Austin Simmons

Simmons has one of the most interesting stories in all of college football, as the high school standout athlete graduated high school at the age of 15 and earned an associate's degree at 17 while reclassifying from the 2025 class to the 2023 class and enrolling early at Ole Miss. In 2023, Simmons redshirted while backing up Jaxson Dart and pitched for the Rebels' baseball team in the Spring of 2024 before giving up baseball to focus on football. In 2024, Simmons saw limited action behind Dart again. Simmons totaled 282 yards passing and two touchdowns, while leading the Rebels on a game-winning touchdown drive against Georgia, where he completed 5-of-6 passes for 64 yards after Dart went down with an injury. While Simmons has a great pedigree coming in, the Rebels have lost their top two receiving targets from a year ago, who accounted for 1,936 receiving yards and 16 touchdowns of their team's totals of 4,561 receiving yards and 31 touchdowns. Ole Miss has tried to replace that production with a plethora of transfer wide receivers. With the offensive wizardry head coach Lane Kiffin has displayed over the years, it is likely that Simmons will be put in a great situation to succeed, but to what extent that will be in year one as the starter will be interesting to see. Read Past Outlooks