Ole Miss star QB Trinidad Chambliss makes defenses finish the play

The Ferris State Bulldogs opened their 2024 season with a 19-3 loss to the Pittsburg State Goriallas. Trinidad Chambliss completed 13-of-20 passes for 133 yards that day, threw two interceptions, and finished with negative rushing yards on six carries.

“He was horrible,” Ferris State coach Tony Annese told CNN’s Dana O’Neil with a chuckle. Anyone watching, Annese said, “would have said that kid would never play at any level.” His explanation was simple: “He was feeling the pressure.”

Chambliss had his own doubts. “I didn’t know if I could be the quarterback of this team,” he told The Torch, Ferris State’s student newspaper, after the season. “I didn’t think I was good enough.”

Ferris State didn’t lose again, winning 14 straight games and the Division II national championship, beating Valdosta State 49-14 in McKinney, Texas, as Chambliss threw three touchdown passes and ran for two more. He finished that season with 26 touchdown passes and 25 rushing touchdowns, according to The Torch.

Saturday night, Chambliss brings No. 7 Ole Miss (5-1, 3-1 SEC) to Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium for a 6:30 p.m. Central kickoff on ABC. Texas (4-2, 1-2 SEC) is coming off back-to-back 27-24 losses to Oklahoma and Florida.

To beat the Rebels, the Longhorns will need to slow down Chambliss, who now has 110 career touchdowns, the most among active FBS quarterbacks. He has also thrown a touchdown pass in 19 straight games, tying Matt Corral for the second-longest streak in program history.

The underdog story is real. What makes him a problem for Texas is more specific than that. Plenty of quarterbacks can run, but Chambliss keeps looking downfield while he does it, so a defense that chases him out of the pocket hasn’t finished the play.

From point guard to quarterback

Basketball was what Chambliss wanted. At Forest Hills Northern in Grand Rapids, Mich., he was, as O’Neil put it, “the quarterback in the fall, point guard in the winter, and shortstop in the spring.” His Ole Miss biography lists all-state basketball honors from the Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan and The Detroit News. “I honestly wanted to play basketball in college but no schools were reaching out,” he told The Torch. “I was getting scholarship offers for football and decided, I guess I’m going to play football.”

Annese, who also coached high school basketball, “liked the way the point guard saw the court and directed his teammates,” O’Neil wrote, and saw in his play “the sort of leadership he believed a quarterback ought to possess.”

Ferris State still made Chambliss wait. He redshirted in 2021, missed the 2022 season with an illness and made one start in eight appearances in 2023. He opened 2024 splitting the job with Carson Gulker, who served as the running quarterback, until Gulker broke his leg against Lake Erie. By late September, Chambliss was describing his biggest change as “adapting and growing into that leadership role” in an interview with Ferris State.

“It really sucked losing Carson, but I knew then I had to lock in even more,” he told The Torch after the season. No other quarterback in the room had game experience like theirs, he said, so it was time to prepare harder and watch more film. “It was a lot of pressure, but pressure is a privilege and I just grew so much as a player and a leader.”

After the title, Chambliss entered the transfer portal. He didn’t want to leave and ignored early outreach, O’Neil reported, but Annese encouraged him to go once the offers grew more lucrative. He signed with Ole Miss on April 15, 2025. Not long after, Annese spotted him working out in the weight room his office windows overlook, waved him in and found him uneasy. “He felt bad and didn’t want me to be upset,” Annese told CNN. “I just said, ‘I love you. You’re my guy. You’ll always belong here.'”

The SEC and a sixth year

Chambliss opened 2025 as Austin Simmons’ backup. After Simmons got hurt, Chambliss made his first Ole Miss start against Arkansas on September 13 and threw for 353 yards, ran for 62 and accounted for three touchdowns. He started the final 13 games and finished with 3,937 passing yards, 22 touchdown passes, and three interceptions on 445 attempts. Ole Miss went 13-2 and reached the College Football Playoff semifinals and the SEC’s coaches named him Newcomer of the Year.

By the NCAA’s count, that was his last season. Chambliss argued that the illness that wiped out his 2022 season entitled him to another, and the NCAA denied his waiver request and his appeal. He took the NCAA to court in Mississippi, where Chancery Judge Robert Whitwell found in February that the NCAA had acted in bad faith and granted a preliminary injunction that lets him play while the case continues. In March, the Mississippi Supreme Court refused to let the NCAA appeal that order early, Mississippi Today reported. A court order, not an NCAA waiver, cleared the way for his sixth season.

What the Sugar Bowl showed

The clearest look at what sets him apart came in the fourth quarter of the Sugar Bowl on January 1.

