MSU head coach Dan Mullen
Mullen Previews MSU Homecoming Bout With Samford
October 24, 2016 | Football
STARKVILLE, Miss. – Mississippi State football coach Dan Mullen previewed his Bulldogs' Homecoming game against Samford at his weekly press conference on Monday.
The contest is set for 2:30 p.m. CT live on SEC Network from Davis Wade Stadium.
In addition, the Southeastern Conference announced that the Nov. 5 home contest against Texas A&M will kick at 11 a.m. on either ESPN, ESPN2 or SEC Network. A network will be determined following the completion of games this Saturday.
Below are quotes from Mullen's press conference:
Opening Statement
"Homecoming week, so it's great to be back home. It seems like we haven't played many home games this year, so it's good to be back at home and playing in our stadium in front of our fans. An injury update, Darryl Williams came back yesterday, flew back yesterday. He's in the training room and mom is here with him. He'll be fine. We don't expect him to be able to play this week but he should be back after that, so I thank everybody for their prayers for him during the course of the game and what went on, but we expect him to have a full recovery and hopefully be back by next week's game. Obviously, it's a big game this week, playing an excellent football team. When you watch this team, Samford, a 6-1 team, a lot of blowout victories and very explosive offense. They have a great quarterback (Devlin Hodges), completing over 70 percent of his passes. They have some explosive running backs making big plays. They have great wide-outs, execute at a very high level on offense, put up a ton of yards and a ton of points and then they're very physical on defense. The defense might be a little underrated for the attention they get. They play hard and physical up front. They have a big, aggressive front, have some great corners outside, that can play man coverage and lock you down. They're probably one of the best FCS teams in the nation, probably the best one we would've played in my time here. They're the best FCS team I've seen in quite a while, so it's a great challenge for our guys. We're going to have to come out and execute and play at a very high level. And hopefully we get a home field advantage, a huge crowd, and people making crowd noise, and helping us get that home-field advantage, which has helped us to be successful over the years."
On running back Aeris Williams…
"Aeris was hurt all week last week. He didn't practice so that puts you two tailbacks down. Guys were getting reps in practice and did a good job and we had to roll them in all week at practice and wanted to get guys rolling into the game. You have [Brandon] Holloway out. Aeris was not at 100 percent, but I think by the time the game was coming around he was ready to go. They played well. We just have to have everybody ready to roll through."
On offensive lineman Darryl Williams…
"We got the word that everything would be ok, but we didn't know a time frame on anything so we set up for one of the trainers to stay with him. They stayed in a hotel that night, then he flew back. We had John Clark, our Assistant AD, he left the sidelines to call his mom. Awhile before he even left the field we tried to get the mom on the phone just to let her know he was alert and had movement in his hands and feet. Obviously, we didn't have much medical detail to give her, but he was alert and moving, so we tried to get her that information as soon as possible. Then after we got to the hospital and got more tests done. They were in constant communication with his family."
On wideout Keith Mixon…
"You saw a playmaker. As a tailback in high school, not a guy that was big, but a guy that was electric with the ball in his hands. He had actually come to one of our football camps, played a little running back and receiver, did both and we just got to see him catch the ball, what type of ball skills he had, with great quickness and explosiveness. It's hard to teach a guy sometimes, 'here's the ball, go do something special with it.' You can teach how to block and how to run certain routes and top-end routes and the technical aspect of things and fundamentals of playing the receiver position. It's hard to coach a guy to be electric with the ball in his hands. So we saw that and thought he's the guy that in lot of ways is similar to a Brandon Holloway. Brandon Holloway came. We moved him to receiver, was in the return game early in his career and ended up settling at tailback. I think Keith, though, has adapted really well to the receiver position and being a slot receiver that also has the dimension of coming in the backfield, because he was a high school running back, and being comfortable running the football."
