One thing about Dan's offense I never understood

I personally prefer a coach that sticks to what a team's strengths are. Be very good at your bread and butter, look at Oregon in their prime they ran the same handful of plays just out of different looks. I don't want a coach that tries to do everything under the sun. I want a coach that is confident in his system and can teach what he knows. Mullen isn't a wishbone guy. And we did change things up this year, we went under center quite a bit more than we have in the past.

I think it is more about the personnel we had at the time.

I?ve been back & forth on Mullen. Strong points are obvious. Recruiting as a weakness is really bad for a Mississippi State. Musical chairs at DC was bad. His strong points offset his weaknesses just enough to let the fan base smell what lie just out of reach - being an elite team.

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Originally Posted by SallyStansbury

Dan was big about control. He loved to control a process and was likely convinced that his system was so great if he could just get players to execute his superior plan the rest would take care of itself. What he didn't account for were his tendencies....by that I mean stuff like:
1. Him allowing Hevesy to be asleep at the wheel recruiting, poor O line talent most years resulting in inability to blow decent D-linemen off the ball. Running game suffers.
2. "Trusting" older, less talented, (think Holloway) players who are undoubtably better than younger players because of their time to sufficiently master his superior coaching.
3. Swag-aversion, Dan was the only one allowed to psuedo-swag around with his shoes, think J-Rob...& 88, and spare me, I know they were retards, but the point remains.
4. Soft D, think CB's playing well off the ball waiting for the other team to make mistakes. Cleveland still did it. Wasn't 13 refreshing in the bowl game? It was for me. Control freaks often hate being wrong, ever....so if teams like La Tech or USA dink us down the field because we are soft and happen to kick our ass, not Dan's fault because they were just great that day? Right?
5. Return game. Making folks fair catch it or only allowing us to return it straight ahead, no swagging around! No deviation from superior plan. Special teams isn't that important right?
6. Speaking of special teams, messing with our field goal kickers. Control freak tinkering. Finally got out of the way with Boniol.....seems to have helped.
7. Echo chamber.....Country Club Yes Men! I was happier with him screaming at Hud back in his first year, offense was more creative with different blocking schemes and lots more misdirection back that first year, maybe because of Gabe Jackson, Saulsberry and other talented players? Maybe because Hud helped with variation in offense play selection?? I don't know, but the longer Dan was here, the less we had any misdirection in running game, it was very predictable. Straight ahead, whichever way we snapped it that was where we were going.
8. Always putting head down and rapidly quick snapping and rushing up the middle with a crap run following a big play. Always. This takes a toll on Offensive productivity over the course of a season, because at least 4-5 times per game we would be in 2-10, 2-9 following a miserable stuffed 1st down run up the gut for no good reason. He always did this, very predictably.
9. Because he knows everything about football and is never wrong, there is never any need to second guess things or self assess, thereby leading to more predictability.

I appreciate what he did for our University and town, but I am glad to have a breath of fresh air. I wish him and his family well at FLA, and hope we beat his ass into the ground next year.

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Pretty good synopsis; particularly items 1 and 8.

I know this, you don?t have to have a 5 Star at every position to win. Everybody and I mean EVERYBODY knew after a chunk play of 20 yards or more, that we were running it straight up the middle on the next play. That?s coaching.

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Originally Posted by DogsofAnarchy

I know this, you don?t have to have a 5 Star at every position to win. Everybody and I mean EVERYBODY knew after a chunk play of 20 yards or more, that we were running it straight up the middle on the next play. That?s coaching.

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No you don't have to have a 5* at every position but it certainly helps. We will never or at least for the foreseeable future have a roster full of 5*s. Our recipe for having a shot at the SEC is a strong defense and a QB that is a game changer. Having a great QB is the equalizer for teams with less talent. We can win the SEC with a majority of 3 and 4* guys as long as we have a DAWG at QB. That is the one thing I hope Jomo can keep doing here at State signing and developing game changing QBs. Without Dak/Fitz 2014 we probably don't win 10 games. In 2015 without Dak we probably have a losing season or at the very best win 6-7 games.

