CFB Week 3

[NoWammies]

Ole Miss pulled out of Winston Salem last night with a W and $1M since the Wake Forest AD decided to buyout the remaining part of the home and home. Kiffin wasn’t too pleased about it though since next year schedule is pretty much set in stone for everyone and will be difficult to replace them with another. 

[s1nglewing]

34 minutes ago, NoWammies said:

Ole Miss pulled out of Winston Salem last night with a W and $1M since the Wake Forest AD decided to buyout the remaining part of the home and home. Kiffin wasn’t too pleased about it though since next year schedule is pretty much set in stone for everyone and will be difficult to replace them with another. 

West Florida is open Week 3 2025

[Insideradvantage]

7 minutes ago, s1nglewing said:

West Florida is open Week 3 2025

Hell that’s D2! 

[s1nglewing]

5 minutes ago, Insideradvantage said:

Hell that’s D2! 

Be about the same as playing Wake Forest

[rebmus]

It’s very doubtful Napier makes it until the end of the season.

He may well get fired today? 

[NoWammies]

I’d be shocked if he has a job tomorrow. 

[Dawg83]

5 hours ago, Bulldogs4 said:

I don’t think we are on life support. But last night was and I think will be the low point. I get your frustration 83 and we are now at ground zero. 
Do you have any suggestion on what could have been done differently when Leach died? That created a conundrum of events leading to where we are today. 20-20 hindsight is perfect. I think Dr. Keenum did the most appropriate thing he could do at the time given the circumstances. Would it have been better to make Arnett temporary through the bowl game? Obviously given what we know now, the answer is yes. 
But at the time a great majority the fan base was on board with that decision. Unfortunately, that was not done. We need to keep supporting Lebby & Co. and give him the time he needs to develop his program. That is going to be longer than we all anticipated. But it is not impossible either. 

I don’t think the issues started when Leach died…. I love the Pirate but this is very much on his staff’s recruiting failures too. His tenure bore some short term fruits but behind the scenes was slowly draining the talent pool of the program. He did win games at State….. with players recruited by Joe Moorhead and Dan Mullen.

 

I agree with you that I’m not sure what else you do other than hire Arnett once Leach passes away. And it was clearly a tough situation he just wasn’t ready for. But there is so much more to it than “Leach died and then it went downhill”. I think some of Leach’s success in the W column was not representative of the long term prospects of the program.

[Bulldogs4]

The Cowboys and State get the woeful defense award for the weekend. Neither defense stopped the other team’s offense the entire game. 
 

Wake Forest pulling out of the Ole Miss game next year is pathetic. They were okay with playing Ole Miss at home. And while they are not a power house they are generally respectable year in and year out. Pitiful. Each college team should rise to the occasion of playing a difficult opponent on the road. 
Sure puts OM in a tough spot. Maybe they will be able to find a suitable opponent. 
 

And 83, I agree the timing of all this is the worst part of it. I mentioned that Florida and State play Saturday. One team will lose and the other team will not lose. There will not be a winner just a non loser in that game. 

[NoWammies]

Being a Rebel on Saturday and a Saint on Sunday surely has been fun so far this year. Loving both defenses for first time in an looooong time. Enjoying it while I can. 

[Dawg83]

51 minutes ago, Bulldogs4 said:

The Cowboys and State get the woeful defense award for the weekend. Neither defense stopped the other team’s offense the entire game. 
 

Wake Forest pulling out of the Ole Miss game next year is pathetic. They were okay with playing Ole Miss at home. And while they are not a power house they are generally respectable year in and year out. Pitiful. Each college team should rise to the occasion of playing a difficult opponent on the road. 
Sure puts OM in a tough spot. Maybe they will be able to find a suitable opponent. 
 

And 83, I agree the timing of all this is the worst part of it. I mentioned that Florida and State play Saturday. One team will lose and the other team will not lose. There will not be a winner just a non loser in that game. 

