Week 1 Mississippi State Report Card

Aug 30, 2014; Starkville, MS, USA; Southern Miss Golden Eagles quarterback Nick Mullens (9) gets sacked by Mississippi State Bulldogs defensive lineman Preston Smith (91) during the game at Davis Wade Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Spruce Derden-USA TODAY Sports

Defense

Grade: A+

Earning Bonus Points: Everyone. The unit lived up to the Psycho defense nickname in every way that they could. The most impressive performance for the unit had to come from Preston Smith. The senior had a monster game and was disrupting plays all night. He only had two tackles, but he was in the face of Mullens, the quarterback for Southern Miss, all night long. He had one pass break up, a quarterback hurry, and even blocked the USM lone field goal attempt. Great night all around.

Forgot to put their name on their paper: Individual statistics. Don’t expect to see a lot of our guys end up on 1st team All SEC at the end of the season, but it won’t be because our defense is poor. It will be because we are as deep as we have ever been as a unit and nobody is going to stay out on the field the entire game. That means we won’t have a whole bunch of guys that pile up gaudy defensive stats. For example, last night we had no one that got more than 6 tackles. We did have, assuming I counted correctly, 32 different players record a tackle. We probably won’t rely quite as much on the depth chart as the competition stiffens, but the game plan won’t change too drastically the rest of the season.