WMD's Thoughts on the Pirate Life of MSU

[War Machine Dawg]

I think C34 has already said most of what I think, but here goes.

1. Leach is a helluva coach. You don't win nearly 150 games at TTU and WSU if you aren't a damn good coach.

2. Pulling a sitting P5 coach is huge. I would have preferred an up-and-comer type from G5, but pulling a sitting P5 coach is a huge statement for us.

3. I'm concerned about the fit. Leach runs a very specific style of offense. And frankly, it's one I don't think MSU and our recruiting footprint is ideally suited to running. MSU has always been a physical, hard-nosed, blue collar type of school and offense. Leach's Air Raid is about as far away on the finesse side as you can go, even more finesse than Moorhead's RPO system.

4. If anyone can make Air Raid work in the SEC that isn't named Spurrier, it's Leach. He is THE guru of the system. It'll be interesting to see how the speed of SEC defenses and how much man they play affects the system.

5. If nothing else, it's going to be really damn entertaining having Leach here the next 3-5 years. It also says a lot to me about how much he wants to test himself against the SEC that he basically took equal money to leave WSU to come here. Leach may come across as a goofy cat, but he's clearly very ambitious and competitive.

6. I don't think it's a good look that we didn't give him the same amount of money for his staff as Northern Miss gave Kiffin. I know it's only a $500K difference and we're paying Leach more, so we're actually spending more than them, but if we were willing to give Napier $5.8M for staff, why not give Leach at least $5.5M? Kinda reeks of Cohen & LT penny pinching, imo.

7. I'm willing to reserve judgment on #6 if we spend extra money to bring in several analysts for the program. That's as important as competitive assistant pay, imo. If we do that, it tells me we're serious about trying to win and will spend the money it takes to do so. If we don't, that $4.7M staff will only take us so far. Ball is in Cohen's court there.

8. I really, really, really want us to bring Feld home. Don't know how realistic it is since he will never want for anything at Oregon, be it facilities or salary. But I'd hand him a check and tell him write the number it'd take to get him back home. Regardless, hiring an elite S&C guy is a must and needs to happen very quickly.

9. Sweet baby Jesus, please let us hire Charlie Strong. I don't get the fascination with Stoops. He's a good DC, but I saw way too many busted coverages this year. I can't help but feel he's boom or bust and we can upgrade on him. Strong was an elite DC and I see no reason he can't be again.

10. I don't really want Felipe Franks. But if Mullen and Leach both think it's a good idea, then I'm willing to give it a chance. And I think C34 makes a good point that we're probably going to need 2 QBs ready to go every weekend with the beating they'll take in an Air Raid scheme.

11. We desperately need to hit the transfer portal for some WRs, a pass catching RB, and a couple of good pass blocking OL. Regardless, I expect us to really struggle the next 1-2 years while Leach turns over the roster. 6 wins is probably the ceiling next year.

12. Despite my concerns and skepticism over the fit of Leach, I'm willing to be convinced. His press conference actually made me feel a little better. If he can get the players to buy in, that'll go a long way. And who knows, he may wind up being an incredible fit.

Regardless, it's going to be a wild ride for a few years. One thing is sure, Leach isn't going to get scared playing against Saban, Jimbo, Smart, etc. He's going to play to win all the time and try to score as much as he can. Also, we better readjust our expectations from defense while he's here, even if we hire a blue blood DC like Strong. They're going to be on the field a lot, much like the last two years, and they're going to give up yards and points. It's just an unfortunate byproduct of the Air Raid offense. You'll get a bunch of 3-and-out possessions with 3 straight incompletions where almost no time comes off the clock and the D has to run right back on the field with essentially no time for a breather. We might see an increased focus on creating turnovers, since that would get the D off the field more often, too. But if that happens, we're going to give up more big plays. It's the give-and-take thing again. Having a top 35 D would be really good for any DC under Leach. We're just going to have to hope Leach's offense can be top 10-15 to offset the decrease in D.

