Arkansas 45 Mississippi State 31

I don't know about you, but that wasn't quite what I was expecting. Casey Dick throws for 4 TDs? Who saw that coming? 501 yards of offense from Mississippi State? Where has that been all year? Bizarre. Seeing as I didn't see the game, I am deferring to someone who did. Agentdog of sixpackspeak wrote a good summary of his thoughts, and so without further ado.

1st qrt, we come out mixing things up, throwing the ball and moving the chains. We get a TD lead in the first damn quarter and the play calling goes conservative. HOLE E SHIT! Who tries to sit on a lead with 3 quarters to play? Arkansas' first possesion they were extremely conservative. After that they opened up things much more with the "Wildhog" formation with misdirections and end arounds and we struggled to contain them. They were very fast and we were keying on McFaggon and let everyone else go. It cost us the big plays.

Our secondary........14-17 199 yards 4TDs for Dick.....that says it all. They sucked...BAD. Their WRs were getting alot of seperation and we never came close to picking a ball. The two TDs to Johnson, he was w i d e o p e n. Monk's TD.....two of our guys where there. Monk out jumped them for the ball. It was a real punch in the gut to have two guys there and see them still covert a 3rd and long into a TD. The long TD to McFaggon.....play action to him...he holds a count along the line as if to block...Douglas was on him then released to cover someone else. Dick dumped it off to him and he was gone.

Offense, like I said. The opening drive looked similar to UK. THen go conservative. We get behind. We open it back up and start moving it. Dixon was still running sideways but Ark DL was blowing up our line. He didn't really have any interior holes to run through. Ducre was ineffective as their LBs were fast.

Two of Carrol's ints were bad. Two were not. The first int was thrown to the middle of the field. The route was ran right into the safety and the safety doesn't take three steps to catch it. The int late to the DL was coming the whole game. They blew up an attempted screen earlier in the game that was completed but could have been just as easily picked off. Carrol drops back is looking in one direction. Then just wheels around and throws the ball in the other direction and the DL is standing there but he lets it fly anyway. But he threw balls into coverage all day. On numerous completions the DBs were on top of the WRs. Carrol is entirely to mechanical and needs to learn how to improvise and check down when needed.

Which leads me to the bright spot of the game. Husband, Butler, Burks, and JSmith had great games. They made catches all day with DBs on their heals with the pass delivered high or behind them or both. There is no way to expalin without video that would do justice to the way they played. They made some very good catches today while covered closely in heavy traffic. I don't remember which one it was but one caught a pass that was thrown high and behind with one hand as he was falling backwards. Amazing catch.

With all that said though, you could analize it a million different ways but it boiled down to the fact that Arkansas was just alittle bit more talented than us. McFaggon, Hillis, and Monk were the difference as well as some of their DL. They had speed just about everywhere on offense and controled the LOS on defense. We really need a burner in the backfield and on special teams as well.

There ya go. I'm moving on to Ole Miss. A win is essential as it will guarantee a bowl game. A loss may very well keep MSU out.