Dan Mullen was Entering Dangerous Territory Before Jones and Simmons Signed

Oct 10, 2015; Starkville, MS, USA; Mississippi State Bulldogs players and cheerleaders sing the alma mater after the game against the Troy Trojans at Davis Wade Stadium. Mississippi State won 17 – 45. Mandatory Credit: Matt Bush-USA TODAY Sports /

Dan Mullen needed Kobe Jones and Jeffrey Simmons because Mississippi State fans were losing faith in him.

Not renewing their season tickets. Withholding donations from the Bulldog Club. Not buying any Mississippi State merchandise until the program was headed in a different direction.

These were the things Mississippi State fans were telling me when Dan Mullen lost out on Scott Lashley.

It sounds severe, but the fans have had a hard time dealing with people lavishing praise on Ole Miss and the recruiting classes he has been bringing in. This coupled with two straight losses to the Rebels in the Egg Bowl made many feel like wins in the Egg Bowl were about to become a thing of the past.

Scott Lashley’s announcement was an ominous sign that Dan Mullen was about to miss out on some of the best talent the state of Mississippi had to offer. The 2016 class featured four players in the general vicinity of Starkville and should have been easy pickings for Dan Mullen. Lashley had been long considered one of the easiest blue chip prospects for Dan Mullen to get, and he lost him.

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We were all stunned as fans. How could we lose a player who was considered a shoe-in? Was Dan interviewing for other jobs when he should have been recruiting? Were the staff changes playing a negative role in our recruiting?

Everyone who knew anything about recruiting was telling us to be prepared to only get one of the coveted players Dan Mullen was aiming to sign. Kobe Jones was considered our last hope for making any type of splash in the 2016 class, and even he wasn’t a certainty.

When Kobe Jones and A.J. Brown announced their decisions at Starkville High this morning, Bulldog fans were relieved to see Jones would at least be a Bulldog. That brief moment where we felt relief went back to anger after Brown committed to Ole Miss and basically said Mullen didn’t really recruit him.

The player who felt like the longest shot of the four was Jeffrey Simmons. Simmons was rated as the number 1 prospect in the state of Mississippi. It would be a long shot to get him, but it would help ease the tension that had escalated to a fever pitch in a very short time between Dan Mullen and the Bulldog fans.

So when Simmons put the Mississippi State hat on and picked the Bulldogs over Ole Miss and Alabama, it did more than just give the Bulldogs a highly rated prospect. While the 2016 recruiting year still had some big misses, it showed us that the well regarded 2015 class wasn’t a fluke, and Dan Mullen can get big time prospects, even if it isn’t as often as many fans would like.

Dan Mullen hasn’t given up on winning at State. If he hadn’t signed Kobe Jones and Jeffrey Simmons, we might not have believed it.

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