5 interesting things to look for in the 2017 SEC season

College football is almost upon us. Soon, we’ll be in the midst of another season in the SEC!

Going into the year, here are some interesting things to look forward to:

1. Will we get a break from Bama fatigue? 

I am pretty tired of Alabama’s dominance. They have now won the SEC three straight years, and four of the last five. They’ve won five national titles since 2009. They’ve won the West six times under Nick Saban.

LSU appears to have taken a step back. As usual they’ve lost a lot of players, don’t have a QB to match their other talent and now they made a questionable hire at head coach with Ed Orgeron. Plus they’ve now lost six in a row to Alabama since the “Game of the Century” in 2011.

So if LSU is down, who from the West can challenge the Crimson Tide? Ole Miss seems to be their kryptonite but they’ve fallen on hard times. Dan Mullen has never beaten Alabama. Texas A&M, Arkansas – meh. So everyone seems to want to point to Auburn as the team that can do it. Naturally, the Iron Bowl is a fiercely competed game but Gus Malzahn’s teams have lost by an average of 15 points per game since the Kick Six in 2013.

Can anyone from the East challenge Alabama? As a division, they haven’t won the SEC Championship Game since Tim Tebow did it in 2008.

Florida keeps tallying SEC East titles with three and four loss seasons while Georgia underachieves and Tennessee is still wondering in the wilderness.  UGA might be back in 2017, but we hear that every year. With folks talking about South Carolina and Kentucky creeping up to the 2nd or 3rd best teams in the East, it’s hard to figure much will change.

Rest assured, Alabama is the heavy favorite yet again to win the SEC and return to the College Football Playoffs. Why Las Vegas tabbed them with a 10.5 over/under win total when they’ve only won less than 11 regular season games once in the last nine years is beyond me.

Visit 121 Village

2. Auburn’s Quarterback situation

Every single year we hear about this new QB Auburn has that is going to really have them contending. And almost every year since Cam Newton that guy flames out before October.

2011: Barrett Trotter was supposed to be the guy but he ends up splitting time with Clint Mosley.

2012: Kiehl Frazier was a huge talent but he was terrible and Auburn rotated QBs all year as they spun to a 3-9 finish.

2013: Gus Malzahn was going to fix Kiehl Frazier but instead it was converted defensive back Nick Marshall who played QB all year.

2014: Since Nick Marshall returned for his senior year, this is the outlier.

2015: Jeremy Johnson was going to be the best in the SEC but he was terrible so Sean White takes over.

2016: John Franklin III was going to be the next Nick Marshall but he didn’t even get off the ground before Sean White had to take over.

2017: Jerrett Stidham is going to take Auburn back to a SEC championship…..or is Sean White going to have to take over again?

3. Week 3: Ole Miss at Cal

There is a lot of racial and political tension in America right now. So this seems like a good time for Ole Miss to travel to the University of California, Berkeley….right?

Actually, no, it doesn’t. Right or wrong, but Ole Miss has a checkered past when it comes to race issues. Cal-Berkeley is known for being perhaps the most liberal activist campus in the country. That doesn’t sound like a good mix with all the angst about social issues right now.

I’m no Ole Miss fan, but I’ll be praying for no issues. Let’s just have a football game, but somehow that doesn’t seem likely.

4. The search for a week with a compelling slate of games

I can’t find a week during the season with at least a few games to look forward to. I’m sure that will change as the season progresses and preseason expectations evolve into reality, but for now I’m not seeing it.

Week 1 has some exciting non-conference games with Alabama vs. Florida State and Florida vs. Michigan. Then Week 5 has Ole Miss vs. Alabama, Mississippi State vs. Auburn and Georgia vs. Tennessee – but none of those are really high profile…..at least not yet.

October has a few weeks with at least five SEC vs. SEC games, so hopefully those will loom larger at the time than now. I’m sure a big week will pop up, but right now I’m looking at a lot of blah (maybe it’s the Bama fatigue).

5. A Mississippi State Thanksgiving

The Battle for the Golden Egg is back on Thanksgiving night this year.

As always, the Dallas Cowboys will play in the late afternoon NFL slot on Thanksgiving Day.

So that means the order of the day will be:

1. Turkey
2. Dak Prescott
3. Egg Bowl

If all goes well, they’ll all have a sweet aftertaste.