Hail State,

WMD

[Todd4State]

This is the biggest football hire MSU has made since Jackie as far as National recognition goes. It's huge for our program and I can't really believe that Mike Leach is OUR coach. I don't think I understood and I certainly didn't anticipate how big it would be until I saw the media hoopla. The difference is Jackie was always seen as an outlaw who was able to skirt the NCAA and had a bad guy image. And Joe Paterno bashed him as well. That led to the media nationally not liking Jackie and as a result they didn't like us. And it was kind of sad in a way because the media ran down teams like our 1998 and 1999 teams that were really good basically because of Jackie. They called our schedule soft and called us lucky. But with Leach the media loves him. It's really going to help our branding a lot because there are people that are just fans of Leach and those people will now be MSU fans casually and follow us. He has a good relationship with Finebaum- which will prevent embarrassment like Finebaum basically hounding Joe Moorhead about the Rutgers job.

I think his tenure could be similar to Jackie's but maybe without the losses to people like La Tech, ULM, Tulane, and etc. just because the talent gap we have now is much bigger between us and the G5 schools than it was in Jackie's time. But I think we'll pull off more upsets than we did under Dan.

I'm not as worried about throwing the ball a lot. The difference between Leach and Croom and Moorhead is that Leach has shown that he can make his system work with 2-3 star recruits. Leach also has a very simple offense so I don't think it's going to be as complicated for our players like it was with Croom and I think Leach is going to demand more discipline than Moorhead and the offense will reap the benefits of that. Leach is not going to start a guy like Guidry and let him drop 2-3 balls a game. He's either going to coach him up or sit him.

Defensively I think as long as we have an elite SEC coordinator like a Charlie Strong that puts pressure on an offense and creates sacks and turnovers we'll be fine. I don't think Leach was ever really able to find his defensive equal at Texas Tech or Wazzu until he found Grich and then things worked out fine. Leach has never had SEC athletes to work with since he last at Kentucky. That should help on both sides of the ball. Improved S&C will help our team out a lot no matter who we hired honestly. We were so out of shape it really hurt us on both sides of the ball.

As far as our QB getting hit- I mean, we used to run the power spread option. You can't tell me that our QB is going to get hit more with Leach than Dan. Some years we're going to have QB injuries and some years we'll be lucky. But that's just football.

I'm fine with Franks. I just hope he comes in soon enough to participate in spring practice. I think that hurt us some with Tommy last year. I actually think we'll be OK at WR. Payton and Osirus are seniors. Austin Williams is a junior and can handle one of the slot positions. Heath and Ducking are JUCO guys- Heath was UA All-American and Ducking is the kind of guy Leach and turn into a productive player. I bet we move Dontae Jones and Keytaeon Thompson to WR. We're adding Tulu who is an UA All-American and Jaden Walley looked good in the MS/AL ASG practices. Pretty decent group of athletes to work with. Especially if they get good coaching and improved S&C.

I agree on Feld.

I don't agree on Cohen. It's pretty clear that Cohen is making a great effort to fix football and is about to sink more money into it. I'm not going to nit pick him over 500K after he landed Mike Leach. It sounds like we're about to invest more in recruiting and analysts as well. We bitched all year long and it looks like he is hearing us and trying to fix it. I was pretty upset that we kept Moorhead after the Egg Bowl- and even moreso after the way he acted in the press conference. Somehow after the Music City Bowl all of our leaders got on the same page finally and it worked out in the end. Plus yeah- we won the Egg Bowl. I bet gameday is a lot better next year as well. And the best part is you know the New Mexico game probably won't be an 11 AM special now.

We'll see about next year. I bet we win more than six though. If we get Franks and Kylin returns all of a sudden we have a fairly senior laden offense potentially. The key is going to be if the JUCO's can adjust quickly on defense. Our DT's will still be young but they're experienced sophomores now. And again- with likely better S&C.

[the_real_MSU_is_us]

Disagree on 9. 1) shoop (not Stoops) only had busted coverages because he was starting plural true Fr due to injuries. Those guys would have redshirted if they were on the team last year, where we had almost no busted coverages under the same DC. 2) even with great talent, you dont have the #1 D with mediocre coaching. Aranda and Steel and Grantham have had good talent and none of them have ever been #1. 3) Strong hasnt been a DC in literally over a decade. We have no evidence at all his current D would be adapted to modern Os and not stuck in 2009. I dont want to be the test subject that finds out when

[msbulldog]

Sports Illustrated had a story on Feld last year. It said he made $200,000 at Oregon, we ought to be able to beat that.

