One thing we can all agree

[Lord McBuckethead]

No one expects the team to be a Leach team. Everyone expects our team to be ready and assembled as good as any other team with a new coach and new OC and DC.

[Lord McBuckethead]

Offense is offense. Regardless of scheme. You telling me our OL has never run block, pull block, or pass block? You telling me that the WRs can?t go out there, run a route, and catch passes. QB playing like he doesn?t know which play was called. He can?t hand off and throw the ball.

These are the things they have been doing since they were 7 years old.

At some point, it?s just football. Theoretically the offense knows the play before the snap. You snap the ball and you play football.

Sorry to be simplistic, but at the end of the day you are running an 8 yard dig route like you did under your peewee coach, middle school, high school, and now 2-3 years under Leach. Now it?s Barbay. Who cares, it?s an 8 yard dig route.

[Lord McBuckethead]

Don?t forget the OTAs too. Something no other coach has ever had to establish a new system. Well, never had within the rules. We all suspect Saban holds practices throughout the no contact times.

[dawgday166]

Again, nobody is saying they preferred Arnett to Leach! Nobody wanted him dead! But everyone acting like the guy had us putting up 40 a game and lighting folks up are living in a fantasy land. Our offense was dreadful under Leach. Painful to watch. ESPECIALLY in SEC play. Did we have an occasional explosion....absolutely. But did we also have games where you could tell early on they had us figured out and we had to just sit back and watch us go 3 and out after 3 and out after 3 and out? Absolutely.

And I repeat...that doesn't mean we wanted the shit show we have now. The guy wasn't fired bc all of us were storming the AD office saying "WE WANT ZACH!". He died. And his system died with him. And Rogers success did too. Leach was a legend and led us to a good record last year....and thank goodness for Arnett's defense, or that record would have been 6-6.

Against Arky and TAM we put up 40. Is that a monumental accomplishment at home.. not so much, maybe a little.

We had some tweaks that needed to be made .. won't argue that. Would Leach have made them ... dunno. Would i be pissed if he didn't .. most definitely. But would we be still winning 7, 8 or 9 games consistently? Maybe even 10 or more and some major upsets along the way? Not sure but maybe/probably so ... dunno now tho. It certainly would be better than this crap show we're seeing now.

I was the first one last year who said Will ain't letting routes develop downfield and he's dumping cause he don't wanna get hit. And that was true. He balled out a little this past Saturday tho, if you take out the picks. He made a great throw over on the sideline that I was quite honestly surprised made it on target, and he took a helmet between his shoulder blades as he released the ball. It was a damn good completion. That is the Will of 2021. Tough!! I liked it.

I'm not living in fantasy ****ing land. People that think we should be Bama when we ain't Bama are. People that think we can go hire a top notch coach like a Saban or a Smart or even one tier below ... are. Like we have this huge ****ing list of coaches that wanna come to Starkville SMFH.

People who expect us to produce with all-freshmen like Bama ... are. People who think we can cycle thru coaches (and staffs) like AU ... are. People who think we should win 10 three years into a new coaching regime ... are (at anytime but especially with UGA & Bama on our schedule). Dumb mother****ers. Or mother****ers with agendas that ain't the best for MSU. In either case .. dumb, stupid mother****ers.

We had Mullen and I, unlike many other mother****ers on this board, will admit I didn't know how good we had it. I cannot now blame him for wanting to GTFO Starkville. I wouldn't coach here if you handed it to me on a platter.

There's a part of the fanbase who will tear you the **** down if you fail slightly. They'll be relentless about it. Why .. because they ain't in the circle, they ain't in the clique. They're on the outside looking in.

And yet .. you probably are producing the best football they have ever experienced as in 2014, 2017 ... and probably 2018. Maybe 2021 and 2022 just a little given the circumstances. But ... they won't let up. We had the team in 2018. Mullen bolted. Fitz and Aeris (2 ****ing awesome MSU warriors) got screwed. End of Story.

I don't blame Mullen a lick now except .. my main men Fitz and Aeris got screwed. I love those warriors. Tough mother****ers. Aeris 5 to 7 yds a pop of the toughest yds imaginable in the SEC. Fitz had blindside blocking for one night against TAM in 2018 when Aeris started over Hill .. and lit TAM up. Both guys took Bama to the matt in 2017. ****ing warriors!!!

ETA; Good thing we had Simmons, Sweat, Gay, and Abrams (warriors!!!)... and Shoop. Love that guy and he only coached 2 seasons here. He understood how tough SEC football was and instituted "Toughness Tuesdays" for the D side of the ball. Otherwise it would've been really ugly in 2018.