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Originally Posted by PassInterference

I?ve been back & forth on Mullen. Strong points are obvious. Recruiting as a weakness is really bad for a Mississippi State. Musical chairs at DC was bad. His strong points offset his weaknesses just enough to let the fan base smell what lie just out of reach - being an elite team.

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Man that sums it up about as well as it can be done

He got lazy and complacent after 2010 and thought for sure he was gone after 2015 when Dak made big strides in the passing game. He thought he could parlay the ''QB guru'' into a job for sure.

He forgot the fact that he is at times, an intolerable asshole who knows everything about anything.

He ran every DC we had off till Sirmon and that was a figure head hire. He is an absolute micro manager. Mullen called defensive plays at times during 2016 and that is a fact.

Interview with Miami?

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Originally Posted by TrapGame

Mullen wanted to bail on us in 2010. He ****ed up his interview royally.

If you couldn't tell the difference in his coaching acumen after that then I can't help you.

Intense bastard quickly became complacent bastard.

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Originally Posted by SallyStansbury

Dan was big about control. He loved to control a process and was likely convinced that his system was so great if he could just get players to execute his superior plan the rest would take care of itself. What he didn't account for were his tendencies....by that I mean stuff like:
1. Him allowing Hevesy to be asleep at the wheel recruiting, poor O line talent most years resulting in inability to blow decent D-linemen off the ball. Running game suffers.
2. "Trusting" older, less talented, (think Holloway) players who are undoubtably better than younger players because of their time to sufficiently master his superior coaching.
3. Swag-aversion, Dan was the only one allowed to psuedo-swag around with his shoes, think J-Rob...& 88, and spare me, I know they were retards, but the point remains.
4. Soft D, think CB's playing well off the ball waiting for the other team to make mistakes. Cleveland still did it. Wasn't 13 refreshing in the bowl game? It was for me. Control freaks often hate being wrong, ever....so if teams like La Tech or USA dink us down the field because we are soft and happen to kick our ass, not Dan's fault because they were just great that day? Right?
5. Return game. Making folks fair catch it or only allowing us to return it straight ahead, no swagging around! No deviation from superior plan. Special teams isn't that important right?
6. Speaking of special teams, messing with our field goal kickers. Control freak tinkering. Finally got out of the way with Boniol.....seems to have helped.
7. Echo chamber.....Country Club Yes Men! I was happier with him screaming at Hud back in his first year, offense was more creative with different blocking schemes and lots more misdirection back that first year, maybe because of Gabe Jackson, Saulsberry and other talented players? Maybe because Hud helped with variation in offense play selection?? I don't know, but the longer Dan was here, the less we had any misdirection in running game, it was very predictable. Straight ahead, whichever way we snapped it that was where we were going.
8. Always putting head down and rapidly quick snapping and rushing up the middle with a crap run following a big play. Always. This takes a toll on Offensive productivity over the course of a season, because at least 4-5 times per game we would be in 2-10, 2-9 following a miserable stuffed 1st down run up the gut for no good reason. He always did this, very predictably.
9. Because he knows everything about football and is never wrong, there is never any need to second guess things or self assess, thereby leading to more predictability.

I appreciate what he did for our University and town, but I am glad to have a breath of fresh air. I wish him and his family well at FLA, and hope we beat his ass into the ground next year.

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Everyone has given good answers.

It's just disappointing to me to watch our highlights from 2010 and to see the creativity and how much fun we were having and also it seemed like Dan was having a lot more fun too- and then I guess he essentially just got burned out.

It's just that my hope is that a coach that is creative with less talent would be even more creative once he secured more talent into his program. With Dan it was the opposite.

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Originally Posted by shrimp

Interview with Miami?

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Yep. Supposedly he pissed off the AD by being a condescending, arrogant douche nozzle.

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Originally Posted by Todd4State

Everyone has given good answers.

It's just disappointing to me to watch our highlights from 2010 and to see the creativity and how much fun we were having and also it seemed like Dan was having a lot more fun too- and then I guess he essentially just got burned out.

