{"id":169166,"date":"2025-06-30T01:19:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T01:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/169166\/"},"modified":"2025-06-30T01:19:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T01:19:11","slug":"ole-miss-defense-will-not-take-a-step-back-says-pete-golding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/169166\/","title":{"rendered":"Ole Miss defense will not take a step back says Pete Golding"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pete Golding<\/a> is entering his third season as the defensive coordinator for the Ole Miss<\/a> football program. Year two might be one of the best of his career.<\/p>\n

The Rebels boasted NFL talent across all 11 spots and were one of the best defenses in the country in 2024. But now the question is what will this unit be in 2025?<\/p>\n

Losing four starters along the defensive line to the NFL plus starting linebacker Chris \u201cPooh\u201d Paul, Jr. and others there has not been as much chatter outside the Manning Center of how good that side of the ball will be.<\/p>\n

Jared Ivey, Walter Nolen, Princely Umanmielen and JJ Pegues are not walking back through the locker room doors, but that is not a concern to Golding. In fact he might be just as confidence in his group now as he was this time last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of that was from the front six and the (tackles for loss) they created on base downs to get guys like Ivey in obvious passing downs. What I\u2019m most excited about is I don\u2019t think we\u2019re going to fall down from where we were from a front-six standpoint,\u201d Golding said during his \u2018Fireside Chat\u2019 appearance with Ole Miss men\u2019s basketball head coach Chris Beard.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe got a really talented group. Most of that group, ninety percent of that group was already in the room so they know the expectations. They have a really good foundation of what we\u2019re going to ask them to do and why we\u2019re going to ask them to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Golding returns Zxavian Harris<\/a>, William Echoles<\/a>, Kam Franklin<\/a>, Jamarious Brown<\/a> and Jeffery Rush<\/a> as notable players on the Ole Miss defensive front. Can even add junior hybrid linebacker and defensive end Suntarine Perkins<\/a> to the list.<\/p>\n

Newcomers include freshmen Andrew Maddox<\/a> from Oak Grove plus Corey Adams<\/a> and Corey Amos<\/a> out of Louisiana. Transfer additions are Da\u2019Shawn Womack<\/a> from LSU and Princewill Umanmielen<\/a> from Nebraska that Golding is very high on a month away from Fall camp beginning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019ve added two elite edge players to it that will help, obviously, to make negative plays and pressure the quarterback,\u201d Golding continued. <\/p>\n

\u201cInside, everybody says we lost three inside guys to the draft,\u201d Golding continued. \u201cWe didn\u2019t replace them with one portal guy. Because over the last two seasons, from a recruiting standpoint, I think we\u2019ve hit on those guys inside. All four of them are Mississippi kids. They\u2019ve been here. They\u2019ve been in the system. I\u2019m really excited about the front six.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Ole Miss secondary is one area that is still the question mark and unproven entity for Golding entering the season.<\/p>\n

Spring was not the best chance for development with several guys dealing with injuries, including Arkansas transfer corner back Jaylon Braxton<\/a>. He did not participate in any drills during March and April.<\/p>\n

If there is one weakness in Golding\u2019s defense it would currently have to be the back end, which is where a couple games were lost in Southeastern Conference play a season ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the back end, we have nine guys in the back end that didn\u2019t go through Spring ball,\u201d Golding said. \u201cWe\u2019re with them this Summer, obviously, now that the rules have changed. I think a big piece of the success will be this Summer. Getting the continuity together, making sure those guys understand what we\u2019re going to ask them to do. From a coaching aspect we got to do a good job of understanding what they can do and build a package around that instead of just trying to plug them into something that we did last year with different people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pete Golding is entering his third season as the defensive coordinator for the Ole Miss football program. Year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,49,48,25561,899,1788],"class_list":{"0":"post-169166","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ole-miss-rebels-football","12":"tag-ole-miss","13":"tag-regwall"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114769688272887502","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}