One Thing That Always Confused Me About Dan Mullen...

[StarkVegasSteve]

Wish people would stop perpetuating this myth. He didn't want to stay home to play football so he went to ..... Oxford, MS. I can assure you that if AJ Brown and his Father had thought the situation (an offense featuring WRs) and the money were right, he would have played in Starkville without any reservations.

My bad, I should've expounded on that situation, him not wanting to stay in his hometown for college was ONE OF THE MANY REASONS AJ went to Oxford.

[PGHBulldogBG]

I wouldn?t want to stay in my hometown either for college. I traveled 850 miles to go to Miss State. Wanted a change of scenery for 4 years

[dawgday166]

I get this. I'm not debating on why we didn't get AJ Brown, Treadwell or guys like that.

I'm debating on how missed on talented guys that we could've easily had but misevaluated

Treadwell is an easy answer .. he's from Illinois. AJ ... lots of rumors and probably some truth around that one.

[Tbonewannabe]

We missed on those two because Treadwell was never interested in us, not shocking being that he was from inner city Chicago, and AJ didn't want to stay at home to play college football.

But for others, I think the simple reality is that we missed on kids because of a combo of things such as lazy recruiting, a bad scheme for WRs, no history of putting WRs in the league, and not much high level in state talent at the position.

As far as putting guys in the NFL, UM wasn't any better than us before Hugh started recruiting with red backpacks. Eric Moulds is a top 3 receiver in Bills history and Justin Jenkins played for a few years.

UM pretty much had Mike Wallace before Moncreif.

I will say that we have typically concentrated on a run game and good defense to win games for the majority of MSU history. We have never truly had an offensive philosophy like Leach brings. We might have had one or two years of throwing the ball but typically that is not the norm.

UM has leaned more towards that style offense historically.

[smootness]

Bolar, Jaylen Smith, Jordan Duncan, numerous Memphis WRs, etc...

I'll comment on these.

CJ Bolar - I would definitely call this a miss. Good already as a freshman, though he took a big step back last year.

Jaylen Smith - good WR who was never really great, struggled a lot once Lamar Jackson left, wasn't drafted. Could have helped us for sure, you can call it a miss, but I don't see it as a huge deal.

Jordan Duncan - Never did much for a mediocre Cal team, wasn't drafted. I don't see how he would have helped us much.

Memphis WRs - I honestly don't much much about their WRs, but they've had one drafted since 2003. That was Anthony Miller, and he was a 2nd round pick just 2 years ago, so that could be a miss. But he's from Memphis and was hardly recruited...by anybody. Not sure you can fault Mullen for that.

If this is the kind of group you're talking about, I'm not sure it's something worthy of taking Mullen to task over. There will always be misses and guys who aren't rated as high who end up having some success, and you won't get all of them. And our WRs haven't been great consistently, that's definitely true. I think you can get onto him overall for the WRs under State.

But this group? Are these guys better than Bumphis, Bear, Ross, even Jameon Lewis? No. They would have given us depth, and we'll see if Bolar becomes something. But overall, it's not a very impactful group.