Scout.com seems to think Mullen was the right fit!

rebelrouseri

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Jan 24, 2007
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"Under Ed Orgeron, Ole Miss was viewed as the team that was such a loaded outfit that wasn't quite performing.
Viewed by whom? At best, we had serious issues w/ depth and never found a decent qb.

He thinks it will be State's highest-ranked signing class. "I'm very surprised. … I'd be surprised if Mississippi State has ever recruited a top-20 class, rankings-wise. In fact, I'm pretty sure they haven't."
Prepare to be surprised. You only have to go back to '03 to find a no. 20 class. '02 was no. 17.
 

RebelBruiser

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Aug 21, 2007
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Especially the part about Orgeron's loaded teams. I'm sure the guy never realized that Cutcliffe's 2004 class was a disaster that fell apart numbers-wise, Orgeron's 2005 class only had 9 players remaining during the 2008 season, and Orgeron's 2007 class only managed to get 15 players through to the 2008 season.

So, if it weren't for the one good recruiting class Orgeron put together, we would've barely been able to field a team. As it stood, we were still moving guys to positions they couldn't play just because we didn't have depth. Cecil Frison (a TE) was playing 2nd team DT at one time for Orgeron. Jamarca Sanford had to start some games at LB. We were far from loaded. Loaded teams don't have those problems.
 

patdog

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May 28, 2007
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So you might want to give him just a little credit for his recruiting.
 

RebelBruiser

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Aug 21, 2007
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There were 42 scholarship players on our 2008 roster that you could call Orgeron recruits. The rest were either walk ons, Cutcliffe recruits that redshirted a year, or Nutt recruits that were true freshmen.

So, no, I don't consider leaving 42 scholarship players out of a possible 75 over a three year period to be a good recruiting job (an average of 14 players per class). Yes, a lot of our top players were Orgeron recruits. However, you can't say he left a juggernaut in place. The numbers don't lie. We had a ton of holes this year that needed to be patched and a lot of depth issues. Regardless of who you recruit, 14 players per class is not getting it done, and it's definitely not creating a "loaded" team as this article suggests.
 

RounderReb

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Aug 6, 2008
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Jevan Snead = Dan Werner. Orgeron deserves 0 credit for that. In fact, that's the only thing Dan did worthwhile during his tenure in Oxford.

Cutcliffe:
Peria Jerry
Mike Wallace
Jamarca Sanford
Marshay Green
Maurice Miller
Reid Neely
Jason Cook
David Traxler
Chris Bowers
Dustin Mouzon
Justin Sparks

Orgeron:
McCluster
Shay Hodge
Michael Oher
John Jerry (Cutcliffe had him committed the year before)
Greg Hardy
Daverin Geralds
Kentrell Lockett
Jonathan Cornell
Ashlee Palmer
Tony Fein
Josh Shene
Marcus Tillman
Kendrick Lewis
Cordera Eason
Cassius Vaughn
Markeith Summers
Lawon Scott
Ted Laurent
Lamar Brumfield
Johnny Brown

Nutt:
Enrique Davis
Brandon Bolden
Patrick Trahan
Gerald Harris
Emmanuel Stephens

Did this off the top of my head so I may have left some off. As you can see Cutcliffe recruited 7-8 key players for our success. Especially the top 7 on his list, along with Sparks because of his excellent special teams play this season.