The good, bad, and ugly from Mississippi State football's loss at Arizona State

Saturday night wasn't much fun for Mississippi State football. The Bulldogs lost 30-23 at Arizona State while putting together a pretty rough performance overall. What from the game was good? What was bad? And what was flat-out ugly?

The Good: Mississippi State didn't quit

If there's anything positive to take away from Mississippi State's performance in Tempe, it's that the Bulldogs didn't quit despite the game appearing totally out of reach. Arizona State kicked a field goal to go ahead 30-3 with 6:33 to go in the 3rd quarter. Down four touchdowns at that point, it'd have been really easy to give up on the game. But instead, State simply went back to work on offense to put points on the board, and the defense found a way to get a few stops. And as a result, State was down just one score with more than five minutes to go in this game with a real chance to make a comeback. Obviously they fell short, but at least they showed a willingness to keep fighting.

The Bad: The Bulldog run game

State didn't have much success running the ball in Week 1 despite overall numbers looking good. There was nothing good about their run game against the Sun Devils. State finished the game with just 30 rushing yards. Even accounting for Blake Shapen's negative yardage, State ran the ball 19 times for 52 yards. That's a 2.7 yards per carry average on designed runs. That simply won't cut it. This offense is supposed to create easy gains on the ground, but State can't get any sort of push up front, even when they have favorable looks to run the football. State's passing game is dangerous, but if there's no threat of the run in this system, it's going to be hard to be effective.

The Ugly: State's run defense

Speaking of the run game, Arizona State had no issues running the ball on MSU, and that's really an understatement. The Sun Devils totaled 359 rush yards, the most allowed by the Bulldog defense since 2016. RB Cam Skattebo was unstoppable, running 33 times for an absurd 262 yards. Outside of a few drives in the second-half, State had no answer for slowing the ASU ground game. Their baffling decision to play with five-man boxes for much of the game backfired, and missed tackles made matters worse. And this was against a team who made it very clear they weren't capable of doing much else on offense. It's scary to think what this run defense will look like in SEC play if things don't change.