Man doesn’t it just have a Croom vs Zook 2004 feel to it? Florida might murder State and probably should but there’s something about when you get two dumpster fires together to play each other, weird crap happens sometimes.

[MSTSatchmo]

State has 9 games left.  
#1 Texas

#2 Georgia 

#6 Tennessee

#7 Missouri

#5 Ole Miss 

Good grief.  Four of those on the road. 

 

[Dawg83]

4 hours ago, MSTSatchmo said:

State has 9 games left.  
#1 Texas

#2 Georgia 

#6 Tennessee

#7 Missouri

#5 Ole Miss 

Good grief.  Four of those on the road. 

 

How many of those teams score 60? Does anybody get to 70? I am not exaggerating when I say most of those might be “pick your score” games for the favorite.

[maroontide06]

15 minutes ago, Dawg83 said:

How many of those teams score 60? Does anybody get to 70? I am not exaggerating when I say most of those might be “pick your score” games for the favorite.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t see what happened yesterday coming at all.  This Mississippi State Football team is really, really bad.  I know it’s going to take some time to make improvements to the team, but where do you begin?  The whole coaching turnover thing hasn’t helped and the talent level isn’t where it needs to be.  This year is going to be rough, but I’m curious to see how Lebby addresses the issues during the off-season so that improvements can be made.

[MSTSatchmo]

17 minutes ago, maroontide06 said:

I’ll be honest, I didn’t see what happened yesterday coming at all.  This Mississippi State Football team is really, really bad.  I know it’s going to take some time to make improvements to the team, but where do you begin?  The whole coaching turnover thing hasn’t helped and the talent level isn’t where it needs to be.  This year is going to be rough, but I’m curious to see how Lebby addresses the issues during the off-season so that improvements can be made.

Gotta start a QB, OL and DL, but you have to have money to spend.  
 

While some teams are trying to buy their starting lineup though, teams like Bama, Georgia, and Texas are buying their third string with 100+ scholarships available now.  

[NoWammies]

A question I’ve been wanting to ask State fans and this seems like a good place to ask it cuz should get a reasonable explanation. I don’t follow y’all that much so my apologies if a dumb question. It’s more of a two part question actually. Why is it that most if not all State fans put a lot of this on Arnett when he was given less time than y’all are giving Lebby? I keep seeing “just give Lebby time”. Why wasn’t Arnett given time? They both had no head coaching experience before taking the job but it seems Lebby has been given more lead way and a freebie season to be bad and it’s ok. 

[MSTSatchmo]

47 minutes ago, Dawg83 said:

How many of those teams score 60? Does anybody get to 70? I am not exaggerating when I say most of those might be “pick your score” games for the favorite.

All will score 50+.   I expect OM to be a playoff team, but if they’re out of the playoff by the last game of the year, Kiffin will put 100 up on Lebby.  

[Dawg83]

12 minutes ago, NoWammies said:

A question I’ve been wanting to ask State fans and this seems like a good place to ask it cuz should get a reasonable explanation. I don’t follow y’all that much so my apologies if a dumb question. It’s more of a two part question actually. Why is it that most if not all State fans put a lot of this on Arnett when he was given less time than y’all are giving Lebby? I keep seeing “just give Lebby time”. Why wasn’t Arnett given time? They both had no head coaching experience before taking the job but it seems Lebby has been given more lead way and a freebie season to be bad and it’s ok. 

So I’ll start by saying I think anyone blaming it all on Arnett is tremendously off the mark. The long term issues State is having are FAR more inclusive than just Arnett. Now he does shoulder some blame, but I’d argue it’s more from his defensive recruiting and lack of rotations as DC than his short time in charge of everything.

 

It feels gross to criticize someone who passed away but I don’t think you can get around it… the Leach era was a massive failure of recruiting in the long haul. I don’t know how you look at the ultra limited roster Lebby inherited and think otherwise. This team is so absurdly portal heavy because they had no choice but to be.
 

Couple of other things with Arnett vs Lebby:

 

1. Arnett was hired abruptly amid horrible circumstances. It never felt like he was anything more than an interim. His contract basically said he was an interim (tiny tiny buyout).

