Mississippi State football: Are Bulldogs catching Bama at a good or a bad time?
By Les East
Published:
Mississippi State might be catching Alabama at the worst possible time.
Or maybe it’s a pretty good time — relatively speaking.
The 6th-ranked Crimson Tide are coming off a final-second, 52-49 upset loss at Tennessee last Saturday as they head home to face the 24th-ranked Bulldogs on Saturday night.
Alabama figures to be ornery. It not only lost a game in which it was favored by more than a touchdown, but it made a bunch of uncharacteristic mistakes that contributed significantly to the outcome.
It was bad enough to allow 567 yards. But the Tide allowed the Volunteers to gain all those yards in just 22 minutes and 31 seconds of possession time.
That’s very bad defense.
And there’s more.
The Tide were penalized 17 times and lost 130 yards on those penalties.
That’s bad. Really bad. And totally uncharacteristic of a Nick Saban team.
So this could be a bad time to run into Bama. Saban will have his players’ attention in practice this week. He will drill into them the need to do much better defensively, to be more focused and more disciplined.
The Tide figure to bounce back. And with a vengeance.
Not to take anything away from Tennessee, but Bama was not at its best in Neyland Stadium. It figures to be at its best back home at Bryant-Denny.
But there’s another possibility.
Maybe last week’s performance wasn’t an aberration. Maybe this Alabama team is a little closer to how it played against Tennessee than it is to being the national championship favorite that it usually is.
Of course, the Tide are really, really good.
They might still win the SEC West, might still win the SEC Championship, might still be in the College Football Playoff, might still win it all.
But they were beatable against Tennessee, beatable in a tight victory against Texas A&M a week earlier (although Bryce Young’s absence had a lot to do with that).
Maybe they’ll be beatable again this Saturday.
State is in a similar situation.
The Bulldogs also are coming off a road loss. They, too, didn’t play up to their expectations. They, too, will be focused on fixing stuff and bouncing back this week.
Kentucky star quarterback Will Levis was limited by injury, and State star quarterback Will Rogers was not. Still, Levis’ offense gained more than twice as many yards as Rogers’ offense did (478-225) in the Wildcats’ 27-17 victory.
That enabled Kentucky to possess the football for 39:22.
State, like Bama, contributed to its own demise, losing 109 yards on 13 penalties.
Bulldogs coach Mike Leach, like Saban, will have his players’ attention in practice this week.
He’ll have even more stuff to fix than Saban does.
If Rogers and the passing game aren’t significantly better, State won’t have a chance against the Tide.
If State doesn’t run the ball even a little bit (it had 22 yards on 10 rushes against Kentucky), it won’t have a chance against the Tide.
If it doesn’t defend the pass better than it did against Levis, there’s no telling how many yards Young and his receivers will accumulate.
It State doesn’t do something special on special teams, it won’t have a chance against a Tide team that’s favored by almost 3 times as many points as it was favored by against Tennessee.
But maybe Bama is catching State at a bad time — if Leach and his staff can get their players to respond to their loss as effectively as most expect the Tide to respond to theirs.
Or maybe Bama is catching State at a good time — if the performance against Kentucky was an indication that the Bulldogs aren’t really as good as their No. 16 ranking prior to last week’s game would have suggested.
Both teams had subpar weeks last week.
Both are challenged this week to correct the things they did wrong.
Both know that their success on Saturday will largely be determined by how they improve during practice this week.
There’s no great time to play Alabama.
But perhaps this Saturday is as good as any.
Or not.
Les East is a New Orleans-based football writer who covers LSU for SaturdayDownSouth.com. Follow him on Twitter @Les_East.
