Saturday wasn’t the time for the full feast. After all, we were 2 days removed from Thanksgiving. The food coma was still in full effect. Year 1 of the Lane Kiffin-Mike Leach Egg Bowl was not the time, nor place for an all-you-can-eat buffet of deliciousness.

An appetizer we got, and it was perfect.

Well, check that. It wasn’t perfect.

The 2020 Egg Bowl had some sloppy defensive play, quarterbacks holding onto the football a second too long and ultimately, it had plenty of reminders of why Mississippi State and Ole Miss entered Saturday’s contest with losing records. It was, in many ways, a beautiful mess down to the failed last-second Hail Mary attempt (that includes the mini Hail Mary that set it up).

Saturday was the type of game that if you weren’t watching Alabama wallop Auburn in the Iron Bowl or Northwestern choke away a perfect season, it gave you 3.5 hours of late-November joy. No, it didn’t have a fake dog pee celebration that set off a chain of events of epic proportions, and there wasn’t a benches-clearing brawl that prompted the officials to call unsportsmanlike conduct penalties on everyone.

It did, however, remind us just why we as college football fans so desperately wanted Lane Kiffin and Mike Leach in the SEC. We had 827 passing yards on 99 combined attempts. We had 9 different 4th-down attempts, 6 of which were converted. We had coaches who treated their field goal kickers like the person who brings the veggie tray to Thanksgiving.

We had Leach, and we had Kiffin, and we had the Egg Bowl we were promised.

Oh! And, we had pettiness like Ole Miss retweeting MSU’s tweet from September about hopping on the Leach bandwagon.

New faces didn’t change the constant need for shade. Fittingly, it came on social media. This is Kiffin and Leach we’re talking about here. As friendly as they are with one another, perhaps this is the better chapter of the Egg Bowl than what we’ve seen in years past.

This is the rivalry that Hugh Freeze said was too hostile for his taste. This is the game that turned the chill Joe Moorhead into a WWE wrestler. Maybe it’s not so bad to instead watch a couple of guys battle it out via some fun, high-flying offenses.

Granted, the “high-flying” part pertains more to Ole Miss currently. Matt Corral threw a few passes on Saturday afternoon that still haven’t landed. Personally, this was my favorite:

It felt like Corral had a deep-ball quota to hit. Credit Zach Arnett for adjusting MSU’s defense to have more over-the-top help. As entertaining as it would’ve been to watch Corral hit receivers with 20 yards of separation that resulted in Kiffin throwing his clipboard to the moon, this rivalry is more fun when it’s a fair fight.

Saturday turned out to be a fair fight. The MSU offense vs. the Ole Miss defense wasn’t exactly billed as the headliner matchup because both are very much in Year 1 mode. Leach’s offense will get better when he has the personnel to run the Air Raid (getting some linemen who can block 3-man fronts would be helpful). Kiffin’s defense will get better when he can actually recruit at the position (perhaps hiring some better Xs and Os coordinators also would be helpful).

And to be fair to the losing team, MSU has its quarterback moving forward. Will Rogers is the guy, which seems like an important step in the whole “Leach establishing his incredibly unique offense” thing. He made some big-time throws that showed his progression in this offense, especially his first touchdown pass.

The problem for MSU on Saturday was that Ole Miss’ offense is a year or 2 ahead of that. That’s a major reason why Kiffin signed up to join this backyard brawl of a rivalry. It wasn’t just that Kiffin clearly had a quarterback to work with. It was that he had a backfield like Jerrion Ealy and Snoop Conner. It was that Kiffin had young receivers like Jonathan Mingo and Elijah Moore.

Speaking of Moore, his 2019 touchdown was the well-documented reason that the job ever opened up in the first place. Who knows what Moore’s future holds in terms of the NFL Draft — nobody would fault the FBS leading receiver for leaving for the next level. It feels like Kiffin is going to continue to get wideouts who are going to put up monster numbers in his system. It was fitting that instead of the shenanigans Moore took part in last year, he was the 12-catch, chain-moving playmaker who fueled Saturday’s win.

Even if this rivalry suddenly lacks wild, weird moments from the guys on the field — we mustn’t forget about Nick Fitzgerald throwing up the middle finger as he was being carted off the field with a season-ending injury — the on-field product isn’t going to disappoint. I’m not saying we’re going to start getting 56-52 shootouts on a yearly basis, but I’m certainly not ruling that out, either.

When it comes to recruiting, both of their offensive styles will play in the region. There’s no doubt about that. Despite these Year 1 struggles for Leach, I still believe that to be true, even if he does ruffle more feathers along the way. Lord knows Kiffin will, too.

Fortunately for us neutral observers, a new decade is bringing in a fresh chapter to this rivalry.

It felt strange that this game wasn’t on Thanksgiving, and that it didn’t provide 3.5 hours of turkey hangover entertainment. I suppose it still did to that depending on how much you ate on Thursday.

On Saturday, we got the perfect first taste of this tasty new meal. It was an amuse-bouche. We got 1 delicious bite of Egg Bowl goodness.

The feast that awaits is sure to be finger-lickin’ good.