Dan Mullen Needs to Apologize to Mississippi State Fans

Dan Mullen at one time made the Egg Bowl his number 1 priority. For the second straight year, the Bulldogs looked completely unprepared.

What happened to the coach who used to make sure his team was prepared to take on the team form the School Up North? For the second straight year, it looked like Mississippi State didn’t care at all about winning the game that was supposed to be the most important game to the coach.

After the Alabama game, I wrote the offensive line needed to apologize to Dak Prescott. I was wrong. The two worst performances of the season fall squarely on the shoulders of Dan Mullen.

Dan Mullen is the one responsible for coaching these players and getting them ready for the game. And the reason Mississippi State was embarrassed against Alabama and Ole Miss, and the reason they lost to LSU and Texas A&M was because the offensive line was terrible.

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And this isn’t on the players. There were a lot of ways in which the national talking heads told us we would be bad this year, and they were wrong in many of the points they rattled off. But the one they weren’t wrong about was how bad our offensive line was going to be. These players weren’t capable of blocking big time pass rushes or NFL caliber front sevens. They just don’t have the skills. Mullen and his staff put the players in a position to get manhandled and they did in the biggest games of the season.

And in the big scheme of things, Mississippi State fans should probably be happy. The Bulldogs won 8 games when most people said the team would struggle to win 6. We were supposed to be a lock for 7th in the SEC West. But losing to the best teams on your schedule and not even being competitive against Alabama and Ole Miss in front of your home crowd isn’t exactly a cause for celebration.

There were lots of people speculating Mullen was ready to move on from Starkville. I thought they were crazy. Who else is going to pay Mullen $4 million to $5 million to coach their school? And there might not be a school willing to do it, but why would Mullen want to leave? Well, this game changed my thinking.

Mullen seemed ticked off to the one hundredth degree after the loss to Ole Miss a year ago. This year, he seemed completely indifferent. He was talking mostly about being better than what people picked the Bulldogs to be. Dan Mullen appeared to be ready to go do something else.

Do Mississippi State fans put too much on the Egg Bowl? Yes, but there are reasons for it. Here are some of them.

Mississippi State fans give it out just as much when we win, but at least we admit that winning this game is extremely important to us when we do. Bulldog fans have to endure this and be told that the game isn’t all that important to Ole Miss fan. It sucks, and Dan Mullen used to make it seem he thought it sucked as well. I don’t think he cares any more.

I could handle losing this game. If the team looked like it was ready to play and left everything out on the field. But this is the second straight year the team seemed disinterested. And for that, Dan Mullen should apologize to Mississippi State fans.