Matt Corral is quite at home in Mississippi.
“It’s my home now,” he said.
Embracing his chosen state has become easier as he’s grown into the Ole Miss offense.
Corral, a four-star signee from Ventura, California, enrolled in January so he could begin to learn the system of offensive coordinator Phil Longo in spring drills.
He read the playbook, ran the plays and said all the right things in spring.
But it’s now in August practice that things are really starting to click.
It was hoped that Corral, a mobile and strong-armed four-star recruit, would be able to handle himself and take on the offense if something were to happen to starting quarterback Jordan Ta’amu.
“I’m a lot more comfortable than I was in the spring,” Corral said. “It comes from must being around the offense, learning behind Jordan, and coach Longo taking me step by step.”
Corral was listed the No. 60 overall player in the 2018 class on the 247Sports composite list.
He accounted for more than 11,000 passing yards and 123 touchdowns as a four-year starter at Oaks Christian and Long Beach Poly high schools.
He didn’t approach such numbers in the spring as he tried to process the new world around him.
Now his play on the field is less about thinking, more about reacting. And he believes he can play faster.
If called upon, he believes he can run the entire offense.
“If you put it on the board I know it like the back of my hand. The whole thing,” he said.
“It’s one thing to know it, and it’s another thing to go through it with the line and defenders in your face. That’s where I am now, and that’s where I need to get better.”
Part of improvement is not simply knowing where receivers are scheduled to run routes but anticipating how they might break off a route in response to coverage.
“Chasing space” is what Longo calls it,” Corral said.
“We’ve got to get better at finding that open area and the receivers thinking like us. We’ve got to be on the same page.”
