Thoughts on LSU vs. Mississippi State

LSU's defense is the big story from this game. MSU has a pretty good offense, and it was absolutely stumped.

The tone was set with the first or one of the first plays of the game, when MSU ran a simple option play which was quickly snuffed out. Having only seen the play once, my guess is that they were in a cover zero or cover 1 look and had a man assigned to both the QB and the pitch man. I didn't see MSU run another conventional pitch option play during the game.

It really felt like watching an NFL defense. They were able to consistently make Relf wrong on zone read plays. Again, this is based on a single viewing, so I cannot say whether it was a matter of a superior athlete at end or tackle playing both Relf and the RB, or whether it was a schematic thing where the defense assigned a player to both runners. In theory the zone read always works when the QB makes the correct read, but the play was so unsuccessful against MSU that I wondered why they continued running it. Like an NFL defense, the LSU Tigers did not (usually) allow MSU to get away with slow developing running plays or sweeps to the outside.

And through all of this, MSU had some lucky moments on third downs. It could have been even worse. Even after three games it is difficult to accurately describe MSU's quality. They played perhaps the worst D1 team in Memphis in the first week and gave up 14 points and over 300 yards of total offense, not all in garbage time. Then they go on the road and lose to the defending national champs, and follow that up with a loss at home to an apparently legitimate top 5 team after a short week. I'd like to see them play a lower tier SEC team right now just to see if they struggle or not.

The ugly part of the game was MSU's blatant surrender at the end of the game. They were never more than two scored behind. Victory was unlikely, but you don't just quit when you have 3 timeouts and are only down 10. Auburn would never do that. LSU would never do that. There are many reasons why MSU is a perennial cellar dweller in the SEC West, and this sort of attitude is one of them. I expect Mullen to move on to greener pastures sooner rather than later, but if he can't be bothered to fight to the final whistle while coaching a ranked SEC team, why would any other school bother to hire him away? Is that the kind of coach you want on your sideline? Don't get me wrong, Mullen has done a lot of good things there and is a terrific coach, but this is to me a significant black mark.