ATHENS — Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said his Rebels are better equipped to beat Georgia this season than last.

“We’re better defensively than we were a year ago, and very different in the front six,” Kiffin said, “with the four D-linemen and two backers, we’re a lot different there, and hopefully that will help us.”

But Kiffin also made it clear he knows that his team has to be much improved from the one that lost to the Bulldogs 52-17 in Athens last season.

“When we look for plays, sometimes we look at NFL plays, so last week we pulled them up,” Kiffin said. “And we went from watching a defensive (film) cut-up of Georgia to watching and NFL team — I won’t say which team — and I was like, ‘pause the film.’

“Georgia’s 11 actually looked better than the starting 11 on this NFL defense.”

The Rebels, No. 16 in the opening CFP Rankings released on Tuesday night, play host to the No. 3 Bulldogs at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday. UGA is a 2 1/2-point favorite.

Vaught-Hemingway Stadium is the only SEC stadium Kirby Smart has appeared in as Georgia’s head coach and not won (UGA has yet to play at Texas A&M). Smart lost his only game in Oxford as a head coach in 2016 -- his first loss at UGA’s head coach -- by a 45-14 count to a then-No. 23-ranked Rebels team coached by Hugh Freeze.

To this day, it’s the most lopsided defeat of Smart’s career.

Kiffin said he’s hoping the sell-out crowd in Oxford (capacity 64,038) can match how the Bulldogs’ fans showed up and showed out when the Rebels came to Sanford Stadium last season.

“I would hope they would bring the energy in this matchup that we saw a year ago,” Kiffin said. “We went into Georgia, the place was electric in the warmups 30 minutes before kickoff.

“They put us at night there, it will be earlier here. It would be awesome for our fans to have the same type of energy and impact, because that was definitely an impact a year ago.”

The Georgia defensive had an impact, too, knocking Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart out of the game when Dart scrambled and was blasted by Zion Logue and Daylen Everette.

“He had a chance to step out,” ESPN commentator Chris Fowler said of the hit, which occurred at the 3:31 mark of the third quarter. “That would have been the prudent decision.”

Kiffin knows Georgia has more capable defenders on the prowl this season, including Nagurski Award candidate Jalon Walker.

“I think (Walker has) such an unusual size, speed ratio, to be so long and heavy and run so well,” Kiffin said. “I feel like when you watch them, sometimes you forget you’re not playing Alabama from years ago, because they have so much length and look so great at positions, they really have no small guys.

“Kirby’s building it just like Coach Saban built Alabama with NFL players all around.”

Kiffin included Georgia quarterback Carson Beck — who was 18-of-25 passing for 306 yards and 2 touchdowns against Ole Miss last season — in the NFL talent conversation.

“I see a guy that’s extremely first-round talented that’s had a couple interceptions here of late, which a lot of great quarterbacks do, some I think weren’t even his fault,” Kiffin said.

“I saw him play an awesome game a year ago against us. He’s one of the best in the country and definitely one of the most talented.”

But Kiffin’s Rebels are talented, too, having gone out and landed elite Texas A&M defensive tackle Walter Nolan, Florida edge Princely Umanmielen, and Alabama cornerback Trey Amos out of the portal.

That defense, second in the nation with 4.56 sacks per game and second in the country allowing just 82.2 yards per game rushing, is what inspires confident that his team will win.

“We’re a better team when you look at it,” Kiffin said. “We lost two one-play games (Kentucky 20-17, LSU 29-26 OT). Last year, we won all of our one-score games.

“This year we had the two games we were in control of go the other way. I think we’re in a better position that we were a year ago to play them (Georgia).”