's underrated in between the tackles. He's pretty physical and he's got home run speed and,

Amos is going to be more of an inside guy, and then Parrish can kind of do a little bit of everything and knows the playbook well. Are there going to be some new wrinkles, you think? Lane always has a new wrinkle or two. But it doesn't feel like they need to, I don't want to say smoke and mirrors, because that feels like it kind of...

It feels like it undercuts their personnel, but they have at times had some smoke and mirrors things and tricks up their sleeve. This year, it just feels like their personnel can go with anybody and like, we're just going to line up and be who we are. Do you kind of sense that maybe there's going to be a little less trickery and a little bit more, you know, steak and potatoes with Lane and the way they call the game this year?

Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. Lane's always going to – you know how he is. He's going to put some stuff on film each week that people have to account for down the road. He's always going to do that. But, yeah, I mean, I think you're right. This is probably the first time in a very long time at Ole Miss where –

the Rebels are going to be better than a lot of people on paper. It's not really the case in recent years. Maybe not better on paper, but they'll win on Saturday. But now it's kind of, you know, Kiffin said it after day one of fall camp. He said, hey, you walk around, we look like Alabama. We look like Georgia now. There was a lot of people inside that building and people around the weight room that kind of echoed that sentiment where they were like, man, these offensive linemen, you know,

It's like a bunch of Laramie Tunstles walking around, which is high praise. Laramie Tunstle is very, very good, and is very good now in the NFL. But yeah, just that body type, the look, the vibe. They've dubbed this season as the last dance. It's a lot of really talented pieces coming back and then adding more to it. Yeah, Greg, I think the meat and potatoes thing is brilliant.

That's pretty on brand. I mean, I think that's kind of what it is where it's just, Hey, this is what we do. We, we think we're better and we're just going to go out there and get wins every Saturday. All right, Zach, we appreciate the time. I am going to ask you this question because Ole Miss is our team of the day today. We are taking one team every day leading up to kickoff. That's going to be a contender to get to the college football playoff and just point blank ask, will they make the college football playoff this year? So I'm going to ask you, is Ole Miss going to be in the playoff in 2024? Yeah,

I think so. The roster that has been put together paired with the schedule, I think there's a really good shot that Ole Miss is going to be at least 10-2. I think

You've got Georgia at home, which is just a free shot. Georgia's going to be a premier program as they are. You've got a road game at LSU that's going to be tough, but I think Ole Miss is the better team on paper right now. So if it materializes on the field, I think that's a win. And then maybe it's not. You've still got a home game against Oklahoma that you should win, and then a tricky one down the road with Florida on the road, but who knows what the game will be.

the Gators are going to look like at that point. But yeah, I think like Greg said, it's just, hey, meat and potatoes, you know, this is who we are. We're going to line up. We're going to beat you. I think 10-2 is very, very attainable. And I think 11-1 is not crazy to say, which is wild as someone who's covered Ole Miss. 11-1 not being wild is a crazy thing to say on the radio. Absolutely. Zach, great stuff, man. Appreciate the time. I look forward to catching up with you again soon.

Appreciate it, fellas. All right. Zach Berry covers Ole Miss for the On3 Sports Network at Zach underscore Berry. Find his work at OMSpirit.com. We'll continue that conversation kind of around Ole Miss. That's our team that we'll discuss today of will they make the college football playoff? It's an interesting question. We'll discuss it next on Mac and Cube in the morning.

Catch up with all things McElroy and Kubrick in the morning by subscribing to the podcast. Mythically, he's grown. He's almost like a little bit bigger than a player, right? Like the myth of Bo Jackson. Like, rate, and download the show from the jock app or wherever you get your podcasts. It's time for Bob's Dare to Compare. You get style. You get features. You get style.

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which you can probably tell from my appearance. I don't have a crazy high IQ or I really don't have that many skills. I would say my main skill is I believe my instincts. I don't hesitate to follow my instincts ever. The extent that I have, I've got in trouble. The Sean Ryan Show on YouTube or wherever you listen.