When Mississippi State plays this weekend in Lexington, it will be doing so without the services of veteran cornerback Jamal Peters. The senior defensive back has made 39 appearances in his Hail State career, making 10 starts during that span.

Leaving no room for doubt, during his Monday media availability, Joe Moorhead announced that Peters would be out for this game. Peters left last weekend’s contest against Louisiana due to an injury and did not return. He was carted into the locker room, which is obviously never a good sign.

With the Bulldogs down a veteran in the defensive backfield in the team’s SEC opener, defensive coordinator Bob Shoop was recently asked if he knew the defender that would be stepping up into a starting role in the place of Peters. Shoop admitted that he did, however, he did not give up that name immediately.

Here’s what the MSU defensive coordinator said next, regarding who would replace Peters for the Kentucky game.

“(Chris) Rayford and (Maurice) Smitherman, we moved Rayford back to corner — he and Smitherman have done a good job. Tyler Williams and Korey Charles played a lot in the second half of the game the other day. So we are still trying to figure it out,” Shoop continued.

“I’m sure – I can’t say they are all going to play, but I’m sure we are going to have a little bit of a rotation in there. Smitherman’s done a really good job when he’s been in there. Obviously, Cam (Cameron Dantzler) has done a good job the first three games and Chris is a veteran presence that I think started nine games last year at corner. So we made the move to safety, but we felt like for this week and we’ll see how much for the future, we felt like it was in the best interest of the unit to move back to corner.”

When asked how long Rayford would be staying at corner, Shoop was once again reluctant to give up that information.

“For this week, it is what it is,” Shoop continued. “Chris is at corner and we’ll worry about next week, next week.”

How long that is likely determines the extent of Peters’ absence but for the time being, that’s information that Shoop is not willing to let out get out of the walls of the football complex.