[towelliee]

Feld makes 310K this year and next. 2022 bumped to 400K.

[bobcat91]

I dont get the worry on assistants salary. He will be at least QB coach and probably OC. If folks are hired in those positions, it will be window dressing and not a major investment. I'm pretty sue if John sunk 5 million plus into his HC, then he fully discussed what was needed in assistant salaries. Unfurl your flags

[MagicDawg]

>>> 4. If anyone can make Air Raid work in the SEC that isn't named Spurrier, it's Leach.

Apparently we've covered our bases by having a Spurrier in the mix, too.

[ShotgunDawg]

I think it's too early to say our recruiting foot print doesn't support the air raid until we know what our recruiting footprint will be.

Leach is a national name with an incredible amount of contacts in the Dallas and Houston areas from his days at Texas Tech. Dallas and only a couple hours closer to Lubbock that MSU and MSU is closer to Houston that Lubbock.

If he can expand the WR recruiting foot print to get more polished WRs in Texas to supplement what we normally get from Mississippi, this thing could be a perfect storm.

[1bigdawg]

I think it's too early to say our recruiting foot print doesn't support the air raid until we know what our recruiting footprint will be.

Leach is a national name with an incredible amount of contacts in the Dallas and Houston areas from his days at Texas Tech. Dallas and only a couple hours closer to Lubbock that MSU and MSU is closer to Houston that Lubbock.

If he can expand the WR recruiting foot print to get more polished WRs in Texas to supplement what we normally get from Mississippi, this thing could be a perfect storm.

Also, Mississippi and Louisiana are loaded with high quality WRs next year. As local offenses evolve, so does the type of available recruit.

[parabrave]

Walleys little brother is a WR and has bama and LSU camping down the street.

[War Machine Dawg]

Disagree on 9. 1) shoop (not Stoops) only had busted coverages because he was starting plural true Fr due to injuries. Those guys would have redshirted if they were on the team last year, where we had almost no busted coverages under the same DC. 2) even with great talent, you dont have the #1 D with mediocre coaching. Aranda and Steel and Grantham have had good talent and none of them have ever been #1. 3) Strong hasnt been a DC in literally over a decade. We have no evidence at all his current D would be adapted to modern Os and not stuck in 2009. I dont want to be the test subject that finds out when

Damn autocorrect.

I'm not saying Shoop sucks. He doesn't. You don't have a #1 in the nation D if you aren't a good DC. I just think his career says that he's a bit feast or famine. Some years he'll have an elite D, some years it'll be hot garbage. Between the blown coverages and awful tackling last season, I just think we can find someone better. Especially if we can pay in the $1.5-2M range for a DC. That's elite DC money and while I think Shoop is in the very good to great category, I wouldn't put him in the elite category.

[dawgday166]

Damn autocorrect.

I'm not saying Shoop sucks. He doesn't. You don't have a #1 in the nation D if you aren't a good DC. I just think his career says that he's a bit feast or famine. Some years he'll have an elite D, some years it'll be hot garbage. Between the blown coverages and awful tackling last season, I just think we can find someone better. Especially if we can pay in the $1.5-2M range for a DC. That's elite DC money and while I think Shoop is in the very good to great category, I wouldn't put him in the elite category.

Who you got in mind? Just askin.

[War Machine Dawg]

I think it's too early to say our recruiting foot print doesn't support the air raid until we know what our recruiting footprint will be.

Leach is a national name with an incredible amount of contacts in the Dallas and Houston areas from his days at Texas Tech. Dallas and only a couple hours closer to Lubbock that MSU and MSU is closer to Houston that Lubbock.

If he can expand the WR recruiting foot print to get more polished WRs in Texas to supplement what we normally get from Mississippi, this thing could be a perfect storm.

This is a fair point. And we have been known to pull a WR or two from TX over the years. Fred Ross immediately springs to mind. If Leach can get some big time WRs out of TX, that would be huge. Of course, having great WR coaches who can coach up the raw talent of the WRs in our traditional footprint should help too. Guys like Co-Eric Riley should've been way better than they ended up being.

[War Machine Dawg]

Who you got in mind? Just askin.