 

2. Arnett was hired/Leach died when State didn’t even have an AD. Lebby was the new AD’s first major hire.

 

3, Lebby is State’s fourth different head coach since 2018. You can only press the quick eject button on new coaches so many times. State has already maxed that out, in my opinion. It feels like they have no choice but to be patient with Lebby in the name of actually trying to find some semblance of stability for the first time since Mullen left.

[Bulldogs4]

I agree. It is a combination of several different factors. We are on our 5th coach in 7 years. That of in itself is a recipe for disaster. Throw in the factors both internal and external and we find ourselves in a tenuous position. Stability is a must and we need to ride with Lebby & Co. for several years. 

And unfortunately we are in an instant gratification generation along with a fan base that got a bit spoiled by sustained success over a 14 year period. That is all bad news.

 

The silver lining is that you can build a roster faster in the current day if you are savvy and make the right decisions in the portal and in recruiting. 
 

We will see how it goes. 

[Former Coach]

I will be vilified for this but in my opinion State's problems began when they fired Moorehead. I get why he was fired, lack of discipline, but it had nothing to do with on the field performance. He had winning seasons both years and beat OM twice and recruited well. Yes I know everyone's gripe that he had the best defense in the country and didn't win the West or whatever. But while the offense looked very similar to Mullen's is was vastly different. While Fitz ended up having a good year he struggled with the RPO portions of the offense. He was always a great runner but struggled at times throwing the ball. 

 

Bring Moorehead in at the end of the year and give him a year to tighten up on discipline. But when you fire a coach after two winning seasons, beating your rival twice, and two bowl games who wants to go and coach there? While I liked Leach he was a desperation hire. OM had just hired Kiffin and we needed to hire a name coach for excitement and Leach was only option. And its obvious by looking at this team our recruiting under Leach and Arnett was vastly sub par. And after firing Arnett we get Lebby, and I liked the hire and still think it was a good one, because no one P5 coach wanted the job. 

 

So where does State go from here? In this day and age of college football They may never recover. I look for the SEC to go to a 9 game conference schedule, meaning you have to win at least 3 conference games to make a bowl. You now have to essentially  buy you recruits as well as pay for transfer portal guys and pay to keep the  good players you have from getting poached by other teams. State doesn't have that type of NIL money. Add to that the increase to 105 scholarships and now the really good 3 or 4  star guys that you might get because Alabama, Georgia and the likes didn't have room for they now sign. These last 2 losses and the 8 or 10 to come aren't the fault of Lebby, State just doesn't have the players to match even the Toledo's of FBS football.

[coastfootballfanman]

If State is going to be this bad, then I say be bad with the Freshmen. Go ahead and let them guys roll out there and play. If this team goes 2-10 and the great freshmen you signed do not step on the field, they are going to leave. At least if you got 2-10 and they are playing, you can sell them on helping turn things around and the fact they are playing right now. Probably an unpopular opinion, but after the way State has looked the last 2 weeks (especially on defense) I am half way embarrassed to say I root for them. LOL

[Dawg83]

8 hours ago, Former Coach said:

I will be vilified for this but in my opinion State's problems began when they fired Moorehead. I get why he was fired, lack of discipline, but it had nothing to do with on the field performance. He had winning seasons both years and beat OM twice and recruited well. Yes I know everyone's gripe that he had the best defense in the country and didn't win the West or whatever. But while the offense looked very similar to Mullen's is was vastly different. While Fitz ended up having a good year he struggled with the RPO portions of the offense. He was always a great runner but struggled at times throwing the ball. 

 

Bring Moorehead in at the end of the year and give him a year to tighten up on discipline. But when you fire a coach after two winning seasons, beating your rival twice, and two bowl games who wants to go and coach there? While I liked Leach he was a desperation hire. OM had just hired Kiffin and we needed to hire a name coach for excitement and Leach was only option. And its obvious by looking at this team our recruiting under Leach and Arnett was vastly sub par. And after firing Arnett we get Lebby, and I liked the hire and still think it was a good one, because no one P5 coach wanted the job. 

