Week 5 - Aubrin

Week 5 - Aubrin

Well ... that was awful.  Delusions of being good enough to be nationally ranked and candidates for a New Year's 6 bowl have been quickly shattered.  Not only did the Bulldogs prove that they could not win big games on the road against quality SEC teams; LSU proved exactly what we feared, i.e., that they suck.  (Although thanks to our Coonass land grant cousins, we no longer have to bear alone the ignominy of being an SEC team that lost a homecoming game to a team whose mascot is a pack of condoms.)  

For the second week in a row the Bulldogs were dominated up front on both sides of the ball.  Susceptibility to big plays, a traditional thorn in the side of Bulldog defenses in the Mullen era, was on full display early and often Saturday night.  Even without a healthy Kamryn Pettway, the Sherman tank who scattered Bulldog defenders in his wake last year at Scott Field, Auburn ran through and around State's once vaunted defense.  The vertical passing game was ridiculously effective.  Although the Maroon and White offense again protected Fitzgerald reasonably well and occasionally moved the ball on the ground, they were simply not good enough to make the critical play ... and handicapped themselves by continually jumping the snap count to back themselves up.  Perhaps most discouraging, unlike against UGA the week before, MSU can no longer sing the part of Queen's We Are the Champions that goes "... and we'll keep on fighting till the end."  They seemed to just go into a rope-a-dope and take the pounding in the late rounds.  To stay with the boxing analogy, this was one that, as they say in the Olympics, was an RSC ... referee stops contest.  I think everyone expected one Mississippi SEC team to get destroyed on the road by an Alabama SEC team this past weekend; few thought it would happen to both.  Hopefully there won't be a shared Sports Illustrated cover this time.

So now the Bulldogs prepare for that thorny, perennial foe Open Date, which coaches in this day and time seem to greet with mixed reactions -- relief that their players have a chance to heal, but dread that some of the  ones less given to impulse control have time on their hands.  Hopefully the Bulldogs will opt for the former, not the latter.  

Now that not only the 'Dogs, but their SEC colleagues, have a proven track record of nearly a half season behind them, let's take a look at some questions that we had as we began the season ... and see if we can find answers based on experience rather than speculation, hope, and hype:

