Mississippi State hosts UH in Starkville this weekend after fumbling away potential upsets of two ranked teams in the last two weeks.
Two weeks ago, the Bulldogs fumbled four times against Associated Press No. 4 LSU and lost by four after they failed to punch it in on three straight plays from the LSU 1-yard line late in the fourth quarter.
Last week, they fought hard but eventually fell 42-31 to then-No. 25 Georgia Tech, thanks to four fumbles and an interception.
Head coach Dan Mullen says the problem starts at the top with himself.
‘Turnovers are something we preach, and, obviously, I’m doing a real poor job as a head coach in doing that,’ Mullen said after the Georgia Tech game.’ ‘We turned the ball over (nine) times in two weeks, and that’s coaching.’
Mullen, who was previously the offensive coordinator at Florida, has brought new life to the Mississippi State program in his first season as head coach and is hoping to reverse its recent misfortunes with a win over a dangerous UH team.
‘We’ll have our hands full this week, with one of the top offensive teams in the country coming to town,’ Mullen said.’ ‘This will be a unique challenge for us, and Houston is coming off a tough loss last week, but the week before everyone was saying they should be a top-10 team.’
The Bulldogs will face an offense drastically different than the one they faced last weekend. Georgia Tech runs an option attack reminiscent of the Nebraska teams of the ’90s, while the Cougars run a spread passing attack that is near the forefront of college football’s offensive evolution. Although the Yellow Jackets passed for more than 250 yards against his defense, Mullen doesn’t think there’s much they can learn from it that can be applied to their game with Houston.
‘We’ve got to do a good job of playing the full pass game,’ Mullen said. ‘I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of carryover, even though we gave up a bunch of big plays in the pass game (Saturday).’ There’s not a carryover between the two games because it’s so different.’
The Cougar’s shaky defense, which gave up 581 total yards to UTEP (including 305 rushing yards), gives Mississippi State reason to be confident. Bulldogs senior running back Anthony Dixon is ranked 15th in the Football Bowl Subdivision with an average of 106.8 yards per game, and the Cougars’ run defense is ranked near the bottom at 113th out of 120 programs. However, Mullen thinks those statistics are misleading.
‘Their defense plays a lot of snaps every game, because their offense scores so quickly. The defense has to play [the] majority of the game,’ Mullen said. ‘It is a simple math problem: The more plays you play in a game, the more yards you are going to give up.’ I think it is deceiving when you look at that stat, because of how many plays their defense plays a game.’
This week Mississippi State has focused on limiting turnovers. Dixon told The Jackson Clarion Ledger that the coaches had emphasized the importance of not turning it over before Monday’s practice.
‘We really believe that’s what’s been holding us back,’ Dixon said.’ ‘We feel like we’ve been beating everybody. We feel like we’ve been winning the games, as far as the battle; we’ve just been losing the war.’