On wide receiver Malik Dear…
"He didn't play one snap of running back. We was playing the same position he's played the entire year. He and Keith (Mixon) both play some of the same positions. We move those guys around to find different ways to give them the ball. But in the same way, he didn't play one position in high school, he played all kinds of different positions. There are guys that have success through the air -- you have a guy like a Chad Bumphis that can do that or, you know played different positions in high school. Percy Harvin was that way. You can move him around on the field. They're dynamic players with the ball in their hands that have played multiple positions, so they're comfortable if you motion them into the backfield. They're comfortable running the ball as a running back. I haven't lined them up as quarterbacks yet, but Malik played a lot of quarterback in high school. You can do that stuff, and you move them around in the slot, you motion them from the backfield out to a slot position to create matchups. There are guys you're just trying to create mismatches with."
On offensive lineman Deion Calhoun's possible return and freshman Michael Story replacing him against Kentucky…
"Deion (Calhoun) will be questionable again this week for us, but I thought Michael [Story] actually handled it fairly well, in that being his first start. I didn't see any glaring issues. Sometimes, especially guys in their first start, play well, but then they'll have critical errors, something where you can tell it's somebody's first start and they just go the wrong way or jump offsides, some mental errors that way. I didn't see that from him, he handled the situation fairly well."
On consistency…
"We're up and down at times. We're consistently inconsistent right now. At times we played really well. We ran the ball for a ton of yards the other night. We're very run efficient, a lot of the time running for a lot of yards can be deceiving where you have three 80-yard runs and do nothing for the rest of the night. We're very run efficient at times, and then at other times we weren't run efficient. Offensively, as a whole, we're fumbling the ball, we're kicking it backwards, and we're going the wrong way. That gets frustrating, and it's not just at one position, it's across the board. Your seniors have to do a good job of setting the tempo for the guys on the team in setting the standard for everybody. There are guys who are working at that. We've had a lot of injuries in the senior class, and I think it leads to some inconsistency."
On possible returns for running back Brandon Holloway and safety Kivon Coman…
"Neither of them have practiced yet, so it be a later in the week decision."
On keeping the team motivated…
"You've got to win. I's just the confidence of winning the game. We found a way to lose games on the last play of the game three different ways too. It's not like 'uh-oh, here we go again with just this situation.' We've lost on the last play of the game in overtime. We've lost on the last play of the game with our offense on the field, and the last play of the game with the defense on the field. So we've managed to kind of cover it all. I've never been in this situation where in a single season I've lost three games on the final play; not just the final drive or the final possession, on the final play of the game in one season."
On having success in second and third quarters as opposed to first and fourth quarters…
"Inconsistency, because if you go by game, we've dominated a fourth quarter, we gave them 21 points in the third quarter the other night. There's so many different inconsistencies, how we started the game off offensively, our first play we fumble, so you're second and long, the second possession. The first play we fumble. You're second and long, on the next possession, I think we get two straight penalties against us. And other times we're just moving up and down the field at will, so I think a lot of things we do we hurt ourselves, throughout the year. When you have young players and guys that are growing and developing when you really hurt yourself, sometimes that's harder to overcome. When you have a veteran team it's sometimes easier. You make a mistake and hurt yourself, guys shake it off quickly, no big deal, and they understand the situation. They're ready, 'hey, we have a first and 25, that's alright, we're going to convert this and get back into rhythm on that drive.' Not like 'Ok, well, do we have to get it all back on one play? What are we doing?' And so inconsistencies, to me, are hurting us."
On freshmen playing time…
"When we realized we were going to lose Will Coleman for a majority of the season, even though he's in a very limited role, that opened up a spot for Marquiss [Spencer] to get on the field. It's them putting themselves in position, how they perform on the practice field, that you have confidence that their ready to go play, and then other times it's a lot of opportunity. Injuries, a lot of things outside of your control will sometimes give certain guys more opportunities than others. You have to make tough decisions. Right now we have five games left this year. We have a bunch of guys really banged up and you have to make some decisions if 'Do I want to pull someone's redshirt off of them with five games left in the regular season?' Especially because you're looking at the injury reports saying 'When he comes back, that guys reps are going to be cut way back down again," and so there's a lot of things that go into all of that."
On cornerback Jamal Peters' injury late in game against Kentucky…
"He has a bone bruise, talking to trainers. They're hopeful. An injury like that, he should be able to play this week."