Success in the Red Zone will be key in 2017

For a number of reasons, this offseason has the feel of 2014. Maybe not quite the hype around the team, but it definitely feels like State is on the up-swing and a lot of fans are wooly.

There’s reason to feel good when you have the SEC’s leader in total yards returning at QB. The offensive line should be a lot better and potentially having a backfield that’s up to MSU standards after a couple of lost years.

I find myself pumping the brakes a bit, however, due to the defense. They were atrocious last year. Of course, young DC Peter Sirmon is out and proven DC Todd Grantham is in. So right away you have to figure the D will be better in 2017 than 2016, even if that’s not saying very much. But will they be able to equal Geoff Collins’ “Psycho Defense” of 2014?

While 2016’s offense averaged a healthy 30.6 points per game (7th in SEC), they were held to a 77% conversion rate inside the red zone (11th in SEC). Most of that had to do with a horrible 58% on field goal attempts, but we’re likely to see more of the same this fall – so finding the end zone will be huge.

Visit 121 Village

On D, red zone play will be even more important. When you compare the 2016 and 2014 defenses, they are not that far off statistically in YPG (459 to 424) or plays per game (74 to 75). What sticks out is the red zone defense and points per game, where 2014 was 13% better in RZ and a whopping 10 PPG better overall.

MSU lacks a veteran wide receiver with the height of De’Runnya Wilson, and experienced red zone stoppers like Benardrick McKinney, Matt Wells or Will Redmond.

There are a lot of play-makers that need to emerge from this roster in order to have the kind of success we need inside the red zone. You can move the ball all you want between the 20s but it’s where the rubber meets the road that determines football games.

 

121 Village: an online store for Mississippi State fans

I have a new venture I want to tell you about: 121 Village.

121 Village is an online store I co-founded with one of my college buddies. We lived at, you guessed it, 121 Academy Village in Starkville.

We came together to create 121 Village because we wanted an alternative to the Mississippi State shirts and polos provided by Adidas…..or whomever.

We are starting small with some t-shirts and decals, but plan to expand into polo shirts and who knows what else. Keeping the price down and providing something nice to wear to games is our goal.

Please visit 121Village.com periodically to check out what’s new at our store. If you’d like to be added to our e-mail list, shoot us a quick e-mail at 121villagemsu@gmail.com.

Hail State!

 

Can MSU find leadership in 2017?

Throughout the 2016 football season, MSU lacked leadership. It wasn’t surprising since Dak Prescott left a huge void to fill after two years of his overwhelming presence. But that lack  of leadership was evident throughout the season.

Mississippi State may have won the Egg Bowl 55-20….in Oxford, but I’m not sure a true leader emerged. Is Nick Fitzgerald ready to be that guy?

State was pretty mediocre in 2016. We put lipstick on a pig by becoming bowl-eligible and finishing 6-7 via a blocked field goal vs. Miami, but we weren’t really that good. It’s easy to forget about how we felt during the middle of the season because things ended on a positive note. Here’s an excerpt from what I wrote after we played Kentucky:

The leadership void has sucked the life from this team, and has them sitting at 2-5 instead of 5-2. Look at the effort on the field. The lack of awareness that comes from solid preparation. Focus, consistency, determination. This team lacks all of that, and it’s a direct result of poor leadership.

There are seniors on the team who you’d expect to be leaders, but they are quiet guys. Last year’s team lost a lot of top talent aside from Dak that makes the void even bigger. The only time this team plays hard is when Dan Mullen is intense.

Team chemistry is developed in the offseason, and leadership is an offshoot of that. But our QB is dating an NFL cheerleader, one of the best wide receivers in program history has a case of the drops and the the junior class is non-existant. The seniors aren’t leading, juniors have no talent, so that leaves you with a bunch of underclassmen feeling their way through.

Sure, there were three losses (South Alabama, BYU, Kentucky) that the Bulldogs could’ve just as easily won which would have made them 8-4 in the regular season. But the fact is, other Dan Mullen teams would have won those games handily.

There were shaky wins vs. Samford and Miami too. Albeit, they looked great against Texas A&M and Ole Miss.

Visit 121 Village

The team was just really inconsistent in 2016. I think a lot of that stemmed from a void in the leadership department. With only a handful of seniors, we’ll see who emerges to hold the team accountable. A lot of those young underclassmen will be juniors and really need to step up.

If State is going to get back to eight wins or more, it’s going to need solid leadership from key players. Without it, they’ll be scrapping for a bowl game again.