What is essential, needed and what is reality for this season?

[gravedigger]

For me what is essential(not regressing)is:
1. 5 wins over the teams we are certainly better than....All non conference and ole miss
2. Winning at least 2 gamesbetween Auburn,LSU,UK and Georgia

What is needed (some similance of improvement)is:

1. a 4-4 conference record or better.
2. being in the hunt for the west when we play Arkansas
3. Winning one game between USC,Alabama, Arkansas
4. Another bowl game against a high profile national program. (nebraska, notre dame, florida state etc)

What is reality (what my gut tells me):

1.Weare not as effective on offense in the beginning as we had all imagined. Offensive line losses are going to be a grind to overcome with the timing our offense requires.
2. We will emerge from the 1st 4 weeks with 3 wins andcrowing about our shot at bigger things when Georgia sticks it to us.
3. One (or more) tough injuries hit us hard on defense mid season yet....
4. We do beat uab, for once like we should have.We cannot find a way to move the ball on USC and lose. .....once again, a running back Crushes UK and we ride him to victory.
5. We win the UT martin game but not nearly as convincingly as we should,and having bama beaten late in the game, manage topull defeat from the jaws of victory.
6. We are thrashed by arkansas due to losses on the defensive side.
7. We still expect to beat ole miss and the game is far closer than it has been but we pull away in the 4th quarter.....we wind up with a music city bowl against NC State. Fans are pissed, believe they cant be any more pissed off until

Mr "just shut up, write the check and replay the 17ing 2009 cotton bowl tape" lands 11 of the 12 dandy d.

 

[1dawgfan09]

OK, sunshine.

 

[Hump4Hoops]

4 non conference games are all gimmies that we should not lose. We had more stupid mistakes in the UAB game last year than any game of the season and still won.

ole miss and auburn will both be terrible this year and should be wins, yes even @auburn. Kentucky lost their only really good player.

Getting thrashed @UGA is possible, but I don't see it. There is a very good chance that UGA will be coming off a 2-2 streak, or if a hungry undefeated (at that point, easily) ole miss team steals one in oxford, perhaps even a 1-3 record. UGA under Richt doesn't seem to handle that too well, I see them folding early if USC throttles them.

8 wins really has to be looked at as the starting point, assuming we don't regress. 4 noncon wins, AU, UM, UK, UGA.

Arkansas didn't have trouble scoring against us last year, so that won't change. Defense will not lose us the Arkansas game.

To me, "Improvement" is beating an extremely inconsistent USC team, an overhyped LSU team, or an entitled Upig squad. I feel very confident that if Mullen is worth his salt, he'll win at least 1 of those.

We can't control our bowl opponent. Hell, had we beaten Arkansas last year and the SEC had lost a BCS game, there was a very large chance we were a 9 win team going into the ******** music city bowl. We can show "some similance of improvement" by winning at least 9 games in the regular season then beating by an impressive margin whoever we are put up against. Don't tell me that we can't improve as a team just because we get put up against Texas Tech or Clemson in a bowl game. If we beat them by 20, nobody can question us.

Don't give me the "we'll lose a game just because we're high on ourselves" crap. That might be true for Stansball, but not football under Mullen. This is a team with a culture that for so long has been "poor lil' MSU" that we had forgotten what confidence was. The right amount of confidence, swagger, whatever you want to call it, is great. I want a Chris Relf that isn't afraid to throw a bomb to Bumphis or take a chance knowing that Perkins has his back, not a Relf that's going to run east then west or throw panicked ducks.

MSU finally has some ******** swagger. Mullen will keep their heads on straight.

I could easily see how we could end up with 6 or 7 wins. Anything's possible. But Merlins is magical. I wouldn't see it as farfetched that we beat LSU and crush USC.