Mullen, Fitzgerald Preview Bulldogs' Third Straight Top 15 Matchup
STARKVILLE, Miss. – It’s the third straight week that Mississippi State football will face a Top 15 opponent, and head coach Dan Mullen previewed his 24th-ranked Bulldogs’ matchup at 13th-ranked Auburn at his weekly press conference on Monday. Kickoff for the Bulldogs (3-1, 1-1 SEC) and Tigers (3-1, 1-0) is 5:01 p.m. CT on ESPN from Jordan-Hare Stadium. Below are quotes from Mullen and quarterback Nick Fitzgerald: Head Coach Dan Mullen
Opening statement…“It’s another huge challenge for our team. It’s our third-straight week playing a top-15 team. Always a big challenge. We’re playing three conference games against three top-15 teams in consecutive weeks, two of them on the road. It’s a big challenge for us, obviously playing an excellent football team. They have an explosive offense. They’ve got some wideouts who can play down the field. They’ve got a quarterback that’s starting to grow into the system of what they’re doing and understand what’s going on. They’ve got some great running backs. They give you different looks and a great combination of size, power and speed. Defensively, they are one of the top defenses in the country over the first couple weeks of the season. You see that in that they’ve played different styles of teams, and they’ve dominated the defensive side of the ball pretty much everybody that they’ve played. It’s a great challenge for our guys to come off of last week’s game and get back out there. It’s a great opportunity for our guys to come out and play and get a win against a top-15 team on the road.”On establishing a mindset equilibrium with the team…
“I don’t know that it has to be hammered home or established. I’m not waiting to get the National Coach of the Week award this week. There are a lot of coaches that do a great job, and I don’t know that I deserved to get it last week. As you get in the room, you’re never as good as everybody tells you when you’re good, and you’re never as bad as it is when everybody tells you that you’re bad. You’re somewhere in the middle. We’re honestly just trying to improve and get better from week to week. You’re really as good as your last play, and you’re going to be as good as your next play. When you look as a whole at a team, you’re as good as your last game or going to be as good as your next game. So that’s really the focus with our guys. A couple weeks ago, we executed at an extremely high level. On Saturday we didn’t execute and play as well, and that’s all of us as a program. If we play really well, we get a great chance to win. If we play poorly, we have a great chance to lose. That’s kind of the message to the guys; it’s not a panic. It’s like an equilibrium. It’s always somewhere in the middle.”On if the atmosphere changed during practice leading up to Georgia…
“I thought that too, but that’s a maturity thing with the team sometimes. I didn’t think we had as good a week of practice last week as we did the week before. That’s everything. You’re talking to 18 to 22-year-old guys who have all kinds of things going on. They’ve got girlfriend issues, some of them might have things going on at home, they’ve got exams, they’ve got tutoring. They’re ahead in this class or behind in this class. You’re a young football team with people patting them on the back – the family members, the uncles, the cousins, the friends and the people around campus telling them how great they are. Now this week, everyone’s telling them how bad they are. They still have all these different issues and problems going on. The key to it is to have a great mental toughness to deal with all the noise that’s around – the good, the bad, the indifferent, the school and all the other things. When you get here, focus on football so that you can play at a high level.”On Auburn sophomore quarterback Jarrett Stidham…
“He’s a good football player. One of the things is you know the kind of talent he has, but he’s a guy who’s starting to get comfortable from week-to-week. He’s a guy that has experience out there on the field and has made a lot of big plays even before he got to Auburn. Now you’re starting to see him getting more comfortable with their system because it’s different than the system he ran before.”On Auburn’s running game…
“What Gus [Malzahn] is going to do is utilize his personnel. By having the power of the backs, you can incorporate the quarterbacks. You have to defend the quarterback run. They’re going to do a good job formationally, trying to get a formational numbers advantage. They put some pretty good backs on the field with different styles. When Kerryon Johnson is running the ball, he’s kind of a long slasher. Both of them have big-play abilities, but their running style is a bit different. They’re both dangerous in what they do. Knowing Gus for a long time, he likes to run the ball, so they’re going to work and be really good at running the ball. When they can run the ball, that also makes them dangerous in the play-action.”On junior receiver Malik Dear’s injury status …
“He practiced a little bit last week. We’re still not there on the final decision yet with him. I’ve got to see. It’s still not set, one way or the other. The key is when he’s out there practicing, how comfortable is he and where can he get to? Is he still going to be 75-80 percent and going to play the year at 75-80 percent? Can he get beyond that in where he’s at? We’ll see this week at practice a little bit and see how it goes.”On similarities between Auburn and Georgia’s defenses…
“A lot of talent and a lot of speed, with a lot of great players. Schematically, they’re different in some ways, but there are similarities. Like every defense there’s crossover and there’s differences. One thing we do see is a lot of talented players out there on the field.”On improving the vertical passing game…
