Ole Miss 41, Louisville 38: Lincoln Kienholz Lost but Announced Himself in Week 1

Carlos Garcia September 8, 2026

Ole Miss 41, Louisville 38: Lincoln Kienholz Lost but Announced Himself in Week 1

The best game of college football’s opening weekend ended with a walk-off field goal, and the losing quarterback was the story.

No. 9 Ole Miss beat No. 24 Louisville 41-38 at Nissan Stadium in Nashville on a 48-yard Lucas Carneiro kick that capped an eight-play drive. Louisville was the only ranked team to lose in Week 1, and almost nobody left thinking less of the Cardinals than they did beforehand.

Kienholz was historic in a loss

Lincoln Kienholz, a transfer from Ohio State, went 18 of 29 for 307 yards and two touchdowns with no interceptions. He added 69 rushing yards and a touchdown on 14 carries.

That performance made him the first Louisville quarterback ever to throw for 300 yards in his debut for the school, according to ESPN Insights. He was also the first Louisville QB since Lamar Jackson in 2017 to put up 300 passing and 50 rushing yards against a ranked opponent.

Comparisons to Jackson are usually lazy. In this case the stat line forced it.

He nearly stole the game

Ole Miss led by 14 with under seven minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. Kienholz erased it. He found Lawayne McCoy for a touchdown, then ran one in himself with 1:28 left to tie the game at 38.

Earlier, after Trinidad Chambliss hit Deuce Alexander for a 62-yard touchdown late in the third, Kienholz answered two plays later with a 62-yard touchdown of his own to Tre Richardson, and Louisville tied it on the two-point conversion.

Two 62-yard touchdown passes on back-to-back possessions. That is not a football game, that is a video game on rookie difficulty.

Chambliss gave him his due

The Ole Miss quarterback did not gloat afterward.

“He is a solid quarterback,” Chambliss said of Kienholz, via The Rebel Walk. “That was his first start. He played his butt off.”

Chambliss was excellent in his own right, completing 21 of 36 for 336 yards with three touchdowns and an interception. He fueled his early-season Heisman case in the exact circumstance where those cases get made or destroyed.

What we learned

Ole Miss is a real contender with a quarterback who wins games where the defense cannot get a stop. That is the profile of an SEC team that goes 10-2 and makes the playoff field.

Louisville is more interesting. The Cardinals lost a game they had no business being in, on the road, against a top-10 team, with a quarterback making his first start for the program. If Kienholz plays like that in October, Louisville is going to ruin somebody’s season.

Week 1 rarely produces a game worth remembering. This one qualified.

Sources

Carlos Garcia

A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.