Will Rogers on Life after Leach...
- Thread starter Maroon Eagle
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More and more I read, the more and more I think people underestimate the good parts of having a 'system' offense at programs like MSU and similar. I heard Rosebowl say it the other day, "such and such was underutilized, Barbay is going to play our best 11 players, yada yada". Well, I don't disagree with that, in the short term. But people don't realize that Leach was building a repeatable offense, that would eventually be plug and play due to recruiting the right players for it. Not to mention that system would recruit itself. And we'd eventually have a big time payoff, like Texas Tech 2008 or Wazzou 2018, and also consistently win 8-9 games all around it. Remember, it's not like we always have a bunch of offensive skill at MSU, where we can actually have the conversations that we're having now, regarding say Woody and Tulu being underutilized. In most cases, a system offense would be our best play. And people got frustrated, but Leach wasn't changing the system, not for Tulu or anybody.
All that said, for 2023, I agree with the 'play the best 11' approach. #1, Leach is no longer here. #2, we are in one of those rare situations where we do have a great combo of talent and age. #3, again, much easier to go from a passing offense to anything else.
Longer term, I don't know if Arnett works out or not. I've always wanted to see a defensive coach at MSU, so it's intriguing. Just innovate the offense, that's all I ask. But I would like to see a 'system' implemented, maybe even at the AD level. Was the Air Raid system the best for MSU? Probably not. But there are others out there. But I hope eventually, if Barbay stays, he has an actual system, rather than just 'play the best 11', because we won't always have the star talent we have right now.
I mean if you're talking about doing the right thing here.......why hasn't anyone talked about putting Tulu at tailback? Looking at you Barrr-Bayyy....
All that said, for 2023, I agree with the 'play the best 11' approach. #1, Leach is no longer here. #2, we are in one of those rare situations where we do have a great combo of talent and age. #3, again, much easier to go from a passing offense to anything else.
Longer term, I don't know if Arnett works out or not. I've always wanted to see a defensive coach at MSU, so it's intriguing. Just innovate the offense, that's all I ask. But I would like to see a 'system' implemented, maybe even at the AD level. Was the Air Raid system the best for MSU? Probably not. But there are others out there. But I hope eventually, if Barbay stays, he has an actual system, rather than just 'play the best 11', because we won't always have the star talent we have right now.
I mean if you're talking about doing the right thing here.......why hasn't anyone talked about putting Tulu at tailback? Looking at you Barrr-Bayyy....
I’ll always wonder what Leach could have accomplished here. He definitely had things headed in the right direction. His offense and program as a whole was different than what I expected when we hired him but it was certainly working.
His offense needed an accurate thrower, 5 big wide offensive linemen, and then about 8 of your typical run of the mill receivers. Plug in just decent talent that fit that, and Leach can go 8-4. Plug in a little talent and he can win big. So the question to me was always, can he find that decent talent year in and year out here? I have to admit that the offense didn't run like a well-oiled machine here, but there again, he was only 3 years in, and it appears those QBs, WRs and OLs were stacking up. And he hired Arnett, so he gets credit for the defense too. And discipline was a non-issue during his tenure. But....we will now never know completely.
Looking back at our history, defense has always been our strong suit. Our better teams have generally had a good running game. Mobile QBs were always a part as well. So that doesn't lend itself to a high-flying Air Raid attack that we've seen at other schools. So who knows. It's one reason I'm willing to try a defensive guy to see if we solidify that side of the ball year in year out.
I still think Danny Boy was close to the perfect fit, and what a mistake he made by going to Florida (career longevity wise anyway). While he was not a defensive guy, he understood it, and tried his best to make sure we had athletes there. And of course, he innovated on offense because that's his strong suit. But he was certainly at the mercy of his DC.
I don't know what you'd call our offense the last two years, but "working" is not a term I would use. It was horrible last year, and that was with an experienced QB and one of the best WR rooms we've ever had.
I loved Leach as much as the next guy, but there were doubts about whether his offense would be successful here, and he didn't do much to remove them. I shudder to think what it would have looked like if we weren't so good on the defensive side of the ball.
"I still think Danny Boy was close to the perfect fit, and what a mistake he made by going to Florida (career longevity wise anyway). While he was not a defensive guy, he understood it, and tried his best to make sure we had athletes there. And of course, he innovated on offense because that's his strong suit. But he was certainly at the mercy of his DC."
I agree (pre NIL) but I don't know about now. The thing that jumped out at me about Dan above everything else was player development and I don't know if smaller schools are going to get to do that as effectively going forward as we did in the past due to having up-and-coming players poached via the portal. That being said I'm not sure there is a "perfect fit" anymore.