Early in the quarter, Ole Miss trailed Georgia 24-19 and faced 3rd and 7 at its own 28-yard line. Chambliss “raced all the way back to his own 1-yard line, reversed field to avoid three Bulldog pursuers and lofted the ball to Lacy for the first down,” The Red & Black wrote. The official gamebook logs it as an eight-yard completion to running back Kewan Lacy.

On the next snap, Georgia defensive lineman Christen Miller came straight up the middle at him, The Advocate reported, and Chambliss slid right and hit Harrison Wallace III for 44 yards to the Georgia 20. Four plays later, Lacy scored from five yards out, Chambliss hit Wallace for the two-point conversion, and Ole Miss led 27-24.

Chambliss ran for 14 yards that night and threw for 362. Wallace (156 yards) and De’Zhaun Stribling (122) both went over 100, and 10 different Rebels caught passes. All that scrambling didn’t show up as rushing yards. It showed up in the passing game.

The winning drive showed the other side of his game. After Georgia tied it 34-34 with 56 seconds left, Ole Miss faced 3rd and 5 at its own 30 with 32 seconds to go. Chambliss saw that Stribling had a step on cornerback Demello Jones, The Red & Black reported, and hit him in stride for 40 yards to the Georgia 30. Lucas Carneiro’s 47-yard field goal put Ole Miss ahead with six seconds left, and a safety on the ensuing kickoff return made it 39-34.

There was no scramble on that one. Rob Staton of Seahawks Draft Blog broke the throw down in September. He credited Chambliss for knowing the matchup he wanted and wasting no time once he had it, while noting that Georgia’s coverage wasn’t good in that spot. “The quarterback understands the area to attack,” Staton wrote.

Todd McShay’s scouting report for The Ringer puts the same idea in evaluator’s terms. He calls Chambliss “a quick processor whose eyes work rapidly” and credits him with a compact, fast release. “The ball comes out on time when he’s operating within the structure of the offense,” McShay writes, and Chambliss’ creativity outside the pocket is “another defining trait.” McShay’s concerns are specific, too. Chambliss leans on velocity when a softer throw is called for, doesn’t consistently change speeds, and could use more arc on deep balls. As of Wednesday, McShay has him 13th overall and sixth among quarterbacks on his 2027 draft board.

He isn’t doing it alone. Ole Miss plays fast, at 23.5 seconds per play (eighth in the FBS), and Lacy has 29 rushing touchdowns since the start of 2025. The Rebels have allowed 0.83 sacks per game this season, the fewest in the SEC. Some of that belongs to the offensive line. Some belongs to a quarterback who keeps plays alive long enough to throw the ball away, or somewhere better.

This season

Through six games, Chambliss is 142-of-210 passing for 1,676 yards, 14 touchdowns ,and four interceptions. Against LSU and former Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin, he threw for 363 yards and scored on a 14-yard run that put the Rebels back in front in a 32-24 win. The only loss came at Florida, 52-28. In Ole Miss’ last game, a 31-3 homecoming win over No. 13 Missouri on October 17, he threw for 241 yards and three touchdowns and ran for another. He has thrown and run for a touchdown in five of the Rebels’ six games, according to Ole Miss. Deuce Alexander has been his leading receiver, with 35 catches for 523 yards and five touchdowns.

Interceptions are up. He threw three in 445 attempts last season and has four in 210 this year. That’s still under two percent of his throws, and last season’s rate was always going to be hard to repeat. Texas hasn’t been picking off many passes, either — the Longhorns only have three interceptions in six games.

What Texas is up against

On paper, this is strength against strength. Texas allows 17.8 points and 272.5 yards per game and has given up four rushing touchdowns and four touchdown passes all season. Ole Miss counters with an offense that averages 37.5 points and has scored on all 24 of its red-zone trips, 21 of them touchdowns.

Texas is expected to be without its best pass rusher. Colin Simmons leads the FBS with 10.5 sacks and 16 tackles for loss, and his sacks account for more than half of Texas’ 19. He had a sack against Florida before leaving with an ankle injury, and ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported that he is expected to miss Saturday’s game with a high ankle sprain. On Wednesday’s player availability report, Simmons was listed as questionable.

Without Simmons, Texas has to find pressure somewhere else. Asked how the defense can still be itself, Sarkisian pointed to Lance Jackson, Zina Umeozulu, and the versatility of linebacker Rasheem Biles. He also brought up a fourth-and-12 against Florida, when Texas lost its rush lanes and gave the Gators’ quarterback “an opportunity to roll to his right.” Against Chambliss, that’s the whole game.

In that 2024 opener, Annese said, Chambliss was feeling the pressure. After that season, he called pressure a privilege. Saturday night, Texas has to finish what its pass rush starts. If it doesn’t, he will.