Personally, I really like the idea of Strong. Leach needs someone with a name and that he can trust to basically be the HC of defense. I think he'd let Strong do that. That said, I'm not too up on DC names. Frankly, it's not my job. But I wouldn't hesitate to call up someone like Gary Patterson and ask him who he thinks are great DCs, then go from there. Or call up someone like Urban and ask which DCs he hated to face and contact those guys. We obviously aren't going to pull someone like Venables, so we'll need to be a little creative. I just think MSU fans get a little too hung up on one coach or system sometimes. We like our safety blanket, so to speak, and Shoop & Grantham are our two DC safety blankets right now. Heck, I'd bet Leach has his own list of DCs that he hates playing against and may call a few of them. That's certainly what I'd do if I were an offensive HC.

[dawgday166]

>>> 4. If anyone can make Air Raid work in the SEC that isn't named Spurrier, it's Leach.

Apparently we've covered our bases by having a Spurrier in the mix, too.

Haha ... I like that too.

[dawgday166]

Personally, I really like the idea of Strong. Leach needs someone with a name and that he can trust to basically be the HC of defense. I think he'd let Strong do that. That said, I'm not too up on DC names. Frankly, it's not my job. But I wouldn't hesitate to call up someone like Gary Patterson and ask him who he thinks are great DCs, then go from there. Or call up someone like Urban and ask which DCs he hated to face and contact those guys. We obviously aren't going to pull someone like Venables, so we'll need to be a little creative. I just think MSU fans get a little too hung up on one coach or system sometimes. We like our safety blanket, so to speak, and Shoop & Grantham are our two DC safety blankets right now. Heck, I'd bet Leach has his own list of DCs that he hates playing against and may call a few of them. That's certainly what I'd do if I were an offensive HC.

Offense has changed since Strong was DC. I also thing his rep is a little more than the substance but not saying he isn't or hasn't been a good DC. Just saying the rep is very strong with him and maybe stronger than deserved.

I agree on Leach probably having some ideas and he also knows a lot of folks in the profession.

[Todd4State]

Offense has changed since Strong was DC. I also thing his rep is a little more than the substance but not saying he isn't or hasn't been a good DC. Just saying the rep is very strong with him and maybe stronger than deserved.

I agree on Leach probably having some ideas and he also knows a lot of folks in the profession.

It's not like Strong has been out of football completely for ten years or anything like that.

[dawgday166]

It's not like Strong has been out of football completely for ten years or anything like that.

I know but he hasn't done well since Louisville at all IMO. His Ds haven't been that great either I don't believe. Lot of factors go into that tho.

Just kinda saying that everyone is acting like Strong is Venebles. He ain't and never has been ... even at FL.

[War Machine Dawg]

This is the biggest football hire MSU has made since Jackie as far as National recognition goes. It's huge for our program and I can't really believe that Mike Leach is OUR coach. I don't think I understood and I certainly didn't anticipate how big it would be until I saw the media hoopla. The difference is Jackie was always seen as an outlaw who was able to skirt the NCAA and had a bad guy image. And Joe Paterno bashed him as well. That led to the media nationally not liking Jackie and as a result they didn't like us. And it was kind of sad in a way because the media ran down teams like our 1998 and 1999 teams that were really good basically because of Jackie. They called our schedule soft and called us lucky. But with Leach the media loves him. It's really going to help our branding a lot because there are people that are just fans of Leach and those people will now be MSU fans casually and follow us. He has a good relationship with Finebaum- which will prevent embarrassment like Finebaum basically hounding Joe Moorhead about the Rutgers job.

I think his tenure could be similar to Jackie's but maybe without the losses to people like La Tech, ULM, Tulane, and etc. just because the talent gap we have now is much bigger between us and the G5 schools than it was in Jackie's time. But I think we'll pull off more upsets than we did under Dan.

I'm not as worried about throwing the ball a lot. The difference between Leach and Croom and Moorhead is that Leach has shown that he can make his system work with 2-3 star recruits. Leach also has a very simple offense so I don't think it's going to be as complicated for our players like it was with Croom and I think Leach is going to demand more discipline than Moorhead and the offense will reap the benefits of that. Leach is not going to start a guy like Guidry and let him drop 2-3 balls a game. He's either going to coach him up or sit him.

