Good Nick, Bad Nick. Good Joe, Bad Joe

[Shadow34]

I had a great time watching the win and am still celebrating. But like the coined term from our friends up north for Bo Wallace, it’s week to week with either good nick or bad nick showing up. And i guess that’s cause it seems like our coach is good one week and bad the next (yes i know captain obvious). But Damn it I can’t help but think this year could’ve been something special. Especially with our defense being bad ***.

 

[DAWGS1.sixpack]

We SHOULD be 7-0 right now and ranked in the Top 4 come Tuesday.
We are a great defensive team and with a O with a pulse in 3 games, we are undefeated

 

[Go Budaw]

Outside the Florida game which was an extreme anomoly with how well they knew our personnel and weaknesses on offense, we’ve played well at home and really poorly on the road offensively. We’ve proven to be adaptable too, beating Auburn and A&M in very different ways.

You saw tonight how bad Mond looked under the pressure, and he’s probably the 4th or 5th best passing QB in the league behind the Hawaiians and Drew Lock and maybe Jake Bentley. That is how Fitz looked in BR and Lexington against two defenses that were close to elite, but still a notch below ours. We’ll fare better in those types of games when Moorhead gets his guy in here, or turns Key / Mayden into his guy. But honestly that’s no different than Mullen. He sucked against very good / elite defenses for his entire tenure. Even with a fully established system. Anyone wanna revisit the 2014 Egg Bowl? Or last year’s UGA / Auburn games? Or every game besides last year against Alabama?

 

[mstateglfr]

We SHOULD be 7-0 right now and ranked in the Top 4 come Tuesday.
We are a great defensive team and with a O with a pulse in 3 games, we are undefeated

We could be 7-0, sure, but claiming we should be 7-0 is damn stupid.
To be that, we would have won 5 games against ranked teams.

There are 5 teams undefeated still. Claiming we should be undefeated is unrealistic and laughable.

 

[muhstate]

We could have easily had the same type season under Mullen this year. I've gone back and watched some of our earlier games and outside of Kentucky (looking unprepared and shook on the road), we have alot of execution problems. It's easy to say "Run the damn ball" but when they are constantly playing run because they know you can't pass the ball or catch the ball, it makes for a very long night for our offense.

 

[Dawg1976]

6-2 at a minimum. But if we can finish out the year strong I will be satisfied. Looking ahead to next year, what are we going to do at qb? Hard to see a true freshman walk in and take the controls. Hopefully KT improves but he looks lost right now. Can Mayden step forward and surprise?

 

[MSUDC11]

I feel like there’s a “we should have this record” element with every season. Should’ve beaten Bama and Ole Miss last year and gone 10-2, should’ve beaten USA, BYU, and UK in 2016 and gone 8-4, should’ve gone 11-1 in 2014, etc.

I feel like the only game we SHOULD have won is Florida. The other two losses were winnable games but we lost both by more than two touchdowns so it’s hard to say we are clearly better than both of those teams, especially with them being road games.

 

[Go Budaw]

We could have easily had the same type season under Mullen this year. I've gone back and watched some of our earlier games and outside of Kentucky (looking unprepared and shook on the road), we have alot of execution problems. It's easy to say "Run the damn ball" but when they are constantly playing run because they know you can't pass the ball or catch the ball, it makes for a very long night for our offense.

I agree. I think Mullen would have been 9-3 with this team, only because he wouldn’t have lost to himself in the Florida game. Most everyone on here would have still called that a disappointment.

When you look back, the game that really set the tone on many fans opinions of our team (myself included) was the Kentucky game. Before the game, we are 3-0. We watched UF lose to UK in a pretty ugly ballgame and everyone was like “well, we should win both of those games...SEC East gonna SEC East lolz”. Then we go up to Lexington with this coach we still don’t know very much about and lose 28-7 in score significantly aided by terrible officiating. Then everyone panicked. Then we lost to UF and it hit a fever pitch.

What we now know is that Kentucky is no joke...especially their defense. They are gonna win 10-11 games and may even go to Atlanta. We also know Florida is no joke either. They are going to win 10 games themselves and hold a win over a Top 5 LSU team, AND their staff knows our roster inside and out.

Another thing...Fitz has always been terrible in road games, but that didn’t get much attention before now. In 10 SEC road starts, there have only been 3 where he wasn’t just plain bad - A&M last year, UK in ‘16, and OM in ‘16. All of those teams had pretty terrible defenses. A combination of road game + good defensive opponent has always spelled disaster for Fitz. It just so happens that 3 of the 4 best teams on our schedule this yeae (and best defenses) are road games.

All that being said, I’m not saying Moorhead is definitely going to succeed long term, but he’s also not the idiot many of us portrayed him to be. Time will tell what his ceiling is when he gets his QB here.

 

[MSUDawgFan86]

We could be 7-0, sure, but claiming we should be 7-0 is damn stupid.
To be that, we would have won 5 games against ranked teams.

There are 5 teams undefeated still. Claiming we should be undefeated is unrealistic and laughable.

If State would have gotten that Fitzgerald last night all season yes they would be 7-0. Scoring 20 points beats Florida and LSU.

 

[WutheringDawg]

No such thing as good coach. Haven’t you heard? Mxxxxvroomcrxxmhxxd is as bad if not worse than Sylvester.

 

[mstateglfr]

If State would have gotten that Fitzgerald last night all season yes they would be 7-0. Scoring 20 points beats Florida and LSU.

Sure, I'll agree.
But that's an IF and not a SHOULD.
Again, there is a difference.

Had everything fallen into place and our QB been perfect, we could be undefeated.
But that is something that should be hoped for and not expected.

It's absurd to expect Fitz to be a comolete and perfect player. He hadn't been before now, so why suddenly expect it?

 

[thatsbaseball]

Game to game performance has not bothered me as much as what we saw at Kentucky. That game was a tip-off as to how far Moorehead had to go to be a competent SEC head coach. I'm not talking about X's and O's, I'm talking about doing a complete job of preparing a team to play a football game on the road in the SEC. It's now a given Kentucky is good (and well coached) and we may have lost anyway but that game was the worst overall performance we've seen by a State team since Croom. It was a total disaster that caused EVERYONE (including Moorehead probably) to question if we had hired the right man. I think the loss of swagger and confidence permeated the program and it's taken til now to start believing in ourselves again. Now only time will tell on Moorhead but he has a long way to go.

edited to ad: Basically a lot like Mullen

 

[bulldogbaja]

We have the best defense in America. I'm never sure what "we should be" means, but I do feel like we lost all three games due to coaching. If that's what he means, that the outcome was decided by someone not actually playing, then I'm on board.