I think we're doing a lot of things to move this program forward but the bad thing about college is if you made a mistake in recruiting three years ago it's going to bite you down the road and even if you fix it through recruiting and that can be seen on our commitment list- Guidry can't help us at the present. And there's no trade deadline or waiver wire to pick up someone that can help immediately. As long as Dan is addressing the issues, I'm fine with it. Which is why I haven't been nearly as critical of Gonzalez as I have of Hevesy. And I will say that if Hevesy recruits better the criticism will stop there too. I hope the come to Jesus meeting is true as well and it does look like we are recruiting o-line much better than we ever have during Dan's time here.

I think MOST of our problems on our team go back to recruiting. If we had more physical WR's on the outside there is no question we would have been able to move the ball and score more on Georgia and Auburn and would have an even better chance to beat A&M and Alabama. Not being able to move the ball hurts the defense as well because they end up on the field all night and eventually they give way from being pounded on all night and we end up with a blowout. Now we may not have won those games but if we at the very least are competitive and keep it with a 10 point margin I'm fine with that. If we're competitive like that, we're going to win some of those games from time to time. And it's going to help our program because sometimes "looking impressive in a loss" can help with recruiting and things like that.

I think MSU fans are kind of in a weird spot because if you are my age as a child you were told that we would never ever be good in football outside of 1980 and that the only way for us to win was to cheat like Tyler did and then that wouldn't work because we would have to forfeit everything anyway. For a lot of those people just winning the Egg Bowl and going to the Liberty Bowl and winning it was a dream season and I think for a lot of fans that was just simply the goal because that seemed "realistic" and "possible" and a hell of a lot better than 3-8. And I think a lot of our fans resigned themselves to that being "the goal" and making a promise to themselves to never go higher than that if we ever did get to that point. Well, Dan is essentially doing that or better. But to me it seems like we have a lot of fans that are scared to even to move forward beyond that and they come up with all of these excuses why we can't or why we shouldn't..."we might piss off Dan if we tell him to improve something and then he might leave", "we screwed up firing Allyn McKeen 70 years ago...I don't want to do that again". And then we have too many fans and internet personalities I guess that if you make a suggestion that looks even a little bit critical all of a sudden you get attacked and accused of wanting Dan fired, not remembering how bad it was, and asked well, who do you think is better than Dan...for saying that we need better wide receivers or something like you would like to see us do better in big games. It's ridiculous and it's a loser mentality. If you set a goal and you accomplish it and then you don't set a higher goal and you just remain content....you're never going to reach your full potential. That's with anything in life. OK- so we're at the bowl game and winning the Egg Bowl pretty much every year level now...why not go for being a consistent 8-10 win program now? Because you as Joe Fan made a promise to yourself that you would never expect more because you didn't believe it would ever happen in your life 30 years ago? And if we don't get to that level, then so what? At least we did everything we could to be as good as we could be rather than say "Gee I wonder what would have happened if..."

But the thing that a lot of those Joe Fan's need to understand is that the goal of the criticism ISN'T to get Dan fired. It's usually that we want something to be fixed that's very easily correctable. Like Dan upgrading special teams, improving recruiting, playing younger players more if they are better than the upper classmen. Dan has done ALL of those things. He didn't leave. I'm HAPPY that he made those corrections and applaud him for it. Heck, he basically fired his college roommate last year and isn't leaving. And we're better for it- and will improve in the future. For example- Cadaver's recruiting example Dan can say the exact same thing about hard work but he just needs to add at the end of his sells pitch that the byproduct of doing that is championships in college at MSU. That's a very simple fix and doesn't compromise what Dan wants to do in any way.

So, as far as the play calling- I think Dan's play calling in general is fine. That tends to improve with better players. Inside zone looks a lot better when Aeris is running it as opposed to Holloway. 9 routes look better when Bear or Ross are running them compared to one of our outside receivers this year. I could go on with that but you get the point. But to give ourselves a chance to win against the big teams we CAN NOT have any glaring deficiencies at an entire position group like we have this year at WR. Again, that goes back to recruiting and making sure that every position group is filled three years before we play an opponent. I think if we can get to the point where we have top 20 recruiting classes and start stacking them we can get to the 9-10 win range consistently with Dan as our coach.

And I do think that Dan being a young coach and still learning is a good point. I think after 2015 when he realized how good he had it here I think he started to kind of re-focus and redouble his efforts to make us into what he wants us to be. And I think Ole Miss getting caught cheating and Cohen becoming the AD were good things for Dan as well. I think Cohen is going to be good at giving him resources he needs and helping him make good decisions off the field to becoming an elite program.

I like a LOT of the things that I am seeing on and off the field from MSU even though there are a few issues like the WR issue- but as long as I know that is being addressed I can handle and deal with it for the rest of the year.