I agree (pre NIL) but I don't know about now. The thing that jumped out at me about Dan above everything else was player development and I don't know if smaller schools are going to get to do that as effectively going forward as we did in the past due to having up-and-coming players poached via the portal. That being said I'm not sure there is a "perfect fit" anymore.
I think NIL means we will continue to move away from focusing on developmental players.
And since Mississippi has so many developmental players, we'll have more out of state folks on the team (which was started when Leach became coach in 2020).
If we do this, we are about to get a crash course in how to get our asses kicked on a routine basis.
I think we continue to develop (mainly MS) players, and hope they blossom as juniors and seniors. And if they come along earlier, well, that's what NIL is for. Because we aren't going to spend much of our NIL, if any, on high schoolers. We will still use the portal too, for the high talent guys who can't get on the field at the blue blood programs. That's a part of it, as is JUCO (still). Those two things also use very little NIL.
So that being said, if Dan's way doesn't work, not sure what Arnett will be able to do, because he's recruiting the same way. We simply cannot do things like Georgia, Alabama and LSU, ya'll know this. The reason Leach went more out of state is because he had to to find the players (like I said in my first post, the Air Raid isn't a perfect fit for our local players).
I think we were seeing it already. Win the ones you are supposed to and lose to the teams with faster defenses that had no problem dropping 8 because they knew their defenders were faster and that Leach was stubborn and not going to run it
I think what you saw in 2021 and 2022 was going to be the norm for Leach. Maybe he’d have one huge year like he did at Tech and Wazzu, and heck maybe it would’ve been this year. But for the most part we were right around where he lived for the majority of his coaching tenure. Which would’ve had him up there with Mullen and Sherrill among our winningest coaches.
As frustrated as we were at times I don't think it's being a realistic STATE Fan to say Leach's O wasn't working. Sure as hell woulda loved seeing his next chapter.
Some of you guys act like last year's offense couldn't get a first down if their life depended on it. Look at the highlights of the games and we were as good as most of our opponents not named Bama or Georgia. With a solid defense (not a great one) we won 9 of 13 games. Not bad for little ol Miss State. This year's team should be strong and unless the dead injuns decide to screw with us we should be back in that 8 - 10 win range aGain.
Well, the point that many people look at and MSU fans seem to want to ignore is the term explosive plays. We just didn't make any. And you can't sustain winning if you aren't going to make those kinds of plays. We had moderate success last year, but a team can't rely on 15 play scoring drives week in and week out. We all saw how easily some drives were derailed with a holding penalty, a QB running backwards into a sack, etc.
SEC defenses, aside from those with stubborn coordinators, are generally disciplined and can follow a gameplan. The fact that many of the teams in the league could follow that plan and slow our offense to a crawl was very concerning. Nothing is ever EASY in the SEC, but we dang sure made DC's jobs less complicated by having a very specific type of offense that we NEVER deviated from.
There's always woulda, coulda, shouldas but we will never really know if Leach would have truly added a running game or a running QB to the mix or not. Things looked to be trending that way, but he could have remained bullish and decided that his way was the best way.
When have we ever had a lot of explosive plays?
And I thought it was called a ball control offense. Keeping your own defense on the bench is the best offense. But I see what you mean, the explosive play is still a fan favorite.
I'm not sure where this notion that we had some dominant defense comes from, but it's not true. We had the 40th ranked defense, and the 43rd ranked offense in the country last year.
Dominant is your word, not mine.
My position is that it was good enough to keep us in games while our offense floundered.
Your words on our offense: "horrible last year"
Your words on our defense: "so good on the defensive side of the ball"
The data does not back up your contention that our offense was "horrible" or that our defense was "so good."
We were pretty good on both sides of the ball which is why we won 9 games against one of the tougher schedules in the country.
Yeah, offense was just like it always has been under the good coaches in the 7-5 or 8-4 seasons. If Mullen had been coach, nobody would have expected much. People just had higher expectations for Leach and the Air Raid, and maybe that was rightfully deserved.
We'll never know if he could have gotten us to that peak again, but I imagine he would have eventually.
I do expect that bringing in Barbay will yield immediate results in 2023. But what happens 1, 2, 3 years from now? We will see. We might be good enough that he gets plucked. Arnett will need to come up with a plan at that point.
We have never had good offenses, for the most part, so this is probably the reason why. Why SHOULDN'T we? This always seems to be the excuse with MSU fans. Well, woe is me we have always sucked so why should we even bother doing what EVERYBODY else in college football does. We always try to do things the hard way. Explosive plays doesn't have to be 50 yard bombs down the field, it can be runs too. But you have to have the spacing to do it and not have 8 players forming an umbrella 20 yards downfield waiting for us to throw it 5 yards.
