Mississippi State football: What do SEC standings look like after Bulldogs beat Arkansas?

The Mississippi State football team was able to get away from the bottom of the SEC West with a win over the Arkansas Razorbacks on Saturday.

Zach Arnett and the Mississippi State Bulldogs weren’t able to get back to .500 in conference play on Saturday. The Mississippi State football team didn’t even play a particularly great game against Arkansas. In fact, the game was pretty ugly for MSU, even though State came out on top of Arkansas.

But what the Bulldogs did do in their win over the Razorbacks is to get off of the cellar floor of the SEC West.

And I’ll take that.

SEC West Standings: Alabama Crimson Tide still rules the SEC West

Is anyone shocked that the SEC West still runs through Tuscaloosa and that Nick Saban’s Alabama Crimson Tide is atop of the division standings at 5-0 in SEC play (and an impressive 7-1 overall)? Alabama’s offense has been absolutely dreadful at times, but the Crimson Tide still have more talent than just about everyone else in the country.

It sure seems likely that Alabama is going to be able to make it back to Atlanta for a meeting with Kirby Smart and the Georgia Bulldogs.

Of course, that assumes that Alabama is able to continue to navigate through the rest of a pretty weird SEC West with that sometimes dysfunctional offense that was mentioned earlier.

That rivalry game against LSU could make things interesting.

LSU Tigers and Ole Miss Rebels battle for second in SEC West

Okay, technically this matchup already happened on the field and we’ve already seen the Ole Miss Rebels shock the LSU Tigers. But LSU has more conference wins and, behind unbeaten Alabama, the LSU Tigers sit at 4-1 against SEC foes while Ole Miss has a 2-1 SEC record.

There’s a chance that things could continue to get strange in the SEC West if Alabama stumbled somewhere along the way. And that’s especially true should LSU find a way to win against the Crimson Tide once more.

Mississippi State football avoids the basement of the SEC West

It’d be impossible to say that the Mississippi State Bulldogs are currently surging, but they are improved in their record. The Bulldogs have won their last two games and are now sitting at 4-3 overall.

But what matters here is how State is now 1-3 against SEC teams following the Bulldogs’ ugly defensive slugfest victory on the road over Arkansas. That’s huge after Mississippi State dropped three straight SEC games back in September.

The Bulldogs have some winnable games left on the schedule, but that offense needs to be fixed for Mississippi State football fans to really be confident about the direction of this team.