'Not a grudge match': Austin Simmons returns to Ole Miss to face Trinidad Chambliss, the QB who took his job

It came a week after he hurt his ankle at Kentucky. Trinidad Chambliss, the Division II transfer making his first start in Simmons' place, had a bleeding hand, so Simmons entered the game against Arkansas and quickly threw a four-yard touchdown pass. He aggravated his ankle in the process and returned to the sideline.

It was Week 3. Simmons never started another game for Ole Miss.

Chambliss never let go of the job, becoming one of college football's hottest stories of 2025, throwing for 3,937 yards, finishing eighth in Heisman voting, and leading the Rebels to the College Football Playoff semifinals.

"We won the (preseason) competition, but [Chambliss] was hot," David Simmons, Austin's father, told CBS Sports. "You can't move him out when he's hot, right?"

Austin Simmons stayed through Ole Miss' historic playoff run, throwing only 19 more passes that season, then entered the transfer portal and emerged at Missouri.

He returns to Oxford on Saturday. No. 13 Missouri (5-1, 2-1 SEC) visits No. 9 Ole Miss (4-1, 2-1) on homecoming weekend, and Simmons brings two more starters from last season's playoff team with him: wide receiver Cayden Lee and cornerback Chris Graves Jr.

One might think there's bad blood, but in the end, all parties got what they wanted. Simmons is leading a resurgent Mizzou program, and Chambliss is back, with the Rebels still in the playoff hunt.

"It's not a grudge match or anything like that," David Simmons said this week. 

Simmons and Chambliss will always be tied together in the sport's lore. Only one yard separates the two entering Saturday. Simmons has thrown for 1,434 yards and 14 touchdowns with only one interception, while Chambliss has 1,435 yards, 11 TDs and four picks. Simmons has played one more game.

"It's scary to know how good he is and how talented he is," Ole Miss coach Pete Golding said Monday.

Perhaps in a parallel world, Simmons leads the Rebels fresh off the school's first playoff appearance last season, not the veteran Chambliss. After the Arkansas cameo in Week 3 last season, Rebels head coach Lane Kiffin said he expected Simmons to return as the starter the next game against Tulane. Chambliss started instead.

"And he was awesome with it, and it was really hard on him because he was really excited," Kiffin said this week. "He had waited his turn and hadn't transferred."

Simmons arrived at Ole Miss in 2023 as a wunderkind, graduating high school two years early with a 5.34 GPA while also earning an associate's degree at Miami Dade College at 16-years-old. On the baseball field, he threw no-hitters in back-to-back games as a high school freshman. When he arrived at Ole Miss at 17-years-old, he didn't have a driver's license, but he kept playing football and baseball for the Rebels. At 19-years-old, he graduated from Ole Miss with a bachelor's degree. In December, he'll earn a graduate degree at Missouri at the ripe age of 21. 

None of it happened by accident. David Simmons, a former Arena Football League player, mapped out his son's path before Austin was a teenager. Austin trained with NFL players at 12-years-old and began homeschooling in sixth grade to pace ahead of fellow students.

"I think the biggest thing is he's a tremendous teammate," Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz said Tuesday. "He showed great leadership. You go from being the starting quarterback to getting Wally Pipped and now you're having to be the encourager."

Kiffin's late-season departure from Ole Miss for LSU in December was messy. The coach left for LSU before the playoff, and Golding, his defensive coordinator, was promoted to head coach. Chambliss' push for a sixth year of eligibility was unresolved then, too, but he planned to pursue an additional year through the Mississippi court system. Simmons entered the transfer portal Jan. 2 with a do-not-contact tag and signed with Missouri four days later. A judge granted Chambliss a sixth year of eligibility in February.

"It was tough leaving. I'd been there for so long," Simmons said at Missouri's preseason media day in early August, according to 247Sports. A Missouri spokesperson declined an interview request to Austin Simmons for this story.

Lee chose to follow Simmons, a connection dating back to when Simmons first took the field in 2024 as Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart's backup. In the season opener, he connected with Lee for a 35-yard touchdown in a 76-0 laugher against Furman.