[DawgFromOxford]

The one thing we agree on, the football program is not good right now. Regardless of how we got here; here we are. So now what? What is the realistic (irrational message board) solution(s)? How long will it take? Is it weeks, is it Months, is it years?

Other than giving a new QB a chance, not sure there is anything that can be done to fix it at this point in the season. The defense is what it is. Arnett moving back to play calling might help but that doesnt change the fact that we are slow and get 0 pressure from our lineman. I?d like to think that if Arnett thought we could win more games by calling the defense he would be doing so by now. The offensive line is what it is.

As far how long it takes to fix: minimum 10 months if Arnett can figure out how to get better talent on the field and better talent on the coaching staff by the start of next season. If he can?t figure it out, you are looking at 2+ years depending on how well our new coach in 2025 can work the portal

[Cowbell]

Bottom line is this....

Arnett was never going to do things exactly like Leach. There was only 1 Leach. So anybody acting like Arnett is foolish for not keeping things the exact same as Leach, is being ridiculous bc it's not possible. And nobody forced Leach out...he died. So people acting like we got what we deserve...that's stupid too. Those that didn't like Leach's style (like me), sure as hell didn't want him dead, and DEFINITELY weren't asking for Arnett instead of him.

That being said, the buck stops with the head man. Arnett knows this. And I think he is trying to change things as best he can during the middle of an SEC slate. I truly believe that Barbay has a good scheme, but so far it has been tough to learn and hasn't been executed well...and Will Rogers isn't good at it. Rogers is an Air Raid only guy...and that's ok, but he should have transferred for his AND our benefit. We should be taking our lumps right now with a QB built for Barbay. But in their defense, they knew we had a ton of experience returning, so rather than throw away a season they were trying to make Will fit it. He doesn't, and they can't make it work, so in essence this season is gone.

Since the season is gone, and Arnett and Barbay's careers are riding on their adaptation....they need to go ahead and admit it's not working with the current personnel, and show that they are going to cut bait on the season in an attempt to save future seasons and recruiting. In my opinion, if they would make the switch to Wright or Parson, it would be a way of them showing "we tried to make it work with the vets, but we run too different of a scheme, so we have to just do what we got do". We would respect that so much more than continuing the agony of running Rogers back out there time and time again to fail. Hurts to watch.

As for the defense. I think Arnett needs to take over the Defensive play calling, and we either need to go with a bend but don't break style D, or bring the house while being less predictable with our LB'ers....but regardless it is going to take getting more speed on the field. We have got to forego talent and skill for speed at this point, bc we aren't losing on skill...we're losing bc we aren't even able to utilize skill bc we can't keep up. It's a shitty spot to be in, but we're here so we gotta do something.

I think Arnett still has people that aren't ready to totally throw him out....but most of those folks are on the fence and he's about to lose them. So he HAS to do something drastic, and he has to do it NOW. If I was in his shoes, nothing screams "I'm willing to try anything to turn this thing around" like benching a veteran QB for a young up and comer....so I'd probably start Mike Wright in a safe spot like this weekend, and immediately bring in Parson when we get a nice lead. That would inject some energy into the fan base (assuming our D can stop them and get us a cushion), and would be a way to generate some excitement into what is currently a dead situation.

If that doesn't work, you can always go back....but if nothing else it shows your willingness to try things, adapt, etc, and it may buy some good favor going forward. Bc I can tell you this, if we continue what we've been doing and finish 4-8 or 5-7 while watching 4 quarters of Rogers every weekend....Arnett and Barbay are toast. That's pretty much a fact at this point. So mix it up, what the hell do you have to lose?

Bravo sir. I couldn't have said it better...

[Todd4State]

Bottom line is this....

Arnett was never going to do things exactly like Leach. There was only 1 Leach. So anybody acting like Arnett is foolish for not keeping things the exact same as Leach, is being ridiculous bc it's not possible. And nobody forced Leach out...he died. So people acting like we got what we deserve...that's stupid too. Those that didn't like Leach's style (like me), sure as hell didn't want him dead, and DEFINITELY weren't asking for Arnett instead of him.

That being said, the buck stops with the head man. Arnett knows this. And I think he is trying to change things as best he can during the middle of an SEC slate. I truly believe that Barbay has a good scheme, but so far it has been tough to learn and hasn't been executed well...and Will Rogers isn't good at it. Rogers is an Air Raid only guy...and that's ok, but he should have transferred for his AND our benefit. We should be taking our lumps right now with a QB built for Barbay. But in their defense, they knew we had a ton of experience returning, so rather than throw away a season they were trying to make Will fit it. He doesn't, and they can't make it work, so in essence this season is gone.

