Mississippi State 17 Vanderbilt 14

Mississippi State got a win over #13 Vanderbilt this past weekend to keep slim bowl hopes alive. MSU played like they did last year: running the ball the vast majority of the time, not turning it over, and putting the rest of the game on the defense.

The win along with the solid performance against LSU has given some of us hope that this team is finally playing at the level we expected 2 months ago. If thats the case then their should be hope of getting to 6 wins against a weak remainder of the schedule. Unfortunately the win raised even more questions in my mind.

- MSU got back to running the ball down people's throats, in particular getting the ball to Dixon. Anthony Dixon had 27 carries for 107 yards, his first 100 yard game of the year. The fact this was his first 100 yard game is more than a little disturbing. Not only did the coaches finally decide to feed him the football, Anthony Dixon finally ran like we've all said he needed. The dancing behind the line of scrimmage was nearly non-existent. He ran north-south, and if there wasn't a hole he put his head down and made 3 yards moving the pile. When you are 240 pounds, you can get 3 or 4 yards whether there is a hole or not, and that is what Dixon should have been doing the last 2 1/2 years.

- Tyson Lee was impressive, but not because of his passing. He had only 81 yards passing, though that was partly play calling. Where he impressed was his running ability. There were a number of times when the play broke down and he got the first down on his own. I can remember three 3rd and longs that were converted solely because of his ability to escape the pocket and run for the 1st.

- The defense was great, though that is partly due to the fact that Vanderbilt is about as inept on offense as Mississippi State. Even so, the defense held them to 107 yards and thats outstanding.

-Now comes the questions. The team gets one win and all of a sudden Croom has this to say about the offense.

"Not any different at all," Sylvester Croom, the Mississippi State coach, said Wednesday of his offensive approach. "We're just executing better. When I said earlier in the season we weren't executing and missing assignments, I wasn't joking. We're executing better now."

MSU only had 247 yards of offense. That is terrible, and he says this is executing the offense? See this is the problem with Croom. If this was a loss with all the same stats, he would have inevitably said the offense just didn't execute. MSU only scored 17 points, and they needed an interception returned to the 7 yard line just to get that, otherwise it is 10 points. This is Croom's idea of executing? Mind boggling.

-Secondly, Vanderbilt had 107 yards of offense and was -2 in the turnover battle. MSU won by 3. Think about that folks. 107 yards and 2 turnovers, any team with that kind of production loses by 20 points minimum 99% of the time. That 1% of the time is when they play MSU. Why could MSU only win by 3 you ask? Because the offense is terrible. Even with this 107 yard effort, this still would have been a loss had the defense not won the game again, returning an interception to the 7, virtually guaranteeing a TD. Yet this is the offense that is executing according to Croom?

-Can we get a punter? Please.



Bottomline folks, the offense is almost completely incapable of winning a game, save for the occasional fluke. The defense has to get every win from here on out either by scoring points themselves or putting the offense in such great field position they can't help but score. Thats all their is to it.


You know what though? They just may be able to do it. The next 6 games are littered with one inept offense after another. It starts with Tennessee. This is the definition of a must win game. If MSU wins, they still have a chance at a bowl, maybe even a decent chance. If they lose the season is almost certainly over. Make no mistake, this game is very winnable. Tennessee is downright bad. They have a good defense, but their offense may be even worse than ours.