Saturday night’s primetime ESPN game pits the No. 22 Mississippi State Bulldogs against the No. 13 Arkansas Razorbacks in a SEC West showdown on an emotional night for Mississippi State, Senior Night.
Mississippi State is coming off of one of its biggest losses of the season at the hands of Alabama, while Arkansas played a tuneup game against UTEP last week. Each team has plenty to play for with quality bowl appearances and the fourth spot in the heated SEC West on the line.
The key matchups will be the Bulldog secondary versus Arkansas’ stud quarterback Ryan Mallett and the Bulldog rushing offense versus a middle-of-the-road Arkansas defense. The MSU defense uncharacteristically gave up some big plays in its loss against Alabama, and senior linebacker K.J. Wright believes fundamentals are the key to slowing down Arkansas.
“[Against Alabama] we did some things we hadn’t done during our winning streak, gave up three really big plays that we haven’t done all year,” Wright said. “We’ve got to come out this week and do a better job of taking angles and running to the ball, so we can make tackles and prevent the offense from scoring on big plays.”
Mullen believes his team will respond well after the loss, which follows previous trends of the season; however, he acknowledges it will not be easy because of Mallett and the potency of the Arkansas offense.
“They’ve been in the position before of having to come back after a loss, but I think they got used to winning a little bit. So it stung a little bit more than the other ones,” Mullen said. “We’re going to have our hands full, the recipe for success requires us to play, as I look at it, the top NFL prospect at quarterback, with a lot of talented receivers surrounding him. They can make a lot of plays in an explosive offense that can score from anywhere at any time.”
MSU has succeeded with a bend-but-don’t-break defense all season. Through 10 games this season, State’s defense has only allowed 10 rushing touchdowns. Only eight teams nationwide have had the same type of success. The touchdown percentage allowed once teams enter the red zone is 40 percent (12-30), which is good for second in the conference.
Wright says this type of defensive philosophy will again be administered this week, even more so because of Arkansas’ big play ability.
“I don’t think there is a way to really stop them, but we’ve got to contain them. We’ve got to stop them from making explosive plays,” Wright said. “[We’ve got to] keep making them snap the ball, and eventually good things will happen for us.”
Mullen believes MSU lost its identity a little bit against Alabama, with turnovers and a lackluster showing in the running game. These two flaws were not part of the formula in MSU’s six-game win streak.
“We’re going to have to execute at a high level, play our game. If you look at the stats, the differences in our wins and losses, the turnovers, our ability to run the ball and control the tempo of the game, those have been the differences in our wins and losses,” Mullen said. “We have to be able to play our game at our tempo for us to be successful.”
Running the ball certainly has been key in Bulldog wins and losses. In all seven Bulldog wins, MSU has outgained the opponent on the ground, while in its three losses (Auburn, LSU, Alabama), MSU has been outgained.
MSU currently ranks third in the SEC, rushing for 211 yards a game, and running the ball should help keep Ryan Mallett and his receivers at bay, because an offense cannot score if it does not have the ball.
Senior leader and starting center offensive lineman J.C. Brignone must have taken a glance at these stats because he has been very vocal about his wishes for Saturday’s game plan: run the football.
“It wouldn’t make me mad if Coach Mullen said, ‘Hey, we’re going to run the ball the whole game, and let’s just get our physical name back and come out and play smash-mouth football,'”  Brignone said. “That’s what we do. We hit people in the mouth. We run power and we run zone and all that. We have to get back that physical nature and swagger we had that nobody can stop us. Because when all five of us get going I don’t believe anybody can stop us.”
Brignone echoes Mullen and believes turnovers, and especially penalties, cost the Bulldogs in the three losses, and the team needs to not only play smash-mouth football to regain its identity, but also play sound fundamentally.
“Alabama is a good team, but just like Auburn and LSU, we beat ourselves,” Bringone said. “We haven’t done it in a while, and people see when we won six games straight, we don’t give up yards with penalties or fumble the ball or throw interceptions. When we play Mississippi State football we’re really good, but when we do dumb things like that, we can be the bottom of the totem pole.”
Again, Brignone is on to something. In the Bulldogs’ seven wins, they are plus-11 in turnover margin, and in the three losses, State is minus-4 in the turnover margin. Against Arkansas, MSU cannot afford to make mistakes such as turnovers and penalties and expect to win.
Expect Mississippi State to come out fired up as Wright admitted it will “be an emotional night for us seniors.” The Dawgs cannot afford to let the emotions get them too up or too down. Brignone sums up MSU’s mindset quite simply.
“It’s another SEC game. It’s a game we need to get our name back and come off the ball.”