Sunday morning QB- Churchill Downs edition
By coach34
State moves to 5-0
1. I cooked a pork loin in the oven so good yesterday I could have had 2 Somalians fight to the death in my front yard for a bite of it. I have discovered grape jelly to be a valuable cooking ingredient.
2. We now have the 5th longest win streak in the nation at 7. Let that sink in. Embrace it. It doesn’t happen to us very often at Miss State.
3. We actually came out with a little more fire yesterday. Great drive to open the game and take the lead right off the bat. We slipped back into coasting some because we jumped out to big leads. The game was over when we got up 27-7 and our guys knew it. The playcalling got conservative at that point, and we were just ready to get it over with. Saban did it last week and people wanted to talk about how improved Mississippi was, we do it and people want to say we aren’t that good. Shocker huh? You can see this bunch will be “ready ready” next Saturday.
4. The defense showed a little more vs Kentucky. We blitzed on the very first play to set the tone and stuffed them for a 3 and out to begin the game. It was a very good performance- holding them to 228 yards. 9 TFL’s, multiple sacks, even put one of their QB’s out of the game. Their QB did make some plays by running, and we had a CB fall down, but overall a very good day for the defense. We only allowed 20 or more yards on 3 of their 12 drives- that’s pretty stout.
5. Tyler got rid of the ball quicker the first time we ran our 5 wide set. Maybe he is learning. I still hope and pray we have a middle screen in place to run out of our 5-wide set. Tenn is going to come after him when we jump in it next Saturday, and a middle screen to a wideout would be the perfect playcall out of it.
6. Deonte Skinner stopped Kentucky’s 2nd drive with a big hit on a WR to dislodge the ball. With him and Wells as our OLB’s next year, it might be the best group of LB’s we’ve had since 1980.
7. Russell made a beautiful throw to Perkins out of the backfield to beat man coverage. Lofted it up for Perk to run under. Doesnt get any better than that. Perkins is the 2nd most important person in our passing game. There is no reason he shouldn’t be catching 4-5 passes every week. He is a weapon in the passing game we aren’t taking advantage of so far this season.
8. Dak needs to play 10-12 plays a game. We saw more of his importance yesterday. He kept alive our 2nd TD drive with a critical 4th down conversion. Hopefully we will see more of the zone read from him this week and a pass. We haven’t needed it yet, and there is no doubt we have it. It’s easy to see he is a better runner than Relf- he has more of a RB movement and he has more speed.
9. Once again we had an opponents signals. The 1st time Kentucky changed a play at the LOS- we checked the defense right into what they called and stuffed it for a 4 yard loss. We do a great job of scouting our opponents. That cant be undervalued.
10. The way we currently run the offense, we are going to continue to struggle in short yardage. There has got to be some changes made to solve this problem and I mean by Saturday. Whether it’s more Dak, or Tyler getting under Center and having more FB’s and TE’s in the game- whatever. It’s got to be done. If we don’t, we are going to end up looking like Freeze did last night, snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory.
11. People worrying about us coasting in games need to look around the SEC. Georgia was sky-high for Tennessee, then flat as can be Saturday vs SC. SC was flat vs Kentucky and trailed at half, but abused Georgia like a Sun Belt team last night. A&M rolled UPig last week, and then turned around and played like crap vs Mississippi last night, turning the ball over 6 times. A team can only get up so many times a season- you just cant do it every week. We’ll be up and ready next week- make sure you are in your seat doing your part to make it a miserable experience for the team in the prison orange.
In Mullen We Trust,
C34