1. Was Sirmons the only reason that the defense was so suspect last season?  Apparently not.  We have to acknowledge that the defense is better in that it has slammed the door on the weak teams that we've played. (Something we didn't/couldn't do last year.)  However, against the top teams we've faced, they've not been able to consistently do any of the things that Grantham focuses on, i.e., stop the run, pressure the QB, and get turnovers.  
2. Is the front 7 on defense as good as their high school and juco ratings, or as bad as they looked last year?  Probably somewhere in between, but trending toward overrated.  Simmons began the season as a beast but has been ordinary against UGA and AU.  Players like Gerri Green and Fletcher Adams, who looked so good early, have disappeared.  Leo likewise.
3. Is the secondary much improved? No, they still lack speed.  It appears that teams have used the aggressiveness of the safeties to exploit them deep.  The corners can't stay with top receivers.  What's to be determined, but won't be this year, is whether the coaches in the secondary don't have good schemes or are simply trying to make silk purses of sow's ears.
4. Will the receiving corp develop to become an asset as in years past? The answer appears to be absolutely not.  No one has shown the ability to get open downfield and stretch defenses or to catch 50/50 balls on back shoulder fades.  The sense of despair that I felt when watching the preseason highlights on last season, seeing Fred Ross make every single play that was made in the passing game, and knowing that he was gone has become permanent.  None of the big receivers has shown any evidence that he will become a passable version of DeRunnya on back shoulder fades and contested balls.  If plays for the slot receivers don't do it for us, it won't be done.  Let's hope Keith Mixon and Deddrick Thomas re-emerge in the planning and execution of the passing game.
5. Will this be the season that the tight ends will emerge as integral parts of the passing attack?  The "half  empty" answer is hell, no; the "half full" one is not yet.  I mean, not even the shovel pass to the tight end has worked.  I honestly thought Farrod Green would be a real weapon for us after the glimpses he had shown last year.  The Jordan Thomas hype has been just that.
6. Is the rushing game behind Aeris Williams good enough to pick up where it left off at the end of last season?  Sorta.  If we mean, can we run the ball on bad defenses, the answer has been yes.  If it means can we do what Josh Robinson did in 2014 (and his Mullen era predecessors did before him) and run on virtually everyone, then no.  We're about where we were last year.  A surprising disappointment so far has been the absence of long home runs by Fitz.
7. Will the young, inexperienced offensive line be good enough to both open holes for the run and protect Fitz when he throws?  As far as the running game does, see #6 above.  The line looked as good as any Mullen and Hevesy have had against LSU, but against UGA and AU, not so much.  They have protected well so far.  If Martinas Rankin isn't hurt bad, I still feel pretty encouraged about this group's potential (assuming they learn not to jump the bleeping count!).  One discouraging sign against Aubie was the return of the low, slow motion snap by Elgton.  That looked to have been cured up until then.
8. Will Fitz develop as a passer the way Dak did between his sophomore and junior years?  No, but to be fair, as I mentioned in #4 above, he doesn't have near the caliber receivers Dak had.  There is no Fred Ross nor DeRunnya, nor any reasonable facsimiles thereof.  On the other had, the protection has been good.  I do think Nick's decision-making has improved.  He has only forced throws that have resulted in interceptions during panic mode time, when the only chance we had was a miracle comeback.
9. Will the Bulldogs find a reliable placekicker? Yes!  ... and I hope I haven't jinxed him.  This was one of my biggest worries before the season began and through the first part of the second game; but since then, very good.
10. Is there a return man who can become a threat on punts and/or kickoffs?  Gray has looked good returning punts.  He has caught the darn ball, which for a couple of seasons was an adventure, and has even picked up some yardage on a few returns.  Being a threat on punt returns was one of the things I expected from him when we signed him.  So many kickoffs go into the end zone that I don't know if we know if we have a kickoff returner.
11. Were the Bulldogs underrated, as we State fans believe they traditionally are, in the preseason polls?  Probably.  Most of the traditional skeptics (i.e., almost everyone who is not a State fan), figured we'd lose all of those first 3 SEC games.  Only our most optimistic fans thought we would win 2 or 3 of them.  Most of us said that we'd be okay if we won one.  Then after we won that one so convincing that it got the state, regional, and national media to have a moment like the Fonz struggled with in a classic Happy Days episode ( https://youtu.be/fbMKjLe-RFA ), we were partying like it was 2014 again.  Not everyone thought we'd win both of the next 2 games, but even the most cynical of us didn't expect to be taken to the woodshed twice.  Now it's fair to say that AU was not overrated after all, as we State fans suspected (and hoped).  LSU most definitely was, however, as we also suspected.  We have a winnable stretch coming up; but UK is probably better than last year, and A&M has been surprising in their physicality and ability to win close games.  I think 9-3 is possible, but that 7-5 or 8-4 is more likely.  Not what we wanted -- or expected -- in those heady days following the beatdown of the impostors from Baton Rouge, but probably about where many Maroon faithful had hoped we might end up before the season began.  Now it's in the hands of our coaches.  Can the team get its confidence back?  Can we plan effectively to overcome our obvious weaknesses?  As I see it, the rest of the season comes down to basically 2 things:  1) Can we win the line of scrimmage against teams with similar talent?  2) Can we be a successful "run first" team from here on out?
12. Have the Bulldogs closed the gap with Alabama?  Absolutely not.  I'm not sure if UGA and AU have either; we won't find that out until late Nov. and early Dec. I see no way that we can stop the Tide; just hope we can slow them down some.  I'm afraid we won't be able to run a lick on them, and we've seen that we can't pass on lesser teams than UAT when we can't run and have no other choice.  I absolutely dread Nov. 11. 

No post-game after Open Date, but I'm thinking I'll do a midterm grade report.  Not sure it will be news since nothing is likely to change, but it may help me to get re-focused if I write some things down.