Since the season is gone, and Arnett and Barbay's careers are riding on their adaptation....they need to go ahead and admit it's not working with the current personnel, and show that they are going to cut bait on the season in an attempt to save future seasons and recruiting. In my opinion, if they would make the switch to Wright or Parson, it would be a way of them showing "we tried to make it work with the vets, but we run too different of a scheme, so we have to just do what we got do". We would respect that so much more than continuing the agony of running Rogers back out there time and time again to fail. Hurts to watch.

As for the defense. I think Arnett needs to take over the Defensive play calling, and we either need to go with a bend but don't break style D, or bring the house while being less predictable with our LB'ers....but regardless it is going to take getting more speed on the field. We have got to forego talent and skill for speed at this point, bc we aren't losing on skill...we're losing bc we aren't even able to utilize skill bc we can't keep up. It's a shitty spot to be in, but we're here so we gotta do something.

I think Arnett still has people that aren't ready to totally throw him out....but most of those folks are on the fence and he's about to lose them. So he HAS to do something drastic, and he has to do it NOW. If I was in his shoes, nothing screams "I'm willing to try anything to turn this thing around" like benching a veteran QB for a young up and comer....so I'd probably start Mike Wright in a safe spot like this weekend, and immediately bring in Parson when we get a nice lead. That would inject some energy into the fan base (assuming our D can stop them and get us a cushion), and would be a way to generate some excitement into what is currently a dead situation.

If that doesn't work, you can always go back....but if nothing else it shows your willingness to try things, adapt, etc, and it may buy some good favor going forward. Bc I can tell you this, if we continue what we've been doing and finish 4-8 or 5-7 while watching 4 quarters of Rogers every weekend....Arnett and Barbay are toast. That's pretty much a fact at this point. So mix it up, what the hell do you have to lose?

Arnett could have very easily hired someone that ran a modified Air Raid as OC.

[dawgday166]

Everyone keeps wanting to debate scheme, stats or whatnot. It ALWAYS comes down to toughness, mindset, coaching, and to a pretty decent degree talent. Throw out the ****ing scheme. Kirby is running mostly what Bama ran in 2011 or so.

Some coaches get the most out of the talent they recruit (Mullen, Leach, and even Saban, Kirby), and some don't. Their are many teams ranked #3, 4, 5 etc in recruiting who Kirby and his UGA team will flat stomp their ass. Kirby can coach and specifically can coach D.

Now if you wanna argue what Leach was recruiting .. that might be an argument. But this year the NIL guys ain't hardly contributing at all. Last year they did.

Mullen/Leach did way more with way less. Could Saban do that? I'm not sure he could as well as they did. Could Kirby ... I would bet on Kirby over Saban on this. Saban ain't as elite a D coach as some think he is ... Kirby definitely is tho. Saban's best teams are when Kirby was DC. Both are top notch recruiters tho.

[Todd4State]

I think MSU is headed toward a hard reboot of it's football program under Selmon. Only question at this point is does that happen after 2023 or 2024?

This season sort of reminds me of Croom in 2008 when Byrne first took over. Croom's program simply didn't fit the direction that MSU was going in anymore. Which IMO was as big a reason as to why he was fired as much as any of the other things.

If I were in Selmon's shoes I would absolutely be taking inventory right now and not really worried that much about Arnett because in my mind he is going to be gone soon anyway. He might as well be an interim.

So the things I think MSU needs to focus on IMO are:

1. NIL. We must continue to build so that we can attract and retain talent. I believe Selmon understands the importance of this based on what I have observed.

2. Make more of an emphasis on becoming a player in recruiting. Recruiting rankings are silly and unreliable but it's also male soap opera and can be used as a propaganda piece to promote the program. People are more likely to support a program that has promise and hope- and when fans hear about the exciting new additions to the team it piques curiosity and hope. That's how a team like Ole Miss can go 2-10 and yet maintain support with a lame duck coach. Because the future is going to be better! Things I would do would be to double if not triple the recruiting budget, hire more people and staff for recruiting, and pay the site owners like the Shannon Terry's and Steve Whitfong's of the world under the table to promote MSU recruiting with National articles and to rate MSU players more fairly.

