Ten Things Mississippi State Learned in Game One
1. Westin Graves looked good kicking field goals – it was assumed by many that Devon Bell would take back the field goal duties after a year off, but it doesn’t look that way. Walk-on Westin Graves booted in a couple of mid-range field goals with ease, and was perfect on extra points as well. He looked as solid as you can be in game one.
2. Dak’s accuracy digressed – the main knock on Dak after his stellar 2014 season was his tendency to not always throw accurate passes. On Saturday night, he threw more than a handful of air-mailed passes. While he’s worked and worked on his accuracy, that’s really something like speed which you either have or you don’t. Hopefully he was shaking the rust off a little bit against USM and he’ll be more accurate going forward.
3. Justin Johnson will be a factor – true freshman Tight End Justin Johnson played early, and caught a touchdown pass in the first half. As far as I could tell, he was the first in the class of 2015 to get on the field (Malik Dear also played in the first half) – if you had him pegged for that in a bet you probably made some money this week.
4. Tolando Cleveland was awful – Taveze Calhoun was injured for the game and hopefully he’ll return for LSU….because Cleveland was really bad in his stead. Maybe some of it was the vanilla game plan that called for him to play 10-15 yards off the receiver, but USM was targeting that side of the field and they got most everything they wanted.
5. Brandon Holloway is the #2 tailback – play after play went by with no sign of Aeries Williams or Dontavian Lee until the very end of the game when they each got one carry. Holloway, a junior, had some nice runs out of the backfield (as well as a 100 yard kickoff return). He definitely works well as the ying to Shumpert’s yang, and Mullen seems to want him to be a regular back rather than a gimmick back if you will (sweeps, screens, etc).
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- Mississippi State football vs LSU: The good, bad, and ugly
- The Wednesday Wrap: Maybe Mississippi State Football Coach Zach Arnett shouldn’t do it his way
- Mississippi State football history vs. South Carolina: Records, streaks, and more
- Mississippi State football bowl projections after Bulldogs crushed by LSU
6. 1st string D-Line looks elite – it was Southern Miss whose O-Line is nothing special, but State’s defensive line looked really good. Most notably, A.J. Jefferson, Ryan Brown and Chris Jones – the guys we knew were really good but they showed out in the opener.
7. More secondary issues? – Mullen once again made sure the defense played vanilla against a non-power five team. Zone D left Golden Eagle receivers wide open all night and the pass defense gave up over 300 yards again. The jury is still out, but not a good start. I tried to make excuses for the UAB game last year but it turned out it was a real issue, so…
8. Special Teams are still a mixed bag – As I mentioned above, Westin Graves looked good and Brandon Holloway returned a kickoff for a touchdown. But then Fred Ross muffed a punt and Gerri Green couldn’t corral a kickoff which led to horrible field position. USM recovered an onside kick and nearly got another one. These things must get cleaned up.
9. Southern Miss should be decent this year – if you want to call USM our “rival” you can, but I’ve never had any problem with them being successful. So hopefully they can navigate their way to a bowl game this year. QB Nick Mullens looked good, and they were motivated behind a good crowd. No doubt they are better than the last few years.
10. Lake kickoffs are a bad idea – I waited, and waited, and waited for the game to start. I ate dinner, watched three hours of the Texas A&M game and THEN our game started. After being awake for almost 16 hours that day it was time for kickoff….and it was hard to keep my eyes open in the 4th quarter. Let’s not do that again. Next week vs. LSU is only an hour earlier, though.