This Mississippi State season had a lot of promise. It still has a third of the way to go, but the ceiling is lower than it once was.

The Bulldogs are 5-3 and 2-3 in the Southeastern Conference as they come off their open date.

State opened the season with consecutive lopsided non-conference wins. It started fast in its SEC opener at LSU and even after a 13-0 lead fizzled in a 31-16 setback, it rebounded with back-to-back, lopsided conference wins against Texas A&M and Arkansas.

All of a sudden the Bulldogs were 5-1 and 2-1 and ranked No. 16 in the country. It was starting to look like coach Mike Leach’s 3rd season was going to be a breakout.

Then things changed. The season started heading in the wrong direction.

And even though open dates sometimes can be an opportunity to stop a slide and turn a season around – and the Bulldogs’ next 3 games are all at Davis Wade Stadium – this season has the look of one that is going to continue in the direction it has been going the past couple of weeks.

In fact, after a 27-17 loss at Kentucky and a 30-6 loss at Alabama heading to the open date, this season is starting to look a bit like the first 2 seasons with Leach.

Last season State lost 2 of its last 3 SEC games before being routed by Texas Tech in the Liberty Bowl.

In Leach’s 1st season, the Bulldogs followed an eye-opening road victory against reigning national champion LSU with 7 losses in the next 8 SEC games before salvaging a home win against Missouri and a victory against Tulsa in the Armed Forces Bowl.

Both of Leach’s first 2 teams – and now his 3rd – generated optimism early in the season before faltering.

This team still has opportunities to avoid a completion of that narrative, but the losses to Kentucky and Alabama – albeit on the road against good teams – call into question whether this group will take advantage of opportunities.

First up is a visit from Auburn – the most winnable SEC game left on the schedule and one of the most important games of the Leach era. A win against the sure-to-be underdog Tigers would stop the skid, get the Bulldogs bowl eligible and even their conference record.

But a loss would produce a very different dynamic and likely a fragile ego for a team facing a visit from No. 1 Georgia a week later.

And now the game against Auburn has taken on even greater meaning.

Reportedly, the Tigers are on the verge of hiring State athletic director John Cohen to run their athletic department. Aside from the emotional aspect of 2 schools meeting while one is poaching the other’s AD, there’s a practical element that will hover over the game and the rest of the Bulldogs’ season.

Cohen hired Leach, and Cohen’s successor likely will evaluate Leach’s uneven 3-year tenure from a different perspective than Cohen would.

This State team – and this coaching tenure – might not recover from a loss to Auburn.

Even if the Bulldogs defeat the Tigers, the game against Georgia still will be problematic.

An expected non-conference win against East Tennessee State on Nov. 19 would provide a salve, but just like last year’s 55-10 win in that matchup, it will be short-lived. Just 5 days later comes the Egg Bowl on Thanksgiving night in Oxford.

Leach is 0-2 against Ole Miss and a 3rd consecutive loss would be damaging – especially as the exclamation point on another late-season slide.

Leach doesn’t have a great track record in rivalry games in recent seasons. His Washington State teams lost their last 7 Apple Cup games against Washington after his first team beat the Huskies.

The prospects for the remainder of this season don’t look good.

And a poor finish would factor significantly into a stern evaluation of the program by a new athletic director.