Mississippi State football is back at home for the first time in three weeks, and their defense will have the task of dealing with the Auburn Tigers and their famed hurry-up offense. 

Auburn has become an important game for MSU if they want to make a bowl, and the challenge will be to contain Auburn’s offense. Auburn runs heavy motion in the backfield before plays on top of going hurry-up no huddle most of the time. Defensive coordinator Peter Sirmon said Auburn will do a lot of what he calls window-dressing.

“There is a lot of different formations,” Sirmon said. “A large amount of shifts and fly motions and a lot of window-dressing to the plays.”

What window-dressing means is before the play is snapped, they will run a man in motion and fake a handoff to him and give the ball to someone else. Auburn runs a lot of fake handoffs and fake passes, and it has worked for them this season in the run game. 

Auburn leads the SEC in total rushing yards this season. They have 1349 rushing yards on 272 attempts and average 4.96 yards a carry and 269.80 yards a game. All the motion and staying with an assignment is usually a challenge for a young defense like MSU has.

Senior linebacker Richie Brown talked about the difference between being older and seeing the offense and knowing how it works compared to young guys like freshman linebacker Leo Lewis, who is seeing it for the first time. 

“For the older guys, they have seen it a little bit more,” Brown said. “For the younger guys it is going to be a little shaky at first, they are going to see a lot of motion, a lot of flying colors, so we are just trying to keep that tempo in practice and get them used to it.”

MSU will have some more help this week in the secondary as cornerback Cedric Jiles is looking to get back into action after breaking his arm in fall training camp. Even if Jiles is in a limited role, it will give MSU’s secondary some much needed depth after losing Taveze Calhoun and Will Redmond to graduation last season, then losing Tolando Cleveland to an ACL tear in fall camp as well.

Jiles has already had two season-ending injuries before this one. Head coach Dan Mullen said he thinks the fact this one was not season ending was a motivator for Jiles.

“I think initially, it is extremely frustrating because he has missed two full seasons and had another injury,” Mullen said. “I think for him, the fact that it is not going to be a season-long injury really motivated him to work to get back and get himself the ability to get back on the field even if it is in a limited role just to be able to play for us this week.”