 

So where does State go from here? In this day and age of college football They may never recover. I look for the SEC to go to a 9 game conference schedule, meaning you have to win at least 3 conference games to make a bowl. You now have to essentially  buy you recruits as well as pay for transfer portal guys and pay to keep the  good players you have from getting poached by other teams. State doesn't have that type of NIL money. Add to that the increase to 105 scholarships and now the really good 3 or 4  star guys that you might get because Alabama, Georgia and the likes didn't have room for they now sign. These last 2 losses and the 8 or 10 to come aren't the fault of Lebby, State just doesn't have the players to match even the Toledo's of FBS football.

State’s problems began when Scott Stricklin left for Florida and Mark Keenum made the colossal mistake of promoting the baseball coach to AD.

 

Firing Moorhead quickly was the one smart thing Cohen ever did…. But I also don’t agree with people still blaming Moorhead for the current state of State when he hasn’t coached here in almost five years.

 

Mike Leach was a superior coach to Moorhead but also Leach recruiting is hurting State more today than anything Joe did.

 

I place the bulk of the blame on administration. It’s easy to blame failed coaches or a certain AD but there’s one person who has been in charge of everything this whole time that nobody wants to criticize for some reason.

[maroontide06]

13 hours ago, Dawg83 said:

State’s problems began when Scott Stricklin left for Florida and Mark Keenum made the colossal mistake of promoting the baseball coach to AD.

 

Firing Moorhead quickly was the one smart thing Cohen ever did…. But I also don’t agree with people still blaming Moorhead for the current state of State when he hasn’t coached here in almost five years.

 

Mike Leach was a superior coach to Moorhead but also Leach recruiting is hurting State more today than anything Joe did.

 

I place the bulk of the blame on administration. It’s easy to blame failed coaches or a certain AD but there’s one person who has been in charge of everything this whole time that nobody wants to criticize for some reason.

When I was walking to the concession stand Saturday I ran into ol" LT.  He's still around.  At least with Dr. Foglesong he was willing to make things uncomfortable (wasn't afraid to butt heads with LT).  Right now we've got someone who's been there far too long and you're right, no one is holding his feet to the fire.

[Dawg83]

38 minutes ago, maroontide06 said:

When I was walking to the concession stand Saturday I ran into ol" LT.  He's still around.  At least with Dr. Foglesong he was willing to make things uncomfortable (wasn't afraid to butt heads with LT).  Right now we've got someone who's been there far too long and you're right, no one is holding his feet to the fire.

Keenum had his moment in the sun and did some good things for State but I believe that time has passed and State could benefit from fresh blood at the top. He’s in his 60’s now and there have always been rumors of him having political aspirations…. Gotta wonder if his time is coming to a close anyway and maybe it would be mutually beneficial. Or maybe State could end up with a worse President that’s a bigger issue. Who knows.

 

When Joe Moorhead cut that interview saying he was told all he had to do was make a bowl game and beat Ole Miss…. There is no doubt in my mind that came from Keenum. He is old school MSU in every way and I think at this point it’s holding State back in athletics (and arguably academics too but that’s a different discussion).

[NoWammies]

Y’all need y’all a Keith Carter. 

[hasbeen67]

I guess in the current age of NIL we can blame ourselves for not hiring enough good players. 

 

You need a good coach, but you have to buy the players.

 

It's probably some combination of all the things mentioned. I think most believed the Arnett team had a little more talent overall. There were some good defensive players and we've seen/are seeing what the running could do. Also, the OC/offense choice was a pretty drastic change for the short notice.  Would have probably been wise to at least stay similar to what you were doing and transition over the next year if that's what you wanted. Didn't have the personnel, particularly QB, to do what they were trying to do. I think between graduation and transfers, most people understood the talent would be thin this year. (But maybe not this bad.)

Edited September 18, 2024 by hasbeen67