3. Make an emphasis on having a product on the field that is exciting to watch. Basically this means NO MORE BLUE COLLAR HARD WORKING fluff. Hire a coach that is experienced and fairly well known that is fun and somewhat likeable or polarizing. We're exciting and we're sexy and our Miss America's look better than Ole Miss's. We're the school that had Dak Prescott and Mike Leach and we are going to attack people vertically through the air and score points. Which leads me too...

4. Hire a modified Air Raid guy like Ben Arbuckle or a Veer and Shoot guy like Sean Lewis or Jeff Lebby to run the offense. No more we run the ball because we're blue collar and that's what MSU does and we run to set up a play action pass. We are going to light the scoreboard up. I want to score so many points that our older fans are complaining about us embarrassing some directional FCS school and were 84 points really necessary? Something that at least makes the bluebloods have to put in work to stop.

5. Continue the Joe Lee Dunn tradition of crazy exotic heavy pressure MSU defenses. MSU has actually gotten this right! (Sometimes)

6. Continue the good MSU special teams traditions. Designate some of the special teams guys are "Mad Dawgs" like we did under Jackie (I loved that) and give them special Mike Leach-esque pirate skull and cross bones patches/stickers to wear on their helmets and uniforms. Make MSU the site of a Kohl's kicking camp and get into the Australian punter market. Only the special teams kickoff units get to the Dawg Pound Rock- and don't half ass it.

7. Make the interlocking MSU uniforms our full time primary uniform. The fans love it and want it. Make us happy. Happy fans buy merchandise and go to games.

8. Prioritize playing in state SWAC schools for FCS games. Stop playing the Egg Bowl every Thanksgiving. Want to do it on Thanksgiving every once in awhile? That's fine. But every year? Let Texas/Texas A&M take that mantle some. Thanksgiving Egg Bowls have a really weird vibe. The tailgating feels off a bit. I think it also hurts attendance. Imagine a 6 PM Egg Bowl on a Saturday and what that might draw? Or an Egg Bowl on a Friday with fans having a long weekend? Play in Kickoff Classics for our P5 games. It creates good attention for the football program and it's like another bowl game. I liked it when we played ULL in NOLA at the Superdome. Even though that wasn't a true kickoff classic. I think it would be pretty cool to watch MSU play someone in Houston, Atlanta, Dallas, Charlotte, or Orlando. Or we could just do NOLA again.

9. Improve the stadium experience as needed. LED lights, and make a move to go towards enclosing Davis Wade.

10. And finally- move the faculty to the east side upper deck or to the visitors section since that's who they're selling their tickets to. Come up with a system to see who is selling their tickets to the opposing fans and make them ineligible to buy faculty tickets.

[CadaverDawg]

Everyone keeps wanting to debate scheme, stats or whatnot. It ALWAYS comes down to toughness, mindset, coaching, and to a pretty decent degree talent. Throw out the ****ing scheme. Kirby is running mostly what Bama ran in 2011 or so.

Some coaches get the most out of the talent they recruit (Mullen, Leach, and even Saban, Kirby), and some don't. Their are many teams ranked #3, 4, 5 etc in recruiting who Kirby and his UGA team will flat stomp their ass. Kirby can coach and specifically can coach D.

Now if you wanna argue what Leach was recruiting .. that might be an argument. But this year the NIL guys ain't hardly contributing at all. Last year they did.

Mullen/Leach did way more with way less. Could Saban do that? I'm not sure he could as well as they did. Could Kirby ... I would bet on Kirby over Saban on this. Saban ain't as elite a D coach as some think he is ... Kirby definitely is tho. Saban's best teams are when Kirby was DC. Both are top notch recruiters tho.

Great post. I agree. That's why I'm surprised Arnett is failing so bad. If anything I thought he would instill toughness. But talk is cheap, and we aren't showing toughness like he talked.

[CadaverDawg]

Arnett could have very easily hired someone that ran a modified Air Raid as OC.

Yep, shows how much he was tired of bailing that style out with his defense while the "Air Raid" got the credit for wins.

Like an above poster said...we don't need the air raid, it wasn't good, but we could really use the toughness Leach brought. I thought Arnett could...but so far he hasnt

[BlackSailsDawg]

Again, nobody is saying they preferred Arnett to Leach! Nobody wanted him dead! But everyone acting like the guy had us putting up 40 a game and lighting folks up are living in a fantasy land. Our offense was dreadful under Leach. Painful to watch. ESPECIALLY in SEC play. Did we have an occasional explosion....absolutely. But did we also have games where you could tell early on they had us figured out and we had to just sit back and watch us go 3 and out after 3 and out after 3 and out? Absolutely.

