By Billy Watkins.
Ole Miss center Brycen Sanders didn’t watch the College Football Playofff’s national championship game last January.
He still hasn’t seen a single highlight of Indiana’s victory over Miami.
“Knowing we were one game away from playing for the championship, I didn’t want to see any other team win it,” he said. “And I still think a lot of people look at Ole Miss as underdogs. A lot of people are counting us out because (former head coach Lane) Kiffin left and the offensive coordinator left.
“But we’re here to prove them wrong. I think we can be better than last year.”
The Rebels, ranked ninth in the Associated Press’ preseason poll, opens the season Sunday night in Nashville against No. 24 Louisville. Ole Miss is favored by a touchdown.
One of the keys to a successful season is overcoming the loss of the offensive line’s starting tackles from a year ago.
“I feel really good about our line,” said Sanders, who is listed as a senior but will still be eligible in 2027 because he was redshirted as a freshman in 2023. “Having the two guards back beside me (Patrick Kutas and Delano Townsend) is really big for us. I think (left tackle) Terez Davis is a very good player — maybe the strongest lineman on the team. And he has great technique. Tommy Kinsler, who we got from Miami, is going to be good. And we have others who can do the job.
“We go against our defensive line every day in practice. That really prepares us for tough games and gives us a whole lot of confidence.”
So does having one of the top playmakers in college football returning, quarterback Trinidad Chambliss, along with perhaps the top running back in the country, Kewan Lacy.
And while the 6-foot-5, 315-pound Sanders is back as a second-year starer, he is almost a different person from the start of the 2025 season.
When I interviewed Sanders a year ago at this time, he shared that he was fighting some mental health issues. He sought therapy from Ole Miss’ Counseling and Sports Psychology department, which helps student athletes deal with issues such as depression, loneliness, anxiety and family problems.
At the time, he told me: “Football can be really hard when you’re not playing. I had doubts creeping into my mind. My self-confidence tanked a little bit. I’m naturally very hard on myself. I put too much pressure on myself (in 2024). I had unrealistic expectations.
“I had to realize that going against the guys in the SEC, some of them future first- and second-round NFL draft choices, I’m not going to win every battle. I had to learn to let a bad play go and move on to the next one. But that’s hard to do.”
His dad, Gary, who played center at Middle Tennessee State in the 1990s, said in an interview by phone earlier this week: “Going into last season, I think he really focused on building confidence amongst his coaches and to let them know he was ready and deserved a shot to start. He probably thought about that more than anything.
“He cares so much because he knows how much it means to the other players, the coaches and the fans. He doesn’t want to let them down.
“It probably took Brycen a couple of games to prove to the coaches and himself that he could do this. But after that, I think he was able to go out and feel free to play football.”
And play it well. He snapped the ball on 1,084 plays, among the national leaders in most snaps played. Also consider that he played a majority of the games during a 13-2 season with a bum shoulder that would require surgery after the playoffs.
He did not allow a sack in 536 pass plays. And his ability to make the calls at the line of scrimmage and get the offensive line in the correct blocking scheme showed.
“Having a pretty good year and playing (three games) in the playoffs is certainly going to help me this year,” said Sanders, a Chattanooga native who graduated in May with a business degree and is now pursuing a Master’s, “and it’s going to help all the guys who return from last year’s team. I know now that if I give it my all, I can hold my own and be a really good player.”
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Even though the focus is on Louisville, I asked Sanders about the Kiffin chaos a year ago.
“I think we all knew a hundred percent at the Mississippi State game that (Kiffin) was leaving for LSU,” he said. “I mean, the rumors had been going on since the Oklahoma game (Oct. 25). We looked at it like ‘it is what it is. Let’s just go play ball and win games’. I knew we were going to be OK.”
He called the playoff run — victories over Tulane in Oxford and Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, plus a heartbreaking loss to Miami under new head coach Pete Golding — “tough mentally because we were preparing for such good defenses. Physically, the coaches did a great job taking care of our bodies. But to be honest, my body felt terrible the whole season. That’s football. I’m sure most players felt like that. We just kept talking to each other about winning a national championship..”
While the grind was tough on the players, it was rugged for the families as well. Gary Sanders sent me a video of his family — wife Allie and Brycen’s sisters, Hannah and Avery — jumping up and down and screaming at the end of the win over Georgia. But Gary was shown bent over with his hands on his knees.
“I was drained, emotionally and physically,” he said, laughing. “I was trying to raise up and celebrate with the others but I was exhausted..
“Then the next morning at 7 o’clock, we’re on the road back home from New Orleans to Chattanooga while trying to make plans for the next week’s game in Phoenix.”
Rest assured, he and the family would gladly do it again.
Brycen Sanders is counting on it.
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