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Dan Mullen Previews MSU's SEC Opener Against South Carolina
Mississippi
State head coach Dan Mullen previewed the Bulldogs’ Southeastern
Conference opener against South Carolina at his weekly press conference
on Tuesday.
The Bulldogs and Gamecocks are set for a 6
p.m. CT kickoff live on ESPN2 with Mike Patrick, Ed Cunningham and
Laura Rutledge calling the action. “SEC Nation” will also be on hand
prior to the game, broadcasting live from the Junction from 9-11 a.m.
Below are quotes from Mullen’s press conference:
Opening Statement
“Obviously
[we have] a big game this week. When you kick off conference play, it’s
critical for us to always get that front foot conference game. A lot of
the time it will kind of dictate how the rest of the conference season
goes -- not always, but a lot. It’s a big game for us, obviously
playing a team with a new coaching staff, they have the big advantage
of actually opening on a Thursday night, which I know is a huge
advantage for a lot of teams. They have a little extra time to prepare
for us, a little extra time to get healthy, get well, after training
camp and the first game so that’ll be a challenge. Especially with a
new staff, a whole new staff in, you’ve only got one game on these guys
as a staff and what they’re doing. They’ve got a good football team,
and they’re playing a two-quarterback system with the young freshman
kid, a young dynamic player. They can run, hurt you different ways and
the older kid really came in threw the ball well. They’ve got some
explosive wide receivers, an excellent tailback. On the defensive side
of the ball they’ve got some experience, guys up front who can rush the
passer, be physical at the point of attack and some veteran linebackers
that are at the next level, so it’s going to be a big challenge for our
guys and we’ve got to be ready to go play at a very high level come
Saturday.”
On South Carolina…
“[We] have limited film on
what they do, and being a defensive coach Will’s (Muschamp) always done
a great job. Their guys play hard with a lot of energy, very very sound
in what they do and we expect them to come after us. I think being at
Auburn last year, he came after us last year a lot, so we expect them
to bring a lot of pressure.”
On practice after the South Alabama game…
“We had a good practice yesterday, a good physical practice. We worked hard, got after it, and went back to work.”
On what he expects from the team against South Carolina…
“[I
expect a] team that goes out and plays hard and plays with relentless
effort, passion for the game; the same thing I want to see every
Saturday from our guys. I want to see 11 guys on the field going as
hard as they can every single snap, with the support of all the guys on
the sideline ready for their opportunity to get out on the field.”
On issues during South Alabama game…
“A
couple of issues that we had were critical errors. I thought overall we
played well; if you look throughout most of the game, a solid
performance, then several critical errors at key moments in the game,
not just from the offensive line, several positions. If you look at
grades, guys actually graded pretty well, did a good job, and then
there would be a glaring critical error at a key moment of the game.”
On linebacker Leo Lewis…
“He
made some plays. It’s good to see him get some play action. As a young
player he has to learn the standard of play and how to play hard every
single snap. It was good to see him out there and make plays in a live
game situation.”
On potential starter change against South Carolina…
“Everybody competes every single week for us. We’ll see how everybody does in practice this week.”
On running back participation in first game…
“I
think each guy got some carries and got some work out of the backfield,
got different touches. There’s only one ball. There’s a lot of people
who would like it into their hands, so we’ll keep working as hard as we
can to get as many people touches as we can.”
On injuries…
“We expect everybody, nobody missing any time after last week’s game”
On defensive end A.J. Jefferson…
“He’s
a team captain for us and he’s worked hard. You expect that. He’s a
fifth-year senior. You expect that out of guys, to come in and perform
their senior year, perform their best. He’s responsible now to go set
that standard, whether it’s been Ryan Brown or Preston Smith or Josh
Boyd, or Fletcher Cox, or Pernell McPhee. For all those guys on the
defensive line, he’s expected as a veteran guy in that unit to set that
standard extremely high, and make sure the young players live up to it.
You have to do it in every aspect. It’s got to be done in practice, but
he’s probably our most productive defensive lineman in practice. He
makes the most plays in practice.”
On punter Logan Cooke…
“Logan
did ok, solid. You got the one punt tipped and that was all on him on
get-off time. I think he’s a guy that we have a lot of confidence in.
He found out he was playing about three minutes before he had to go
kick the ball, in a big, big game. He’s very comfortable with game
transition, so I don’t think that some of the nerves and stuff that
come sometimes with younger guys affect him. He’s become kind of an
older guy now, but only just starting his third season here on campus.
He’s a guy that plays with confidence when it comes to game time.”
On South Carolina QB Perry Orth…
“You
can see as a veteran player, despite his first year in the system, he
understands what they’re trying to do. He throws the ball well and is a
very willing runner. For me, as far as quarterbacks, I like guys who
are willing runners. Dak Prescott was a willing runner, maybe not a
dynamic runner, but somebody that’s willing to run and get tough yards
and do what you need to do in the system. So I think he has experience,
understands their system, what they’re trying to do, and can really
execute their offense.”
On team mistakes against South Alabama and consistency…
“There
are issues everywhere that we’ve got to get fixed. Defensively, we had
three three-and-outs, created 12 negative yardage plays, and then a
bunch of zero yardage gain plays, so over a third of their plays were
zero or negative yards. The issue is we gave up 12 explosive plays.
It’s the consistency of performance. Not “can we do it?” We can do it,
because we’ve shown that we can do it. We have to do it every single
snap of the game and have a consistent performance.”
On the difference between MSU’s first and second half performances…
“I
think a little bit of our effort and execution really dropped in the
second half, and the mental and physical toughness aspect of it is
where it came from, which is something we always take a lot of pride
in. You see most of our negative breakdown, whether it is a guy
straying to the ball, whether it’s a major mental error or critical
error that happened, or a major mistake and you break them down and
they happen in games. There were very few of those plays in the first
half and there were a much larger number of them in the second half.”
On freshman wide receiver Jamal Couch…
“I
think he was helped by early departures of some other people, so there
was an opportunity to be filled for him to go play. He worked hard. You
could tell he was a guy who worked in the summer, which is one of the
bigger challenges for freshmen to get on the field, not just their
physical abilities, which he has some size and physical abilities, but
how fast mentally you can pick things up. I think he did a good job
picking things up mentally and putting himself in a position.”
On lack of turnovers…
“We’re
going to take what teams give us. What I did see with the film is them
playing way off down the field so it doesn’t make any sense if they’re
standing way deep to sit there and throw the ball to one of their guys.
I was pleased we didn’t turn the ball over.”
On lack of creating turnovers…
“Give
credit to them, that’s their execution. They executed well. Their
quarterback took care of the ball. You have to create turnovers but
also the other team has to give it up too. To be honest with you,
pretty clean game from both sides, not massive amounts of penalties.
Obviously, we had several critical penalties at key moments of the
game, and they’re mental penalties, but no turnovers. I think both
teams executed well for the first game.”
On missed opportunities to make big plays…
“There
were a couple and they resulted in critical errors, whether it was we
hurt ourselves with a penalty that erased a couple of big plays or we
missed a block or missed a protection. We had eight explosive plays,
which is the minimum to me that you want. The goal is that you have to
have at least eight explosive plays. We had eight. You’d like to have a
lot more.”
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