Dart rolled his ankle early against No. 2 Georgia in November 2024, and Simmons came off the bench, completing 5 of 6 passes to lead a 75-yard touchdown drive that tied the game. Ole Miss won 28-10. The future looked bright, and it seemed destined to feature Simmons as the face of Ole Miss.

"I love Austin," Kiffin told reporters at LSU on Monday. "I think Austin's a first-round draft pick. I've said that the whole time through. ... He's ultra talented, really similar accuracy of being able to place balls as Tua (Tagovailoa) did."

Kiffin was Alabama's offensive coordinator when the Tide cycled through standout quarterbacks like Blake Sims, Jake Coker and Jalen Hurts. He recruited Tagovailoa to Tuscaloosa but left to become FAU's head coach before coaching him.

Kiffin compared Simmons' and Chambliss' quarterback room to Alabama's yesteryear.

"You don't appreciate sometimes what you have, and I said that a year ago," said Kiffin, who is 4-2 at LSU. "I used to say, hey, some days, sometimes I think at Ole Miss, you're going to say someday, man, remember the good old days? Well, sometimes the good old days … you're in the good old days, you know? I was saying that last year because I think there's Trinidad and Austin in the same room."

Lee has always been reliable, catching 44 passes for 635 yards and three touchdowns last season at Ole Miss, but he's on pace for a career-high season. He now leads Mizzou with 42 catches for 616 yards and five touchdowns, and is on the Biletnikoff Award's midseason watch list.

Golding expressed Monday his affection for the former Rebels now playing for Mizzou. He said he enjoys the "chess match" that happens when a former quarterback returns convinced he can read the defense's pre-snap alignments based on his experience in Oxford.

"So they're coming back, probably got a little chip on their shoulder, too," the Ole Miss coach said.

Three months before Austin Simmons won Ole Miss' job in 2025, and four months before he lost it, he faced the unknown.

"I don't like losing," he told CBS Sports in May 2025, "and I don't like being second, either." 

He's not second-fiddle anymore.

Simmons' father called the move to Missouri a business decision. Uncertainty around Chambliss' eligibility, Kiffin's departure for LSU and the chance to start elsewhere pulled at Austin. Golding said he understood the decision.

"We don't have one problem with anything at Ole Miss," David Simmons said. But Kiffin, the coach the family chose, was also gone. "You know, we didn't come there for Pete Golding."

Still, it's strange. The Rebels felt it in Week 3, when Kiffin brought four former Rebels back to Oxford, and LSU lost 32-24 in an instant classic. After Saturday's 52-17 win at Vanderbilt, Chambliss said it's "going to be weird to see them in different colors."

That's not the only difference. Missouri's offensive scheme asks something entirely different of Simmons than Ole Miss' system did. In recent weeks, the Tigers have become a dominant rushing attack, led by Jamal Roberts, who enters Saturday coming off back-to-back 200-yard performances, a first for any Missouri running back. He racked up 211 yards during a 45-17 rout of Florida before carrying 34 times for 222 yards against Texas A&M last week. In that 27-6 win over the Aggies, Simmons connected on 14 of 28 attempts for 147 yards and threw his first interception in a Missouri uniform, ending a 139-pass streak without a turnover.

"It wasn't my best game," he said afterward.

Saturday may call for more of the same. Ole Miss' rush defense ranks last in the SEC and 111th nationally, allowing 176.4 yards per game.

David Simmons plans to arrive in Oxford on Friday night, where he'll don his Missouri gear, and his son will don a Mizzou uniform in the same stadium where he watched a burgeoning Chambliss yank his job away from the bench. David Simmons calls himself "a big Trinidad Chambliss guy" and talks to Chambliss' father once or twice a month.

"Austin don't play defense. Trinidad Chambliss don't play defense," he said. "They're just going to be the guys they show the pictures of before the game."

Things accelerate quickly when a son reclassifies two years early to enroll in college at age 17. Between 2025's lost season and the turmoil surrounding Kiffin's departure, time has moved rapidly.

"I wish it was Week 1, to be honest with you. But it's not," David Simmons said. "It goes by fast. It goes by real fast."