the statistical reality. Please take it easy on me - and don't misread my username to assume I'm the definition of a female dog - I'm just an actual female dawg that loves football.
I spent an hour this morning on the SEC website - and these are the facts about Mississippi and us when doing a year end SEC only statistical comparison:
Offense:
Rushing - Miss - 11 MSU 13
Passing - Miss 3 - MSU 5
Total O - Miss 6 - MSU 9
Scoring - Miss - 6 MSU 8
Defense:
Rushing - Miss 7 MSU 12
Passing - Miss 12 MSU 7
Total D - Miss 7 MSU 9
Scoring - Miss 9 MSU 8
To make this an apples to apples comparison - we each played the 6 other SEC W teams including each other. But - we played UK and UT and they played UGA and Vandy. This is how those teams ranked:
UK finished 10, 14, 14 and 14 in the offensive categories and 10,11,12 and 13 in the defensive categories while UT finished a respectable 6, 4,4,4 in offensive categories but a deplorable - 13,14,14 and 14 in defensive categories.
Vandy finished - 7,7,8 and 10 in offensive categories and 11,3,6 and 5 in defensive categories while UGA finished - 4,6,2 and 3 on offense and 5,5,4 and 3 on D.
Unfortunately for my analysis - it appears that they played statistically better teams (although UT's offense was similar to UGA's offense statistically). Defensively - they played much better (statistically) teams than we did. We played the 2 worst (statistically) defenses in the SEC - yet they finished higher than us in every offensive category.
Additionally - they finished higher than us in almost every meaningful statistical category while playing 2 teams clearly ranked higher statistically than we did (all other competition being equal).
The SEC teams we beat had a combined conference record of 3 and 29. The teams Miss beat had a combined record of 6-18.
So - here's my beef with Mullen. This is year 4. Bucky is in year 1. They were expected to be horrible and a month ago we were thinking a BCS bowl on the outside and 10 wins at worst. Why should I be optimistic going forward when we are keeping (according to your sources - I don't know) our DC and we are losing Banks, Broom, Slay, Boyd and Cam on D. I see the O being the same or better if Coach finally starts playing Dak - but we lose a lot of a Defense that was in the bottom half of the conference.
How will next year be any better? We not only lose some serious D talent but the schedule flips. We have to go to USC and play OSU. That's two games harder than this year.
8-4 is great until you start breaking it down. I will be in Jacksonville rooting for my dawgs and clanging my bell just like I was in Oxford (sans bell).
I spent an hour this morning on the SEC website - and these are the facts about Mississippi and us when doing a year end SEC only statistical comparison:
Offense:
Rushing - Miss - 11 MSU 13
Passing - Miss 3 - MSU 5
Total O - Miss 6 - MSU 9
Scoring - Miss - 6 MSU 8
Defense:
Rushing - Miss 7 MSU 12
Passing - Miss 12 MSU 7
Total D - Miss 7 MSU 9
Scoring - Miss 9 MSU 8
To make this an apples to apples comparison - we each played the 6 other SEC W teams including each other. But - we played UK and UT and they played UGA and Vandy. This is how those teams ranked:
UK finished 10, 14, 14 and 14 in the offensive categories and 10,11,12 and 13 in the defensive categories while UT finished a respectable 6, 4,4,4 in offensive categories but a deplorable - 13,14,14 and 14 in defensive categories.
Vandy finished - 7,7,8 and 10 in offensive categories and 11,3,6 and 5 in defensive categories while UGA finished - 4,6,2 and 3 on offense and 5,5,4 and 3 on D.
Unfortunately for my analysis - it appears that they played statistically better teams (although UT's offense was similar to UGA's offense statistically). Defensively - they played much better (statistically) teams than we did. We played the 2 worst (statistically) defenses in the SEC - yet they finished higher than us in every offensive category.
Additionally - they finished higher than us in almost every meaningful statistical category while playing 2 teams clearly ranked higher statistically than we did (all other competition being equal).
The SEC teams we beat had a combined conference record of 3 and 29. The teams Miss beat had a combined record of 6-18.
So - here's my beef with Mullen. This is year 4. Bucky is in year 1. They were expected to be horrible and a month ago we were thinking a BCS bowl on the outside and 10 wins at worst. Why should I be optimistic going forward when we are keeping (according to your sources - I don't know) our DC and we are losing Banks, Broom, Slay, Boyd and Cam on D. I see the O being the same or better if Coach finally starts playing Dak - but we lose a lot of a Defense that was in the bottom half of the conference.
How will next year be any better? We not only lose some serious D talent but the schedule flips. We have to go to USC and play OSU. That's two games harder than this year.
8-4 is great until you start breaking it down. I will be in Jacksonville rooting for my dawgs and clanging my bell just like I was in Oxford (sans bell).