Mike Leach and the Mississippi State Bulldogs were stymied by the Alabama Crimson Tide on Saturday night in Starkville.

The Tide looked refocused after last week’s loss to Texas A&M, rolling to an easy 49-9 victory.

After the game, Leach had plenty of praise for Nick Saban’s squad. He also lamented some issues facing his team.

Here’s what he had to say about the Tide (via 247Sports):

On Alabama’s pass rush:

“I’m going to have to look at it. I don’t think we held the ball very much. I’m going to have to say it’s a combination of both, cause I did not think (QB Will Rogers) was as precise in his reads as he could have been. I did not think our receivers were consistently where they were supposed to be; they figured, ‘Oh, Alabama’s really good and they’re so superior, we’ll just go ahead and invent a route,’ and invent some route known only to them, not a chance in hell we’ll find them, but they go ahead and invent it anyway, it’s ridiculous. And I thought that Will played into that too. We’ve got bad communication and we’ve got self-inflicted wounds because we tried too hard and tried to do extra and tried to do too many different things, and we should’ve played better than we did.”

On Alabama QB Bryce Young:

“He is a great player first and foremost. That is why he is at Alabama. He has got a great support staff around him with his coaches and players. Credit to him. They are a great team. We need to execute a little bit better. Coach Arnett put us in the best position possible I think. We just need to execute a little bit better. Play the next play.”

On Alabama’s dominance:

“It’s easy to say that Alabama is really good, and that is true. Everyone recruited those guys nationally, but my problem is we didn’t play as well as we can and that has to be solved. That comes back on us coaches, and on the players as well. There’s a notion that it is just coaches, and it does come back on us because we’ve got to find a way to reach them, but also players must be tough enough to be reached. The fact of the matter is that we put these guys up on a pedestal, and they got ratcheted up higher than we could execute. We tried to do special things because we thought they were too good. The trouble is your best is always enough because that’s all you’ve got. Manufacturing new methods and techniques because you’re scared is not a good approach.”

We’ll see if Leach and the Bulldogs can bounce back from this blowout loss at Vanderbilt next weekend.