We had an offensive "mastermind", "genius" "guru" whatever you want to call him and we were almost dead last in the country in big yardage plays. We are already bringing up the rear in the SEC in terms of talent, budget, personnel, etc, yet we always insist on making it harder for ourselves. MSU can't compete at the level our fans want us to be at by have a slow, plodding 15 play per drive offense and expect to have that success.
We were 11th in the SEC in total offense and 12th in yards per play. Although we were 9th in offensive touchdowns. Not awful (the touchdowns is the most important stat after all). But not great either.
Never said we were a powerhouse but we could hold our own. I'll take points on the scoreboard over stats on a clipboard any day. According to this SEC stat sheet we were 5th in TDs and total offense for the 2022 season.
https://a.espncdn.com/sec/football/2022/SEC Stats.pdf
I think you just answered yourself as to why we lacked explosive plays. Until the second item is fixed we won't lead the nation in the first. I'm not sure why folks still struggle with that concept.
We did pretty well offensively respective to our talent level. I'm not SATISFIED with the output but I understand why we had it. With the experience we have coming in this year I expect us to at least equal last year's output, if not exceed it. If our D holds pat we should be staring 7-8 wins in the face.
Like we do most years, regardless of coach.
I made a poorly worded post. Essentially, I was trying to say the program as a whole was moving in a good direction under leach. We had a well coached team that in my opinion was becoming a better team each year under leach, we won 9 games last year. That’s what I meant by I will always what could have been.
But with that said, the offense was not terrible in my opinion. Not a juggernaut by any means but not terrible.
Leach’s offense was a mixed bag here. When it worked, it REALLY worked (see 2020 LSU, 2021 Auburn, 2021 Kentucky, etc.). But when it didn’t work, it could be really hard to watch.
I’d call it mostly a net positive. But I understand the criticisms and think it’s something we can improve upon. How soon? We’ll see in about two months.
I’d call it mostly a net positive. But I understand the criticisms and think it’s something we can improve upon. How soon? We’ll see in about two months.
Look at the conference only stats. They’re more comparable. Especially with our non-conference schedule.
We were dead LAST in Power 5 in “explosive plays” last year. Not in the SEC. Not in the South. In ALL of college football.
Whether you like that term or not, there were 120+ teams that were better than us at creating game changing plays.
I like Leach. Not bashing him by ANY means. But his offense just wasn’t good anymore.
I think people get blinded by the # of pass attempts and think how amazing it was for lil ol never been able to pass MSU but teams would have let us pass 100 times per game if it meant we were only gaining 3.5-4 yards.
The data is ******** because the data includes games against the likes of East Tennessee State, Bowling Green, and Memphis (oh, and a horrid Arizona team).
You're wanting me to ignore my lying eyes and trust the data when we were hanging 56 on ETSU and playing third stringers on defense late in games? You want me to ignore my lying eyes that saw a defense play their asses off until they ran out of steam late because our offense couldn't get them a rest every now and then?
My original point was valid. Thank you for repeating it. There might be others here who choose to look at raw numbers instead of actually what happened in games, too.
My comment was poorly worded too. "Terrible against anyone with a pulse on defense" would have been a far more accurate statement.
Very accurate but unfortunately par for the course for every coach we’ve had in the history of the program (probably).
Okay. Remind me who was on our schedule last season?
yeah I’m shocked we didn’t hang 50 on Georgia and Alabama. We’ve never had a problem doing that under previous regimes. Leach was the worst****
How about not being able to move the ball against Arkansas. Or Kentucky. Or Ole Miss. terrible games against all of them during the leach years. Why do we focus on the big boys?
We put up 40 points on Arkansas. What are you talking about?
Kentucky? Yeah, we sucked. Ole Miss? Yeah we struggled in a rivalry game and still won.
The main knock on Leach's offense that I agree with is that it puts a lot of pressure on the QB. I think Will was trying to do too much (like bootleg it into the end zone and turning it over).
But remind me - which unit gave up a 99 yard TD drive with the game on the line, again?
Yeah, the offense was terrible. Thank goodness we had that #35 defense to carry us to all those wins
There is something to history. We shouldn’t totally ignore it.
to me, the question is, what’s the easiest way to a competent, repeatable offense?….At Mississippi State.
The last part is the key.
This all day. Back to Back .500 seasons yet some STATE Moriartys still bich even on Sutherland's birthday. These same folks don't know who Geronimoe was or how to define Courage and Intelligence when the deck's stacked agin ya.
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You're being obtuse.
Or maybe you loved watching the futility against Illinois, Ole Miss, Kentucky, etc.