The good news: Mississippi State won the spring game. The bad news: They also lost.
Actually, the Maroon side, led by quarterback Chris Relf and the majority of the starting offensive linemen, beat the White team by a score of 26-13.
Relf completed 13 of 24 attempts for 184 yards and two touchdowns with no interceptions. He only carried the ball four times, gaining 19 yards.
Relf appeared to be an improved passer from last season, and he said hard work over the past months has been key to his improvement.
“They [the coaches] didn’t really make it an emphasis for me,” he said. “It’s just something I wanted to do on my own, just work on my throwing game. I knew I had the running business, so I just tried to work on my throwing game also.”
The man battling with Relf for playing time is freshman Tyler Russell, who quarterbacked the White team. Russell went 12-27 passing for 125 yards, two interceptions and zero touchdowns.
It was not the show many were hoping for, but everyone from coach Dan Mullen to Relf admitted Russell, who was sacked three times, compared with zero for Relf, played with a much less experienced offensive line.
Russell acknowledged he struggled, but he said it was a process that was good for him.
“I think I did pretty good for my first time out here in the spring game, in a game situation as far as all the fans,” he said. “I did some things that were bad, and I just gotta block the bad plays out. Really, I think I needed that. I think I needed to come out here and see how it was for the first time, so now I’m out here, and I got my first game experience under my belt. So next time I’ll know what to expect.”
Relf may have had better numbers, but Mullen said it is not necessarily indicative of who will be the starter next year.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s still so long before we play. I think what you saw today is a guy that’s been a big situation in front of a big crowd playing in this type of atmosphere before and a guy that hadn’t. I think that’s the biggest difference I saw between the two. It’s a long time before we have to play a game, but our job is to keep developing both those guys. We’ll see and whoever deserves playing time is gonna play, and if it’s one then it’s one and if it’s two then it’s two.”
Rising sophomore wide receiver Chad Bumphis caught three passes from Russell for 45 yards, but he said it was his backup playing on the Maroon team he was impressed with.
“We’ve got so many other people that can play,” Bumphis said. “Brandon Heavens stepped up. We both play the same position, so him playing well is a big thing for me. I know he can play it’s just about proving it to the coaches and proving it to the fans.”
Heavens caught four passes for 63 yards, and he scored one of three touchdowns for the Maroon team on a 20 yard reception in the corner of the end zone.
Mullen said he knew Heavens had the ability to do big things, but the head coach said he wants to see it more consistently.
“Brandon has some playmaking ability,” Mullen said. “I think the biggest one for him now, we know he can make plays, now we need consistency in making those plays. He made some plays today and missed some plays today, and that’s the consistency that’s gonna come with maturity, and hopefully we get corrected by next September.”
The Maroon team had a much more successful day than the White team when it came to running the ball, as junior transfer Vick Ballard and redshirt freshman Montrell Conner combined for 133 yards, including a one-yard touchdown run from Ballard.
Conner had been injured for most of the spring, and Mullen said he was excited to see what he brought to the table.
“It was great to get him out here the last couple days and today to get out here and run the ball and do some different things,” he said. “When you have a guy like Anthony Dixon who you can turn and hand the ball to some 30 times a game, and he walks away, you better have some depth of some guys that can come in a fill that out. I think we found some depth at the running back position and guys we felt comfortable putting in the game.”
Senior defensive end Pernell McPhee said the defense was limited to four basic plays throughout the scrimmage and did not throw anything too wild at the offense. However, he said the vanilla defense at the scrimmage was nothing like what the defense has done all spring.
“We play more aggressive, and we attacked everything the offense threw at us,” McPhee said. “We were all out, balls to the wall running to the football.”
The attendance at the game was a new record for the state of Mississippi with 34,127 in attendance. Sound familiar? The last four digits, 4,127, are strangely similar to the Egg Bowl score of 41-27.