When the 2014 college football season opened, the next to last Saturday of September and the first two Saturdays of October looked to be murderers row for the Mississippi State Bulldogs with dates scheduled against LSU, Texas A&M and defending Southeastern Conference champion Auburn.
Now the Bulldogs have negotiated two-thirds of that seemingly impossible stretch of games and instead of a battered team with two losses, Mississippi State finds itself the toast of the college football world.
After they beat LSU 34-29 in Baton Rouge and followed that up with a 48-31 demolition of Texas A&M, the Bulldogs jumped up to No. 3 in the Associated Press poll. But despite the early-season success, the Bulldogs are anxious to get back on the field against second-ranked Auburn.
“Last week, it was a great win for us as a team. Guys did what they needed to do, made plays throughout the game we that needed to make,” MSU coach Dan Mullen said. “We have a tough matchup this week with Auburn. They will be the best team we play so far. Every team we’ve played so far this year has been undefeated going into the game. It’s another one.
“You look at Auburn and the type of team they are, the team knows how to win. Obviously they are the defending conference champion. They got to play for a national championship last year. Their guys know how to win. They’ve played in big games and know how to play in big games.”
“They have one of the top defenses in the conference. You look at them, they have a lot of talented players. They roll a lot of guys through on the defensive line. They got big, physical linebackers. They have great athleticism in the secondary to cover you,” he said.
State will attack the Auburn defense with an offense led by a quarterback who is an early-season Heisman Trophy favorite. Dak Prescott directed the wins over LSU and Texas A&M by completing 35 of 50 passes for 536 yards and four touchdowns without an interception. Prescott is also a threat when he tucks the ball and runs. In the past two games, Prescott has rushed 45 times for 182 yards and four touchdowns.
Mullen knows that the hype can distract a player’s focus, but he’s not worried about it having an effect on Prescott.
“We talk to him about that stuff,” said Mullen. “When you have that deal with him, the talk is he got here being Dak Prescott. If he really likes kind of what’s going on with it all, continue to be Dak Prescott. If you don’t, then change and go be something else. You’ll also see different results that come along with that. I think when you look at it that way, that’s what it is. He’s a young college kid that’s having a good time. I tell him, ‘don’t take yourself too seriously.’
“Take it with a grain of salt. Have fun with it and enjoy it. Sometimes it will be there, sometimes it won’t. All that attention, all that hype – that’s constantly changing. You just kind of take it for what it is. The reality behind it all and the people that are constant, those are the things that really matter.”
The people who are there for Prescott include a massive offensive line that protects him as if their life depends on keeping him upright. Then there is equally as impressive 5-foot-9, 215-pound junior running back Josh Robinson, who has 592 yards and six touchdowns on 79 carries, an average of 7.5 yards per carry.
“He’s a tremendous kid and such an unbelievably positive attitude. I always knew he had a lot of talent, and what you saw coming into this season was him developing maturity,” Mullen said of Robinson. “The key to that was maturity and not losing the personality that makes him who he is and so much fun to be around, but the maturity of knowing how to take care of his business.
“I think Josh has done a tremendous job of getting tough yards when he needs to get tough yards, hitting explosive plays when there are opportunities to hit explosive plays, catching to ball out of the backfield, blocking when we need him to block. That’s the maturity of just, ‘hey, give me the ball and I’ll show you what I can do when I go run with it,’ it’s being a complete football player, and that’s what we need out of everybody on our team.”
Mullen loves the ranking the Bulldogs have achieved but knows that it can all be lost if the team doesn’t continue to win.
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool. It’s fun,” he said. “Still down in there in the meetings trying to figure out how to score some points and how to shut them down. I think all of our coaches on our staff, everybody is proud with what we’ve been able to build here a little bit. This has nothing to do with our goal. Rankings and all are really cool. The only one that I see is that we’re 2-0 in the SEC with six games to go, so we haven’t accomplished all that much yet, but the rest of it is kind of cool.”
The tests continue Saturday with Auburn visiting Starkville.
“They have, I think, the most experienced quarterback in the league. He leads the league in rushing (by a quarterback). They’ve got big-play wide receivers on the outside. Obviously, they’re a great running team with a big, physical offensive line and a bunch of different backs they’ll throw at you, including their main guy who is the third-leading rusher in the SEC,” said Mullen.
“Really another huge challenge for us this week with a great team coming in. Should be a pretty exciting game, should be fun and should be a great atmosphere. We’ll be ready to go play.”