Jaxson Dart fired three touchdown passes, Quinshon Judkins ran for a career-high 205 yards and No. 15 Ole Miss beat slumping Texas A&M 31-28 Saturday night in College Station, Texas.
Dart finished 13 of 20 for 140 passing yards and totaled 95 yards on 17 carries. Dayton Wade, Casey Kelly and Jonathan Mingo snared receiving scores as the Rebels (8-1, 4-1 Southeastern Conference) beat the Aggies for the second straight season.
Judkins, who turned 19 Saturday, carried 34 times and produced a crucial score in the fourth quarter, giving him 13 TDs — the most ever by an Ole Miss freshman.
For Texas A&M, true freshman Conner Weigman was 28-for-44 for 338 yards in his first career start. He threw TDs to Moose Muhammad III (eight catches, 112 yards), Evan Stewart, Noah Thomas and Devon Achane. Achane rushed for 138 yards on 25 carries.
The Aggies (3-5, 1-4) lost their fourth straight game in a season for the first time since 2005 as a member of the Big 12.
On the first series, Ole Miss ran six straight rushing plays before letting Dart throw. When he did, he found Wade for an 18-yard score with 13:02 left in the opening quarter.
But on fourth down, Weigman tossed a short score to Muhammad. On the next drive, Stewart made a leaping, one-handed grab from 15 yards out for a 14-7 lead.
Both teams failed on fourth-down conversions before Ole Miss successfully gambled again on a fourth-and-4 with a fake punt on its own 15. Jonathan Cruz booted a 46-yard field goal to make it 14-10.
In the third, Dart’s 56-yard pass to Mingo and a third-down face mask penalty led to the quarterback’s 1-yard TD throw to Kelly. The epic series went 94 yards on 13 plays.
Ole Miss built a two-score lead when Dart flipped a 2-yard TD to Mingo on a rub route for a 24-14 advantage.
After another failed fourth-down conversion by the Rebels, Weigman tossed a 2-yarder to Thomas with 9:11 left. But Judkins ripped off a 61-yard run and scored three plays later to counter it.
After Achane’s 7-yard catch cut it to 31-28, the Aggies got one more possession but turned it over on downs with 16 seconds left.
–Field Level Media