STARKVILLE — It really isn’t supposed to be this easy, is it?
For the first time in school history, Mississippi State has beaten two Top-10 teams on consecutive football weekends after overwhelming sixth-ranked Texas A&M, 48-31, Saturday before a raucous crowd of 61,113 at Davis Wade Stadium.
Behind quarterback Dak Prescott, who each weeks seems to validate his status as a legitimate Heisman Trophy contender, and the play of a physical, opportunistic defense, the 12th-ranked Bulldogs shrugged off an early 7-0 lead and pummeled the Aggies, opening as much as a 31-point lead early in the fourth quarter.
Two weeks ago, MSU burst onto the national scene by beating LSU, ranked eighth at the time, in Baton Rouge, historically one of the most difficult places for a visiting team to play.
“We did a lot of things that we need to do to win,” sixth-year coach Dan Mullen said after Saturday’s game. “We knew it was going to be a tough battle. We knew we would have to continue to play at a high level for four quarters.”
In truth, the Bulldogs have needed little more than three quarters to impose their dominance on both LSU and Texas A&M.
In those two games, MSU has outscored both those teams by an aggregate score of 75-27 through the first three quarters. To date, the only changes on the scoreboard that have occurred in the fourth quarter have been little more than cosmetics.
Saturday, Texas A&M scored two touchdowns in the game’s final two-and-half minutes to save itself some minor measure of humiliation.
“Mississippi State came out and beat us,” said Aggies’ quarterback Kenny Hill, who threw five TD passes, but was also intercepted three times by Bulldog linebacker Richie Brown. “Congrats to them.”
Prescott, meanwhile, continued his almost-methodical assault on opposing defenses. The junior quarterback ran for three touchdowns and passed for two more scores on a 19-for-25 passing performance. Through five games, he has accounted for 20 touchdowns and is just two short of the MSU career record of 52.
“I thought Dak did pretty well,” Mullen said. “He’s getting a lot of attention, and he’ll get more attention now with his performance (today), but that’s what we expect out of him. We expect him to play games like that and for us to keep winning, he’s going to have to play at a very high level. He’ll handle it very well because he knows that all we are is 2-0 in the SEC. That’s not our goal. We want more.”
Meanwhile, a third straight game against a Top 10 team may await.
Auburn was ranked fifth going into Saturday night’s home game against LSU. The Bulldogs, now 5-0, host Auburn next Saturday and will likely be ranked in the Top 10 themselves, a first under Mullen.
“To knock off two Top 10 teams is great,” Mullen said. “But as a university as a whole, it’s just the beginning, not just as a football program but as a university. To be what we want to be, there’s going to be a lot of firsts around here.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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