A desire to prove to the nation that losing 18 starters from last year’s roster wouldn’t cause a dropoff in production was not the only fuel the Ole Miss football team needed to amass a blowout victory on Saturday. A player from the visiting team also threw the Rebels a motivational bone.
Ahead of both teams’ 2025 opener, players from Ole Miss and Georgia State were jawing on the field at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium as the Rebels entered the facility following the season’s first “Walk of Champions.” The exchanging of trash talk was not enough for Panther defensive back Tyler Scott. The redshirt sophomore took it upon himself to snatch a chain off the neck of Ole Miss defensive end Da’Shawn Womack and toss it into the stands, prompting an immediate scuffle that involved police.
Insane: Georgia State CB Tyler Scott SNATCHED an Ole Miss player’s chain in the pregame and launched it in the stands…
He was quickly benched for the game
pic.twitter.com/BnVbDZClos
— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) September 1, 2025
Georgia State head coach Dell McGee acknowledged the pregame incident, though he was not on the field when it all went down. McGee said that Scott’s chain-snatching occurred after the defensive back’s towel had allegedly been nabbed by an Ole Miss player. But, as many of us were taught in our youth, two wrongs did not make a right, and Scott was suspended for the game by his head coach — after Womack elected not to press charges.
“I went to Coach [Lane] Kiffin and apologized. I think someone from the Ole Miss team snatched his towel. [Scott] snatched a chain. Words were exchanged. But that’s just not who we are as a university,” McGee said after the game. “We’re not going to allow guys to represent us that way. That was one of the reasons he did not play at all, so it was a disciplinary action that I took.”
When presented with the option to press charges, Womack determined that it would be more beneficial to let Scott have to line up against Kiffin’s offense, rather than deal with law enforcement. While McGee took that away from the Rebels, Scott still had to bear witness to a 63-7 beatdown of his team.
“I thought our guys handled themselves really well, I think better than I would have in that situation. That was crazy. I’d never seen anything like that. I didn’t know who the guy was at the time … I had some words for him. I didn’t do as well as our players did with him,” Kiffin said of the altercation. “You guys hear me say all the time, everything bad is good and everything good is bad. I pissed Womack off. [He] was the defensive player of the game and played amazingly and as hard as [he could] in the game.”
As Kiffin noted, Womack had quite the debut for the red and blue. On top of practically living in the backfield all night, the LSU transfer was tied for first on the team in solo tackles. He and veteran linebacker TJ Dottery logged five individual take-downs apiece in the season opener.
On the offensive side of the ball, redshirt sophomore quarterback Austin Simmons had an overall positive showing in his inaugural start for the Rebels, despite a couple of miscues. The southpaw completed 20 of 31 passes for 341 yards, three touchdowns, and two picks. Penn State transfer Harrison Wallace III was Simmons’ top target with 130 yards and a score on five receptions. Returning tight end Dae’Quan Wright logged 78 yards and a touchdown on four receptions.
The running game, an area where Ole Miss struggled mightily last year, proved solid. Missouri transfer Kewan Lacy, in his first start, led the stable with an eye-popping 108 yards and the first three scores of his collegiate career on 16 carries. Returning running back, Logan Diggs, had seven carries and 91 yards in trash time.
At special teams, Western Kentucky transfer Lucas Carneiro, the 2024 CUSA Special Teams Player of the Year, had a flawless first game for the Rebels. The junior placekicker connected on a pair of field goals, one from 42 yards out and the other from 33 yards out, while succeeding in three extra-point attempts. Freshman Mike Baker also had a trio of successful point-after attempts. Wallace was attention-grabbing in the punt return game.
The Rebels’ week one performance moved them up one spot in the Associated Press top 25. With a lot of shakeup in the top 10 of the most recent poll, Ole Miss finds itself in a prime position to make waves in the polls early, especially with Texas, Clemson, and Alabama having blemishes on the win-loss column. The full top 25 can be found below:
- Ohio State
- Penn State
- LSU
- Georgia
- Miami
- Oregon
- Texas
- Clemson
- Notre Dame
- South Carolina
- Illinois
- Arizona State
- Florida
- Florida State
- Michigan
- Iowa State
- SMU
- Oklahoma
- Texas A&M
- Ole Miss
- Alabama
- Tennessee
- Indiana
- Texas Tech
- Utah
Ole Miss will turn the page and focus on its week-two opponent, Kentucky. The conference opener will be a bit of a revenge game for the Rebels, whose 2024 College Football Playoff campaign was, in part, upended by a 20-17 home loss to the Wildcats. Saturday’s matchup will occur at Kroger Field in Lexington at 2:30 p.m. CT. ABC and participating SuperTalk Mississippi stations will broadcast the contest.
“I was there,” Dottery said of the 2024 loss to Kentucky. “[That left] a sour taste in my mouth.”
