The worst thing for a sports program is when there’s more talk about what’s going on off the field than on it. Unfortunately for Ole Miss football, that’s about all there’s been in the past year or so, first with the Hugh Freeze scandal, then with the continued turmoil of the NCAA investigation and pending sanctions on the program.

The best way to fix that is to inject stability into the program, and athletic director Ross Bjork felt that promoting interim coach Matt Luke to full-time head coach after his 6-6 season in 2017 was the best way to do it.

“When we named him the interim coach, we said he’s really the only guy, and he’s the right guy at that time to hold us together,” Bjork said last week during the Rebel Road Trip stop at the Vicksburg Convention Center. “And then as he went through the season, we played great football. We played harder as the season went along, we stayed together, despite some adversity, and then you look at his experience and who he’s been around, he was the right guy.

“So all of that combination just proves that, you know what, we can move this program forward,” Bjork continued. “He’s going to work his tail off, he’s going to recruit at a high level, he knows what big time football looks like, so I can’t wait to see all that come together in a big way.”

On the field, the Rebels are also looking for some stability at the quarterback position. Former 5-star recruit Shea Patterson transferred to Michigan, and Jordan Ta’amu, who took over when Patterson went down with a season ending knee injury midway through last season, will remain at the helm of the Rebels’ offense.

Ta’amu was 12-of-20 for 190 yards and two touchdowns, and ran for a touchdown in the Grove Bowl spring game earlier this month.

Perhaps the biggest plus for Ta’amu has been how the team has rallied around him as a leader.

“Obviously he’s a very talented kid. That helps when you’re out there making plays. I think his first seven possessions were scoring drives,” Luke said. “So that obviously helps people rally around him, but he is a great player and a great guy and I think people enjoy being around him. He’s very unassuming, very quiet, but he also has a quiet confidence about him. I think people like that.”

Meanwhile, at running back, the Rebels are replacing Jordan Wilkins, who rushed for 1,011 yards and nine touchdowns last season. Wilkins was picked by the Indianapolis Colts in the fifth round of the NFL Draft on Saturday. Luke felt the Rebels have a stable of backs ready to fill the void.

“I was really pleased with the running backs this spring,” Luke said. “We have a junior college transfer, Scottie Phillips, I think he was a junior college All-American, then Isaiah Woullard had a good spring. Eric Swinney really got into the competition, he’s coming back and he’s healthy, so that gave us three backs, and we also moved Armani Linton over from defense, he had a good spring as well.”