Defensively I think as long as we have an elite SEC coordinator like a Charlie Strong that puts pressure on an offense and creates sacks and turnovers we'll be fine. I don't think Leach was ever really able to find his defensive equal at Texas Tech or Wazzu until he found Grich and then things worked out fine. Leach has never had SEC athletes to work with since he last at Kentucky. That should help on both sides of the ball. Improved S&C will help our team out a lot no matter who we hired honestly. We were so out of shape it really hurt us on both sides of the ball.

As far as our QB getting hit- I mean, we used to run the power spread option. You can't tell me that our QB is going to get hit more with Leach than Dan. Some years we're going to have QB injuries and some years we'll be lucky. But that's just football.

I'm fine with Franks. I just hope he comes in soon enough to participate in spring practice. I think that hurt us some with Tommy last year. I actually think we'll be OK at WR. Payton and Osirus are seniors. Austin Williams is a junior and can handle one of the slot positions. Heath and Ducking are JUCO guys- Heath was UA All-American and Ducking is the kind of guy Leach and turn into a productive player. I bet we move Dontae Jones and Keytaeon Thompson to WR. We're adding Tulu who is an UA All-American and Jaden Walley looked good in the MS/AL ASG practices. Pretty decent group of athletes to work with. Especially if they get good coaching and improved S&C.

I agree on Feld.

I don't agree on Cohen. It's pretty clear that Cohen is making a great effort to fix football and is about to sink more money into it. I'm not going to nit pick him over 500K after he landed Mike Leach. It sounds like we're about to invest more in recruiting and analysts as well. We bitched all year long and it looks like he is hearing us and trying to fix it. I was pretty upset that we kept Moorhead after the Egg Bowl- and even moreso after the way he acted in the press conference. Somehow after the Music City Bowl all of our leaders got on the same page finally and it worked out in the end. Plus yeah- we won the Egg Bowl. I bet gameday is a lot better next year as well. And the best part is you know the New Mexico game probably won't be an 11 AM special now.

We'll see about next year. I bet we win more than six though. If we get Franks and Kylin returns all of a sudden we have a fairly senior laden offense potentially. The key is going to be if the JUCO's can adjust quickly on defense. Our DT's will still be young but they're experienced sophomores now. And again- with likely better S&C.

C'mon, Todd. There's a difference in delivering the blow while running and getting your head ripped off by a speed rushing DE or blitzing LB. I really hope Leach keeps recruiting dual threat QBs, though. I know they won't run as much, but their escapability will give him an extra dimension. Plus it'd be nice to still have a QB that can scramble for extra yards if/when a play breaks down. I know they'll primarily be asked to sit in the pocket, but I think that mobility at QB is really key in modern football, especially at the college level.

I think y'all are setting yourselves up for disappointment on the record front next season. Next year is truly a rebuilding year. Even if we move KT to WR and Heath, Payton, Osirus, etc. are drastically improved, I'm still not sold we're ready to throw 55 times a game for at least 2 more years. And I think everyone needs to accept that Kylin is gone. I'd be beyond ecstatic if he came back, but I don't see it. He's shown the NFL everything they need to see as both a runner and receiver. And they can improve his pass blocking up there, although I think most people way overstate how bad he is at it. But one thing is for sure, it will be a fun 6-6 instead of a miserable 8-5. And ultimately, I can live with that, especially if we show improvement as the season goes along.

[War Machine Dawg]

Offense has changed since Strong was DC. I also thing his rep is a little more than the substance but not saying he isn't or hasn't been a good DC. Just saying the rep is very strong with him and maybe stronger than deserved.

I agree on Leach probably having some ideas and he also knows a lot of folks in the profession.

This is why I'm not overly worried about it. He seems to have finally realized his teams at least need to play a modicum of D in order to be the best they can. Whoever he ends up hiring will be good. It's way easier to find a good DC than it is to find a good offensive mind, imo. We've already done the hard part. It may take Leach 2 or 3 guys before he finds someone like Mullen with Diaz then Grantham, but I think he'll find his guy. We're going to have growing/transition pains regardless for the next 2-3 years anyway, so that's another reason I'm not too worked up about DC.