MWN Mailbag: Corndog Edition

One week of college football is in the books. The Bulldogs didn’t obliterate the Golden Eagles of Southern Miss from the face of the Earth, so people are now assuming the Bulldogs won’t win any SEC games this year. I’m not going to jump to that conclusion, but instead, I’ll try to adequately answer some questions from our loyal readers.

Questions are running the gamut this week. Lots of different topics to cover, and I’ll get to them all. If you don’t like these answers, these are the best I got. I don’t keep the best answers to myself and send the rest to you guys.

I’m really not. I know a lot of people thought the game is a precursor of horrible things to come, but two very early and very preventable mistakes made this game much more close than it should have. The USM player who stripped Shumpert deserves some credit for causing the fumble, but Shumpert did not protect the ball like he should have. If he scores instead of fumbles, USM gets an early hit to their confidence. If Fred Ross doesn’t try to field that punt, then USM might not score for the entire first quarter. Those two turnovers alone put the defense on the field longer than they should have been. It affected their tackling because they got tired.

And once again, the Bulldogs weren’t going to do anything outside of the simplest form of their offense and defense. USM is more capable this year of moving the ball against simple vanilla offense, and their defense is more capable of stopping it. And it helped they were at home. We played terrible and still won by 18. I’m okay with that.

Now if you want me to worry, this is the way to make me worry. The philosophy of what we do with kickoffs makes sense. Whenever I see someone say, “Why can’t we kick the ball to the back of the end zone?” I know they don’t pay too much attention to what Mullen says in his pressers. Devon Bell is perfectly capable of doing just that. Mullen prefers that he kick it high because of the new rule with kickoffs. Touchbacks go to the 25 instead of the 20, and Mullen wants to pin teams deep. It’s a sound philosophy.

The problem is the execution. Why try to put a team 5 to 10 yards further back when you can guarantee they will start at the 25? You’re playing with fire when you employ this strategy. And when you have one of the most dynamic players in all of college football receiving the kicks, the fire is even hotter. Yeah, I’m not liking this idea at all.

No, but I am more open to the idea of them getting equal touches. Ultimately I think Shumpert will be the better of the two when we need a back that can run through contact. Holloway can’t do that. Holloway does have speed to burn, but the issue has always been finding ways to utilize that speed.

Holloway is a weapon. If the coaching staff can find ways to open up space, he will get to the end zone in a hurry. But it is going to have to come outside of our power running identity. And for that reason I think Shumpert will stay the number 1 back, but we might see more of Holloway than we thought we would.

Absolutely, but they are also very similar to those uniforms. I don’t think it is a coincidence many have liked these so much when they are very similar to those.

I know people get riled up over uniforms, but I just don’t. As long as we win and the recruits like them, Adidas can make whatever uniforms they want.

I honestly have no idea, but there are probably people on Pinterest commenting about how much they love this, and how they can’t wait to put a Butterfly Corn Dog in their kids’ lunches. What would possess anyone to stick some Doritos in the side of a corndog? But this did make me laugh when I saw it. And for that, the MWN Mailbag has made my life just a little bit more enjoyable.

Next: Bulldogs Undefeated in New Davis Wade Stadium