If I’m Joe Moorhead, there’s something I can’t preach about enough in Dan Mullen’s Starkville return
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All week, I thought to myself, “Joe Moorhead is a fool if he doesn’t play up the Dan Mullen angle in that locker room.”
Obviously Mullen’s return to Starkville after spending 9 years there was going to be a popular topic of conversation around town.
This week, we saw everything from buttons with a photoshopped image of Nick Fitzgerald flipping off Mullen — something Fitzgerald didn’t support — to the local ice cream place “Bop’s” changing the former MSU coach’s go-to creation from “The Mullen” to “The Lateral Move.” There’s no doubt that the “Dan Who?” shirts and the cowbells will be out in full force come Saturday night.
So yeah, of course Moorhead should get his team fired up with the Mullen angle, right? I mean, Mullen left MSU to take over a 4-win Florida program instead of sticking around to coach what was perhaps his most talented roster yet.
Whether they admit it publicly or not, it’s natural if there are some hurt feelings in the MSU locker room. Nobody wants to feel like a stepping stone. Everyone wants to show their ex that they’re doing just fine without them. As fate would have it, MSU gets a chance to show that on Saturday night.
But if MSU doesn’t learn from its undisciplined performance last week, it’ll look like the crazy ex that’s spiraling out of control.
MSU is coming off a Kentucky game in which it got flat out embarrassed. And that’s not the case for the simple fact that they lost by 21 to a team that hasn’t had a winning record in conference play since the first year of the Jimmy Carter administration.
It was the penalties. All the penalties.
By game’s end, MSU racked up 16 penalties for 139 yards. The Bulldogs extended Kentucky drives instead of getting off the field, and as a result, they let the Wildcats’ ground game take over the game. When the Bulldogs did get the ball back, they found ways to dig themselves holes with far too many pre-snap penalties in what turned into a raucous atmosphere in Lexington.
Saturday night is going to be raucous, as well, though it’ll be the MSU crowd that’s deafening. If the Bulldogs follow the same undisciplined game plan they had last week, they’ll give away any chance at competing in the SEC this year.
Moorhead knows this. That’s why he and the MSU staff instituted a new policy for unsportsmanlike conduct penalties after Bulldogs had 4 against Kentucky.
“We’re going to put an end to these unsportsmanlike conduct penalties,” Moorhead said via the Daily Journal. “Any unsportsmanlike conduct penalty now, I’m going to pull the guy out of the game and he’ll come stand next to me and he’ll go back in when I tell him to. One way to catch their attention is to take away their playing time.”
The good thing for Moorhead is that his team recognized how unacceptable of a performance it was. Jeffery Simmons and Gerri Green called for a players-only meeting last Sunday to discuss their unhinged play against Kentucky.
And to be clear, it wasn’t just a Kentucky problem. MSU averaged 60 penalty yards per contest in the first 3 games. On the year, MSU is averaging more penalty yards per game (79.5) than any SEC team.
Moorhead recognizes that can easily continue on Saturday.
“There’s an emotional component attached to this game that is relative to coach Mullen and his staff being with these players for an extended amount of time,” Moorhead said. “But at the end of the day, I’m not going to be on the field taking any snaps and neither are our assistants or any of their coaches.
“The game is going to be played on the field between the white lines between 11 Mississippi State players and 11 Florida players.”
Lord knows Moorhead won’t have to get his team fired up on Saturday night. The circumstances should take care of that for him. What he doesn’t need is a team that’s a little too fired up with players jawing outside the whistles, which they were doing before kickoff against Kentucky.
After all, it’s MSU that’s a touchdown favorite at home. Florida is the team that’s just 1-6 vs. Power 5 teams dating back to the start of October 2017. The Gators are the ones who are still figuring out their offensive identity — the rank No. 91 in FBS in total offense — in the first year of the Mullen era. The last thing Moorhead wants is to give Florida opportunities that it doesn’t earn.
This is an interesting fork in the road early in Moorhead’s SEC coaching career. The calm, cool, confident coach isn’t an in-your-face disciplinarian. The way that his team comes out on Saturday night will tell us a lot about his ability to adjust, and not just from a game-planning standpoint (MSU’s offensive line simply has to be better than it was last week).
How does Moorhead corral his team and keep them focused on the task at hand? It’s one thing to talk about that to the media or in a players only meeting. It’s another to execute that when tensions are high.
One thing we know is true, though. The date that many MSU fans have had circled on their calendars for the past 9 months is finally here.
We’ll see if the Bulldogs can play nice when their ex shows up.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
