Has anyone considered that this team finished about where it should have?

[Tin Cup Cowboy]

I believe most of the vitriol that is being spewed on this board is due to some of your own personnel expectations not being met. Maybe this team really just wasn't the juggernaut some of you allowed yourselves to believe it was.

Where exactly do you propose we picked up that 9th or 10th win?

Bama?
LSU?
A&M?
Ole Miss?
Northwestern?

So let's say we beat Northwestern, are we magically a better team? Any of you that were positive we would crush Ole Miss consider they were a better team than us this year?

Sure there is room for improvement, but some of you need to get a friggin grip on reality. Five years ago if I would have told you Mullen's record without a name attached you would have taken it in a heartbeat.

An 8 win season is an 8 win season, we beat the teams we were supposed to beat. Just because some Ole Miss homer tells you we didnt' beat anyone doesn't make this a good season.

 

[tenureplan]

championships

nm

 

[SwingAway]

Where have you been? It's not about beating 8 cupcakes. It's about not even belonging on the same field as half of our conference opponents especially getting drummed by our rival who won 2 games last season. It's about quitting and a coach not seeming to care.

 

[Indndawg]

Its not so much that we lost to these teams but it was how.
Ole Miss' players said for public consumption our players "quit" Quit. You don't quit when you're playing your rival, in a non-meaningless game. This team has few leaders and reflects its coach in many cases. Giving up and talking smack and then getting shamed.

 

[FlabLoser]

I think that the 2nd half season defensive meltdown, and lack of a running game scheme, cost us 1) a victory @LSU Ole Miss, and 2) a fighting chance to upset @LSU.

I didn't say we should have beat LSU. I'm saying that we were really close to making it a one score game with time left in the 4th in a game where LSU moved the ball against our super soft no-QB pressure scheme. With a better...heck, with an average MSU defense, we give ourselves a chance to win that game.

 

[thatsbaseball]

If many had known how weak this schedule would be most would have predicted more than 8 wins and there would be even more disappointed people than we have now. We should have won 10 games, Ole Miss being no.9 and NU being no.10.

 

[patdog]

Uh, yeah. I do propose that the 9th or 10 win should have come from Mississippi and Northwestern. Those were 2 very winnable games and we weren't really even competitive in either one of them. With our schedule, we should have won at least 9 games this year.

 

[CadaverDawg]

I think the OP in this thread is a little extreme, but there's some truth in what he's saying. Last year everyone was saying things like, "we needed to keep scheduling easy games because getting to bowl games is what matters", and "it doesn't matter who we beat, just that we make bowl games right now", and "Let's make bowl games for 5 or 6 years straight before we step up the schedule...that way we have better talent", etc.

Well, here we sit, 3 straight bowl games, 8 wins, two great recruiting classes in a row, and what are we hearing on here....things like "8 wins, but they were all cupcakes", and "it's not the 8 wins, it's how we played", and "it's not the losses, but that the losses were bad and 1 was to OM." I'm included in the group saying it too, so I'm not calling people out. But what happens when next year the schedule is tough and we only win 5 games?? Everybody bitches about us not needing to schedule Ok State, and even if we play Bama and LSU and everybody else close, it won't matter because why?? Because we didn't make a bowl game. Then you will hear, "see, we should have scheduled easier because a weak 8-4 with a Gator Bowl is better than a strong 5-7 with close losses in all 7 games against good teams".

I say we are in better shape making our adjustments and staff changes while still winning 8 games and getting good recruiting classes, than we would be otherwise. Plus, having your rival return from the dead always makes a season seem a little worse than it was, but nobody wants to admit that. I will agree that we didn't play to our potential, but a bad 8-5 as a State fan is something I can tolerate, at least long enough to see what adjustments are made by the Head man who got us back to relevance.

 

[Tin Cup Cowboy]

Bingo

 

[Tin Cup Cowboy]

Come on pat, you know that win yesterday would not have amounted to anything.

You are typically very rational so I will ask you, now that the season is over, do you believe we had a better team than Ole Miss this year?

I do not.

And as for the other's replies regarding effort, I'm in 100% agreement on that, it was disappointing at times. However, I see no room to ***** about the record. No State fan should ***** about being 8-5 IMO.

 

[NCDawg.sixpack]

Yeah, I saw no. 37 on our team shaking Moncrief's hand before the Ole Miss game was over. We just don't have the fire that it takes to be real competitive. Guys are just moping around with no sense of desire to win. Same with our coaches. What do you think Saban would have said to Whitley yesterday after throwing the ball down resulting in our getting a 15 yard penalty and giving us bad field position. I didn't see Mullen say anything to him.

 

[patdog]

We should have had a better team than Mississippi this year. No doubt about it. We had more talent than they did. A lot of people are going overboard, but there is good reason for a little bitching after these last 2 games. I do agree that I'll take 7-6, 8-5 back-to-back most any time at MSU. The last 2 years have been better than all but a few 2-year periods in our history.