“The whole offense is everything tying together. To sit there and say, ‘We’re just going to get the vertical passing game going,’ is not going to change. When you can run in play-action and establish the run, that helps open the vertical passing game. When you’re completing, managing the game and checking it down a bunch, that’s going to help the vertical passing game. You’ve got to be able to call the shots down the field and hit them. You’ve got to wins some 50-50 balls down the field every once in a while. That’ll all help it.”On quarterback Nick Fitzgerald against Georgia…
“I think he was getting through reads too quickly and almost skipping guys to get through the check-downs. It’s like, I went from my first read of progression to my fifth read of progression and didn’t really pay much attention to two, three, and four.”On the development of receivers Jamal Couch and Reggie Todd…
“They’re coming along. Reggie’s a redshirt freshman and Jamal is a true sophomore who both played limited last year. They’re coming along. I see improvement in them from one week to the next. Their attention to detail is improving, and they’re learning how to play the possession better.”On senior receiver Gabe Myles’ injury update…
“Any time your starters are out, you miss their presence. Not that we don’t have guys that are good enough when the next guy up has got to go play, but there are a lot of schools where one guy goes down and another 5-star comes in. We’re not usually that type of program. We’re developing our guys and playing that way. So that hurts. But we’ll see on Gabe. We’re hoping by mid-week he can be out there practicing for us.”On how he would prepare to stop his own offense…
“I think that’s dangerous because I think we can win down the field. We didn’t win the one-on-ones. If we go catch some of those one-on-one balls down the field, Saturday might be a little bit different. I think that’s part of it. When you’re going to go throw up the 50-50 ball, you’ve got to come down with it.”On how well Auburn generates tackles for loss…
“They have a bunch of really, really talented guys. They do a nice job of scheming and making sure they’re in position. Most of them are top national players. They have talented, NFL-style players. Those guys are pretty good at disrupting things.”On how Georgia stifled sophomore defensive lineman Jeffery Simmons…
“They did a nice job of blocking him on their run game. I don’t think we executed. We got out of position a bunch on defense, and that really hurt us really more than anything else. We were out of position on some really big plays, and that neutralized a lot of it.”On senior punter Logan Cooke…
“The key is we need him to continue to improve his consistency. In the punting game especially, he’s a great punter, but it’s about consistency. It’s not 35, 34, 70. We’re looking for 45 and 50-yard punts with over a four-second hang time. That’s legitimate consistency. I know that’s what he’s working on. He’s got the strong leg and he’s got the talent. It’s just making sure he’s consistent with every kick”On junior defensive lineman Cory Thomas’ injury update…
“I don’t think Cory will be back until after the bye. We’re hoping to get him back after the bye week.”On younger running backs…
“Like I said with all the young backs, they’re learning the system and the focus. You’ve got to be consistent. If you’re going go on the road and play a big game against a real tough opponent, we can’t have missed assignments and guys going the wrong way because those end up as negative-yardage plays. Now the crowd’s into the game and they’re going crazy. You’ve got to recover from something that shouldn’t have happened because it was a mental error. Those young backs have some talent, and we’ve got to keep grinding on them to make sure they know what they’re doing.”
Quarterback Nick Fitzgerald
On what didn’t work against Georgia…
“There were 11 guys not doing their job. There were little things, like this guy not finishing his block here or the wrong hold on the run. Everything came down to just finishing plays and everyone just not doing their job.”On facing Auburn’s defense…
“They’re really good, like what we saw this past weekend. They’re going to play multiple defenses and kind of switch it up. They’re big, fast, strong, physical – everything about an SEC defense.”On improving the vertical passing game…
“Within the game play, I think calling those shots – maybe calling them a little more often or feeling the game and see how it goes. There needs to be enough time, protection-wise, to make those downfield reads.”On if he feels dared to throw deep…
“I don’t think so. We didn’t really have to throw a bunch of deep balls in the first three games. We did our jobs as an offense. We moved the ball on our own, and we didn’t have to get it at huge chunks at a time. We were consistently moving the ball five to 10-yard chunks at a time. I don’t think we have to throw it deep by any means, but I think more downfield shots will open up.On how to improve in practice…
“Everyone just really needs to stay locked-in and focused. If anything from this game, we can take it as a reality check. Maybe we thought we were a little better than we were. Maybe we got a little lackadaisical at times. I felt we weren’t really locked-in sometimes at practice. That’s going to change. We need to get back locked-in and focused like we were LSU week.”On last year’s game against Auburn…
“The game itself didn’t go too well. We had a lot of turnovers and a lot of missed assignments. Overall offensively it was not a good game.”On if the tight ends could have been utilized more against Georgia…
“I guess yes and no. It came down to the formations and the plays that we called. If the read’s there to get it to them, we’ll get it to them.”On dealing with a loss…
“Don’t get too into social media. Don’t look too much into what people say. Outside of this facility, it doesn’t really matter. In terms of a loss, it was a big loss. It was embarrassing. We kind of got our butts kicked in every facet of the game. We come into the locker room after that and have to have a really short memory. We’ll have a meeting about it, look over the film yesterday and come in today focused on the opponent and a new week to really get after it.”