And I repeat...that doesn't mean we wanted the shit show we have now. The guy wasn't fired bc all of us were storming the AD office saying "WE WANT ZACH!". He died. And his system died with him. And Rogers success did too. Leach was a legend and led us to a good record last year....and thank goodness for Arnett's defense, or that record would have been 6-6.

No the real issue is you. Don't tell me I thought it was boring. That's opinion. And what you are doing is saying it's boring and using that to say is was bad. No the system did not die with him. The system is used everywhere including the NFL with modifications. The #3 team in offense this year is Air Raid built. It will always attract QBs and WRs for the simple fact of being show cased. We are now back to recruiting the 459th player in the nation for our QB.

[BlackSailsDawg]

Our offense was good in '21 and 1st half of '22. I'm not arguing things might've need tweaking and I was probably the 1st one to call out Will on not allowing downfield routes to develop and dumping it off.

To me .. I was like "Dammit, Leach needs to fix that shit". But .. we're still winning games and we're tough and physical. Sherrill, Mullen, and Leach in my lifetime. Ballard briefly.

As Mr Football ... C34 himself, the saint of all football knowledge has basically said, we're MSU and we expect to be Bama!!

He's saying that now but he wasn't saying it when Leach was the coach.

ETA: When Leach was coach, C34 expected us to be as good as Bama. He expected Will to be as good as Bryce Young in 2021 .. when Will was playing really good but not behind Bama's 4.5* talented line.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to dawgday166 again.

[BlackSailsDawg]

Other than giving a new QB a chance, not sure there is anything that can be done to fix it at this point in the season. The defense is what it is. Arnett moving back to play calling might help but that doesnt change the fact that we are slow and get 0 pressure from our lineman. I?d like to think that if Arnett thought we could win more games by calling the defense he would be doing so by now. The offensive line is what it is.

As far how long it takes to fix: minimum 10 months if Arnett can figure out how to get better talent on the field and better talent on the coaching staff by the start of next season. If he can?t figure it out, you are looking at 2+ years depending on how well our new coach in 2025 can work the portal

Time line. If Arnett gets 2 years, we will be staring at 5 years from being any kind of a threat. We are wasting a half of a decade.

[BlackSailsDawg]

Everyone keeps wanting to debate scheme, stats or whatnot. It ALWAYS comes down to toughness, mindset, coaching, and to a pretty decent degree talent. Throw out the ****ing scheme. Kirby is running mostly what Bama ran in 2011 or so.

Some coaches get the most out of the talent they recruit (Mullen, Leach, and even Saban, Kirby), and some don't. Their are many teams ranked #3, 4, 5 etc in recruiting who Kirby and his UGA team will flat stomp their ass. Kirby can coach and specifically can coach D.

Now if you wanna argue what Leach was recruiting .. that might be an argument. But this year the NIL guys ain't hardly contributing at all. Last year they did.

Mullen/Leach did way more with way less. Could Saban do that? I'm not sure he could as well as they did. Could Kirby ... I would bet on Kirby over Saban on this. Saban ain't as elite a D coach as some think he is ... Kirby definitely is tho. Saban's best teams are when Kirby was DC. Both are top notch recruiters tho.

The truth is we are seeing the difference between a great staff and a LOST one. Smart knows what they have and don't have so he isn't putting his team in a no win situation. They a Keeping it simple stupid.. KISS for his team and allowing them to grow. It's this is what we can do well and this team can't do what last year did yet.

What we do extremely well in pass protection is Air Raid. What we are learning to do is 11 man and rushing from it. So do those things.

Do you think Smart or Saban would ever keep doing 12 man personnel if they did not have the man power for it? We both know it's NO. They would not

[BlackSailsDawg]

Yep, shows how much he was tired of bailing that style out with his defense while the "Air Raid" got the credit for wins.

Like an above poster said...we don't need the air raid, it wasn't good, but we could really use the toughness Leach brought. I thought Arnett could...but so far he hasnt

The defense allowed Ole Miss to march down the field for 98 yards to almost beat us. The one game that the offense cost us in 2022 was the UK game. That was LEACH'S fault for not running it more.

[TrapGame]

Time line. If Arnett gets 2 years, we will be staring at 5 years from being any kind of a threat. We are wasting a half of a decade.

Arnett has to show some growth this year. There has to be a back end improvement. We need to beat a couple of SEC teams and finish 6-6 and go bowling. If we finish 4-8 he needs to be let go. That is abject failure and does not need to be rewarded. Next year is going to be bad enough but I'm afraid we are going to have a mass exodus in the portal come December.