Know Your Foe: Sooners Face Ole Miss QB Trinidad Chambliss

Oklahoma is looking to take another step toward bowl eligibility this Saturday, when the Sooners return to Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium to play the Rebels in Norman.

The game will be a rematch of last season’s game in which Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss carved up Oklahoma’s top-ranked defense for 368 yards of total offense, including 315 yards passing and a fourth-quarter go-ahead score as well as 53 yards on the ground to lead the Rebels to a 34-26 victory over the Sooners.

But as Sooners head coach Brent Venables noted during his weekly press conference on Tuesday, Chambliss’ statistics in 2026 are already impressive, so Sooner fans will be especially concerned with the ways that the quarterback is vulnerable in order to help the Sooners come out on top on Saturday.

Through nine games in 2026, Trinidad Chambliss is having another massive campaign, maintaining a high passing volume with 262.1 yards passing per game and 18 touchdowns. While Venables said he feels like he knows a lot about what’s going on out there in college football, that Chambliss is arguably the best player in college football right now, the Sooners coach also noted that there’s a lot more to slowing down the Ole Miss quarterback than just looking at a stat sheet.

"Trinidad Chambliss is a guy for me who feels like I know a lot about what's going on out there in college football, just arguably the best player in college football," Venables said.

"Just an absolute stud. A winner. Having a great year. I think that he's done a lot of great things. The No. 1 thing is he knows how to win. You can have him bottled up all you want or get into a great rhythm and then he just rips your heart out."

Sooner fans, you already know the name Trinidad Chambliss.

He is the Ole Miss quarterback that tore up the Sooner defense in Norman, OK on October 25, 2025. He threw for 315 yards with a fourth-quarter go-ahead score as well as 53 yards on the ground in a 34-26 loss to the Rebels. In nine games so far in 2026, he is having another massive season with 262.1 yards passing per game and 18 touchdowns.

Chambliss is a compact quarterback, listed at 6-foot and 200 to 210 pounds. He has elite speed, up to 21 mph, and tremendous short-area agility. He is an outstanding off-script player. When a play breaks down, he remains calm, keeping his eyes downfield as he scrambles to extend plays. He has excellent arm strength and can throw with touch to the middle of the field as well as down the field. His pressure-to-sack ratio is very low because of his elusiveness.

There are several concerns regarding the undersized quarterback’s durability, and sometimes he can be hit with batted passes at the line of scrimmage because he can’t see over the tackles of the other team. At times, the quarterback can be pressured into making mistakes by clean, disciplined pressure and disguised coverages.

But while his passing yards remain elite, his completion percentage has dropped from 66.1% to 62.7% and his average rushing yards have dropped from 35.1 to 20.8 yards per game. More importantly, he has been tested with 9 interceptions in 9 games after throwing only 3 all of last season.

The Sooners can’t just go after the Ole Miss quarterback with abandon. The edge defenders and defensive line will have to be very disciplined in their rush lanes to keep the pocket from collapsing and allowing Chambliss to escape to the outside. Taylor Wein and Adepoju Adebawore will have to work to collapse the outside of the pocket and keep the quarterback’s outside shoulder contained so he can’t bounce outside.

To the point of his elusiveness, interior push is the best way to contain an undersized quarterback. David Stone and Jayden Jackson will have to win their one-on-one matchups on the inside to collapse the pocket on Chambliss vertically.

Chambliss is great when he can pre-snap read the defense to identify the grass to attack. However, when forced to read post-snap rotation and disguised coverages, he can struggle. The Sooners’ safeties Peyton Bowen and Reggie Powers III will need to communicate well in the back end and shift the picture late on the quarterback to force him to hold the ball longer than he would like or to make a rushed decision.

Another big aspect of Chambliss’ game is the designed quarterback runs and backyard scrambles that he runs. These can be difficult to defend and linebackers Kip Lewis and Owen Heinecke will have to be the spying players on these types of plays. They will need to play disciplined on play-action fakes and play off of their keys to make sure that they tackle the quarterback in space before he reaches his top end speed.

Oklahoma looks to move to 6-4 on the season and secure bowl eligibility in front of their home crowd. This team can get revenge for last year’s game against the Rebels if the defense can hold down the college football’s ultimate escape artist and give Jason Witten’s offense a clean game.