It's just that my hope is that a coach that is creative with less talent would be even more creative once he secured more talent into his program. With Dan it was the opposite.

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I think my only issue with Dan's play calling wasn't necessarily with wrinkles such as lining up in the wishbone but getting predictable with play calling within our normal offensive system. You can be creative and have wrinkles that don't involve lining up in a completely different formation. I know you never want to get behind the chains but I would have liked to see us challenge defenses earlier in downs from time to time vertically which I know was hard to do this year with our deficiencies at WR.

Thats one thing I look forward to seeing with Joe's offense is more of a vertical passing attack assuming we have some WRs step up and show that we can do that. I think we all got to see during the bowl why we rarely took legit shots down the field.

Slightly OT but I still don't understand how you sign a scholarship to play WR in the SEC and manage to drop passes downfield that literally hit you right in the hands in stride. I know things happen but your only real job outside of blocking occasionally is to catch the dang football, you work on it and do it tens of thousands of times a year and yet Todd still can't catch his a**..

Dan did a good job but we clearly missed on some recruiting..due to OM being cheaters or whatever

The offense with Dak, Jrob, d?runnya, Fred, beckwith and the other guy was as good as we?ve ever had in my opinion - passing and running ...that was Fred Ross? best year the next 3 were funny, but we made the bowls and we just need to plug our holes quicker. Dan did well with developing recruits but not necessarily in time for the next year. The field goal people went down the drain during this time and we started losing more than we should have.

We should have beaten bama this year ...we just couldn?t ever and to me it?s not our players as to why we aren?t.

I think Dans creativity fell do to the situation, before Holloway there was a guy on the team who had long hair. He was the workhorse type guy on the team. Dak was a sophomore I think. A real good guy, he had long hair...real athletic, anyway he was creative with him and they made big plays. Tyler..everybody was hurt, Gus walley was out. Those years Dan was alright we still didn’t have an OLine to compete with bama tho.

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Originally Posted by PassInterference

I?ve been back & forth on Mullen. Strong points are obvious. Recruiting as a weakness is really bad for a Mississippi State. Musical chairs at DC was bad. His strong points offset his weaknesses just enough to let the fan base smell what lie just out of reach - being an elite team.

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Sounds like the Hoffman's on gold rush. Have those guys every made money on the gold?

it was just time to move on. There is always good and bad look at Ole Missy

Ole miss probably cost us champ during the Dak years with their excessive cheating, we also had injuries to blame for losses but after this Dan gave up and bolted.

Just being a devils advocate - it?s intersting that the complaint is ?dan got less aggressive and creative after 2010?, when every offense since 2013 surpassed 2010 statistically. So creativity went down and production went up?

If my memory serves we never had backups that were ready as in who would replace Redmond in eggbowl- I attribute that to ole miss because these were the years of their 10 classes.

And we all know all ole miss did was pass on cleve’s Side every pass play

Or easier explanation, when drunnya left, we stopped throwing the out of bounds type passes, and long shots to Ross and Dak and Nick started going more straight up the middle type passing or we lost luster but before that we did do some nifty passing plays.

One thing to ask yourself is why Shumpert and Holliway got so many carries? We are in the SEC and the two backs, we have, would struggle to break the starting line up in CUSA and MWC? Aeris Williams sat back and watched that BS unfold in his presence. A freshman, Kaylin Hill, was more productive than Shumpert and Holloway in their final two years? Local talent must have saw this and questioned Mississippi St Football when they were being recruited? This is at all positions. Mullen's actions, like this, were great for Ole Miss recruiting, ie, just use his actions against him? Mullen upgraded MSU. but leveled off. Because of his DNA, Mullen could play Shumpert and Holliway and not play his best back. BTW, isn't that QB at Georgia a Freshman?

I agree with all that. The special teams did not seem to be amped then and the field goal or the years after 2014 or 15

Jameon Lewis

If Lewis had another year but we could be creative and were with him. Really it’s that we were so good but our special teams, field goals were off, little things that matter as in field position at bama. We start from 10 every down until last year or so