Just some numbers

[paindonthurt_]

Sherrill first 4 and 5 years

1991	Mississippi State	7–5	4–3	T–4th	L Liberty
1992	Mississippi State	7–5	4–4	3rd <small>(West)</small>	L Peach		23
1993	Mississippi State	4–5–2	3–4–1	4th <small>(West)</small>
1994	Mississippi State	8–4	5–3	2nd <small>(West)</small>	L Peach	25	24
1995	Mississippi State	3–8	1–7	4th <small>(West)</small>

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first 4 years averaged 6.5 wins
first 5 years averaged 5.8 wins

2009	Mississippi State	5–7	3–5	T–4th <small>(West) </small>
2010	Mississippi State	9–4	4–4	5th <small>(West) </small>	W Gator	17	15
2011	Mississippi State	7–6	2–6	5th <small>(West) </small>	W Music City
2012	Mississippi State	8–5	4–4	4th <small>(West) </small>	L Gator
2013	Mississippi State	0–1	0–0

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first 4 years averaged 7.25 wins

There were blabbering idiots who wanted Sherrill fired after 1995 and 1996 also.

If you asked yourself on the day we fired Croom "would you pay someone $2.5 million to coach at MSU if they could average 7 wins after year 4 and 5 with 3 straight bowl appearances (2 being New Year's day)", i'd have to believe you'd say yes or i'd have to believe you are an idiot.

 

[engie]

You are absolutely correct. The goalposts have moved since Mullen was hired.

That said, I certainly can understand disappointment with our offense. Surely no one thought we had found our "ceiling" with Chris Relf at QB in 2010...

 

[hotdogface]

You make a very good point. Some more context:

We play one more regular season game a year under Mullen than we did under Sherrill. So of course that impacts the wins.
The SEC is a far more difficult conference, top-to-bottom, under Mullen than it was when Sherrill was here.

 

[johnson86-1]

That said, I certainly can understand disappointment with our offense. Surely no one thought we had found our "ceiling" with Chris Relf at QB in 2010...

I know there are some people that are just pissed because we lost (which is unreasonable), but I think the bigger issue people are pissed about is that we wasted an entire off season without trying to address obvious problems on offense. The SEC is too tough to do stuff like that.

I also think people that aren't extremely concerned are fooling themselves into thinking a 21-3 loss to Ok St is respectable. By the end of the season, I think they'll probably be a good team. But we caught them at the right time, with no clear leader at qb and an OC that, while he ended up making good adjustments, didn't light it up initially. While I think we're much improved on defense, Ok St.'s offense isn't top tier yet.

And on the flip side, our offense sucked against a defense that was solid, but not great. OSU's defense is much improved and will be a good big 12 defense, but I seriously doubt it would be in the top half of the SEC.

I don't think there is any reason we can't get to a bowl game with our talent. But there was no reason for us to not be able to score against OSU with our talent. If we weren't going to be ready for that game, I'm not sure how we're going to get ready in the future with much less time to prepare. Pretty much the only hope for this season is that Russell was playing with a concussion and kept calling audibles to take us out of good plays, while the coaches inexplicably refused to do anythiung about it. I don't think that's what happened, and even if it was, that's still not exactly comforting.

 

[paindonthurt_]

Thats a legit argument, gripe and point, but ther is no reason

to be a complete moron about it. Thats how some people are acting.

 

[engie]

Overreaction is a staple of message boards... Nothing you can say/do will change it. We had people starting call out threads for me every single time the baseball team lost a series this year for stating up front how good I thought they were and could be and sticking with it. Just the nature of the beast...

 

[57stratdawg]

Are people really being a complete morons?

Almost everything I've read has been pretty calm and observant. There have been way more post pointing out the issues in our gameplan/substitution patterns than there have been "FIRE MULLENZ" post. In fact, DH has locked two or three threads about "Should we hire _____ as our next coach".

 

[patdog]

No question that the reaction would be much different if we had lost 38-20 instead of 21-3.

 

[WhiteShepherd07]

Lets see some numbers of Jackie's record vs top 20 opponents.. Lets also see some numbers of 3rd down conversion percentages under him..

 

[horshack.sixpack]

I agree. I will say that I'd be in favor of firing the play caller right now and trying to salvage this season. In the context of this season, that seems knee jerk and irrational. However, I don't buy into the "late season swoon" theory for last year. We pretty much saw this ALL season, last season. Up until Alabama exposed us, we scraped by and the optimists kept saying that we were just keeping the playbook vanilla until we needed it. Turns out we just sucked at calling plays (having the right plays to call, whatever). Fast forward to one game into this season and we still appear to suck in the same exact way. Since no offensive changes of substance have been made, you have to believe that either:

1) Mullen is extremely loyal to Les, keeping him around even though he can't make in game adjustments and sucks at calling plays.
2) Les is doing everything that is asked of him, doesn't deserve to be fired but Mullen is the play caller = the problem and he ain't firing himself.

I don't know which, but I see far too much evidence at every level of college football that with competent offensive coaching, points can be put on the board. And then I see what we do on offense. I don't know jack squat about coaching football, but I did learn some fundamentals life truths watching Sesame Street growing up, like "one of these things is not like the other", and our offense doesn't look anything like what i see on the college FB landscape these days.

All that being said, I hope the game was an anomaly and we are an offensive juggernaut the rest of the year and everybody saves this post to openly mock how stupid and myopic that I was.

 

[jacksonreb]

especially the west is tougher.....in the early mid 90's bama was not the juggernaut they are today nor was lsu. auburn was hit or miss and ark was just ok. msu or ole miss moving up in the west and winning 8-9 games is exponentially harder today than it has ever been.

 

[engie]

There was a time in the mid 90s that half the west was on crippling probation(s) both real and self-imposed(LSU with Hallman, Dinardo, etc..)

Bama - probation 95 and 96
Auburn - probation 93-95
Ole Miss - probation 94-98
LSU was self-imposed with bad coaches
Arky was adjusting to life in the SEC

Of course, MSU had to pull a quick one and go ahead and get ourselves put on probation in 96 -- which was what actually fried us in 2001...

There will never be a better chance to surpass some of these programs than we had in the 90s...