Saturday, Mississippi State fans were reminded of the memorable words from our Founding Document: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal — except in football. We’re definitely not saying that.”
Mississippi State opened its 2016 football season against South Alabama Saturday. It was supposed the day the Bulldogs transitioned from Best Quarterback to Next Quarterback against the team that on paper, at least, would allow MSU to work out some kinks, break-in 13 new starters and walk off with a win.
That’s why you schedule Sun Belt Conference teams in the early season, after all.
It was not a matter of whether the Bulldogs would miss Dak Prescott, but a question of how much they would miss him.
Well, by now you know the story: MSU coughed up a 17-0 halftime lead against a team that had never beaten a Southeastern Conference opponent and lost, 21-20, when kicker Westin Graves’ clanged what would have been a game-winning, pride-preserving 28-yard field goal off the left upright with just a few ticks left on the clock.
Oddly enough, the biggest question facing the Bulldogs now is not the quarterback position — where it’s clear that junior Damian Williams is, for better or worse, the only choice at the moment.
No, the question that looms largest now is, “Just how bad is it going to get?”
That’s not the sort of question you want to be considering one game into a 12-game schedule, of course.
Thirty minutes after the game, MSU coach Dan Mullen answered questions from the media for about 10 minutes. Normally, that’s a pretty brief press conference, but on Saturday, 10 minutes was more than enough time to say all you need to say when, really, there isn’t much to say in the first place.
This game, he said, was about a young team learning to execute, to make plays in critical situations, to show poise and correct mistakes, especially those mistakes that occur in critical situations.
It was Mullen’s 36th loss (against 55 wins) during his seven-plus years as the Bulldogs coach. By almost any measure, it stands as his worst. For starters, the 17-point lead is the largest one of his team’s has ever surrendered in a loss. It was also against a non-power conference team, which had Bulldog fans thinking, no doubt, of Mississippi’s State’s humiliating loss to Maine in 2004.
Mullen said losing always stinks and, to paraphrase, the aroma Saturday was no more pungent than any of the previous 35.
Maybe, but losing to a team you are favored to beat by four touchdowns is not so easily dismissed.
Mullen did his best to strike a positive posture. It’s a young team with 13 new starters (including the quarterback position where fans are lamenting the loss of Prescott in earnest today). The Bulldogs lost their best two cornerbacks to injuries during fall camp and three other players were out serving one-game suspensions.
As is common with young teams, the Bulldogs will get better, Mullen insisted.
So will the competition, unfortunately, beginning next week when MSU opens its typically brutal Southeastern Conference schedule against South Carolina, a team that has beaten the Bulldogs in each the teams’ past seven meetings.
Williams, meanwhile, the quarterback widely considered to have the least “upside” of team’s collection, appears to be MSU’s most reliable option. Sophomore Nick Fitzgerald played the first two series, both of them three-and-out possessions, and missed on all three pass attempts. Enter Williams, who led MSU to scores on his first four possessions before the Bulldogs bogged down in the second half.
He completed 20 of 28 passes without an interception and added 93 yards rushing. But he averaged just seven yards per completion, and the big plays that were common in the Prescott era were few and far between. MSU’s offense had to earn everything it got Saturday.
And it didn’t get enough.
The defense, meanwhile, is going to have a hard time defending the pass — they gave up 285 passing yards and two touchdowns against a team that was also breaking in a new quarterback. But that shouldn’t be entirely unexpected, considering MSU was already down to its third and fourth options before the first play of the season. There’s only so much you can do about that.
The Bulldogs had a lot of questions going into Saturday’s game. But the biggest question, maybe the most disturbing question, emerged Saturday.
After taking that 17-0 halftime lead, the Bulldogs appeared flat and uninspired, almost as if they were not particularly interested in playing anymore.
Teams generally are expected to maintain some general enthusiasm for the game for longer than the first 30 minutes of the first game of the season.
The Bulldogs have 660 minutes left to play this season and Saturday, at least, it seemed they had almost as many questions.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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