OXFORD — Under Lane Kiffin, Ole Miss football doesn't play with its food.

In 10 games against programs from the FCS or Group of Five, Kiffin is a perfect 10-0 at Ole Miss. Only one of those wins had been decided by one score. Following the Rebels' 76-0 steamrolling of Furman on Saturday at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, their average margin of victory in those games is 36.4 points.

Watching ranked teams like Oregon and NC State endure close calls against the likes of Idaho and NC State this week, the Rebels couldn't relate.

"Really pleased by the performance," Kiffin said postgame. "That's not always the case in these games where they go your way early, or maybe you're pleased with one side of the ball and not the other. I thought that these guys, our players, really came out with a great intensity. We really challenged them not to have anything to do with the opponent, have it to do with them."

But why does this matter? Why is it noteworthy that the Rebels (1-0) pummeled a group of FCS players in the Paladins (0-1) that, by Kiffin's own admission, put up less of a fight than Ole Miss' own scout team in a mock game last week. In a game bereft of takeaways due to the level of the competition across the line of scrimmage, it's a window into what Kiffin has built.

It's evidence that this group, full of players pulled out of the transfer portal from programs across the country — some of whom hold NFL ambitions and arrived in Oxford thanks to the NIL compensation offered by Ole Miss' outstanding collective — can buy into what Kiffin and his staff ask of them.

For a program that has endured self-professed culture problems in the past, what takeaway from this pummeling could hold more weight than that?

"It was like, 'All right, this is the first message you get to send as a team,' " Kiffin said. "'It doesn't matter who you play next week, or Week 5, any of that stuff. This is all that matters, this game. You can say that, that doesn't mean it's gonna work. It's good that they responded that way. They played like it was an elite SEC game."

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Here's a taste of the domination that resulted from that mindset: Ole Miss outgained Furman 772-172 in total yards. It allowed 26 rushing yards the entire game. It committed just three penalties, came away with 16 tackles for loss and broke off 19 chunk plays to the Paladins' five.

Roster construction was likely more instrumental than any pregame speech Kiffin or his staff could deliver. There are just 10 underclassmen on the Rebels' two-deep between offense and defense.

This is a savvy, experienced team. And Saturday, the Rebels acted like it.

"One part of the reason why we did take this game so seriously . . . is we have a lot of guys who've played a lot of football," star wideout Tre Harris said. "Lot of guys who know how the game goes, how the game flows and how everything's supposed to be. Just having that many guys with that many games under their belt and to be able to have that amount of game experience with everybody and the team, everybody just kind of clicked."

Not much from Saturday's romp will translate to the key SEC games that will define Ole Miss' season. Mindset, though? That means everything.

David Eckert covers Ole Miss for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at deckert@gannett.com or reach him on Twitter @davideckert98.

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This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: What we learned from Ole Miss football's drubbing of Furman