Brian Hadad is in a heated Twitter debate....

[Goldendawg]

5 and 7 last year with the UM stomping bringing a lot of forgiveness. We barely beat Miami of Ohio of all people to go 6 and 7. Don't forget Holloway up the middle as a feature back either. We now beat our OOC opponents regularly, the set East opponent usually, and some other West also rans. We are still far from beating Ga. and Auburn regularly. (And bama is ruining the league)

[Bodaski]

Saying MSU has hit its ceiling by becoming a pretty regular 8 game winner. That we'll never consistently become a 9-10 win team.

Agree? Disagree?

Should MSU fans be happy and content? Is it wrong for MSU fans to want to take another step?

Thoughts?

As long as we consistently recruit mostly 3* and a few 4* guys I don't think you should expect anything more and if we continue down this path and it looks like we are, then I have to agree with Brian as well. I think we get about as much as we can get out of our talent each year. We may slip up and find an acorn here and there some years, but if we continue to do what we have been doing, why would it change?

[Bulldogg31]

As long as we consistently recruit mostly 3* and a few 4* guys I don't think you should expect anything more and if we continue down this path and it looks like we are, then I have to agree with Brian as well. I think we get about as much as we can get out of our talent each year. We may slip up and find an acorn here and there some years, but if we continue to do what we have been doing, why would it change?

I've got a good friend who is a bigtime Georgia guy. We were together last weekend and got into a discussion about State and why we didn't compete better with UGa. I told him Mississippi just doesn't produce enough top-level talent every year to support one D1 power, much less 2 (or 4 if you count LSU and Bama cherry picking off the top.) So we looked it up.

This year (from memory) Mississippi has zero 5-star guys, and three or four guys who are 4-stars. By contrast, Georgia has four 5-star kids, and every kid in their top 30 was four-star or better.

I'll bet none of those Georgia kids grew up hoping to play for Mississippi State. We are absolutely fighting an uphill battle every single year. We will never be a Top 10 recruiter unless we go the Ole Miss route which we all know will send us back to purgatory.

Mullen's doing a very good job. Let the man keep building and improving our reputation by developing NFL players and I'm betting more kids WILL grow up wanting to play for us.

[BrunswickDawg]

I think Cohen is the opposite- and he loves football just like Keenum loves it. I don't think they are going to let any coach slack around. Obviously I think we all agree that firing Dan for not recruiting o-linemen would be extreme. I do think what they would do if they were unhappy about enough things they would just not give him an extension like after 2015. And if he fixes those things I think they would go ahead and give it to him- like after 2016.

And I'll say this about Dan and I was wrong about this with him- he seems like he does and is willing to adjust. I don't think he is nearly as stubborn as many make him out to be. He has mostly given up coaching special teams and hired a good kicking coach, he demoted Sallach which a lot of people never thought would happen in order to get Looney who is a better recruiter and coach. Dan hired Grantham after we told him we would pay whatever we needed. So, I don't know if he had a come to Jesus talk with Hevesy or not- but it honestly wouldn't surprise me if he did. To me it looks like our o-line recruiting is starting to pick up for the first time since 2009 so whatever happened it appears to be working.

I still think a lot of that was Loafers not wanting to stretch the budget. Notice how a lot of Dan?s ?lack of fire? as some call it dovetailed with Byrne leaving and ?reignites? with Cohen. Loafers was cheap. I still think that is why Dan didn?t get extended after 2015 - but got more off field staff and some raises for on field staff (as we hired new guys). Loafers would only pay for Dan or more assistant money not both. It?s hard to get things done or want to get things done if you feel like you don?t have what you need to compete. I think Scott had just enough LT bred into him not to want to go above what he thought the budget should be.

[Dawgology]

Our biggest problem is splitting talent between 3 state schools and then our proximity to Bama and LSU. With the downturn of USM and tsun's impending implosion we are set to make a move that could lock this state up for MSU for the forseeable future. I hope we do because IF we can then the sky will be the limit.

ETA: with a couple more wins over LSU like the one this year we at least won't have to worry about them cherry picking too much either.

[BayouDawg]

Should have beaten LSU his first year. "Just give the ball to Dixon"

Yep that's an area where I think we can improve on to increase our win totals. Taking advantage of the opportunities in close games. There have been about 12 of them in *******'s tenure that we have come out on the wrong end. If we can improve in those situations and get those wins when the opportunity arises, we could approach the 9 win average.