On Samford quarterback Delvin Hodges…
"He's an excellent quarterback, a very accurate quarterback. He has a great, really quick release, has some really good receivers too that he gets the balls to, and he can make different types of throws. He's got good touch on the deep balls. He can rip it into a tight space. They do a nice job spreading things out, a lot of run-pass options, and he does a good job of making good decisions on the field. And you watch him, he's such a phenomenal athlete and I think people think about that, they think of running quarterbacks. He's not a running quarterback, but he keeps plays alive, uses his athleticism to throw the ball, keeping plays alive scrambling around. He's hard to sack. He's an excellent quarterback, one of the best quarterbacks we've probably faced so far this year."
On running back Nick Gibson…
"He sees things very well, makes very smooth, natural cuts, and he's working still to be a consistent player. You turn and hand him the ball, you feel pretty good. Pass protection, routes, all the things you need to do and knowing all the different schemes, all that stuff, he's still working making sure. He's detailed in becoming an every down player. He had a good week of practice last week, ran the ball well in practice, and we we're banged up so we threw him in there, gave him a couple carries to hopefully continue to see improvement on him in the total picture in being that total back."
On defensive struggles…
"It's a little bit of everything. You have a bunch of injuries, combined with a bunch of young players combined with a new staff on the defensive side of the ball. I guess altogether it adds up. You can see it, you don't want it, and we have to continue to work, continue to improve on it. The nice thing is, I see a lot of improvements out of guys. You see a lot of really good things, then there's head-scratchers. I'll turn on the film and I'll show you four plays of them running the same play four times against the same defense four times, and I'll show you two tackles-for-loss and two 30-yard gains, and really it's inconsistency of performance of guys. Sometimes we're making great plays, getting off blocks and winning at the line of scrimmage. It's just young guys, and sometimes they're executing, sometimes they're not."
On quarterback Nick Fitzgerald…
"When you throw the ball high a lot of the times, you're rushing a throw and then there's a lot of different reasons that that can happen. One, protection, you're shifting in the pocket. Two, you're getting to a third or fourth read in progression, you got there a little bit late. Three, a receiver doesn't run the right depth of the route and you're just trying to get the ball out fast. So a lot of times what will happen sailing is you're trying to hurry up, to try and speed things up you over-stride on your step. A lot of times, as soon as you over stride you sink, because overstriding is going to raise your front shoulder and going to cause the ball to sail on you. So a lot of that is just lower body mechanics and how fast you're processing the information and that everybody else is getting their job done too.
.
The contest is set for 2:30 p.m. CT live on SEC Network from Davis Wade Stadium.
In addition, the Southeastern Conference announced that the Nov. 5 home contest against Texas A&M will kick at 11 a.m. on either ESPN, ESPN2 or SEC Network. A network will be determined following the completion of games this Saturday.
Below are quotes from Mullen's press conference:
Opening Statement
"Homecoming week, so it's great to be back home. It seems like we haven't played many home games this year, so it's good to be back at home and playing in our stadium in front of our fans. An injury update, Darryl Williams came back yesterday, flew back yesterday. He's in the training room and mom is here with him. He'll be fine. We don't expect him to be able to play this week but he should be back after that, so I thank everybody for their prayers for him during the course of the game and what went on, but we expect him to have a full recovery and hopefully be back by next week's game. Obviously, it's a big game this week, playing an excellent football team. When you watch this team, Samford, a 6-1 team, a lot of blowout victories and very explosive offense. They have a great quarterback (Devlin Hodges), completing over 70 percent of his passes. They have some explosive running backs making big plays. They have great wide-outs, execute at a very high level on offense, put up a ton of yards and a ton of points and then they're very physical on defense. The defense might be a little underrated for the attention they get. They play hard and physical up front. They have a big, aggressive front, have some great corners outside, that can play man coverage and lock you down. They're probably one of the best FCS teams in the nation, probably the best one we would've played in my time here. They're the best FCS team I've seen in quite a while, so it's a great challenge for our guys. We're going to have to come out and execute and play at a very high level. And hopefully we get a home field advantage, a huge crowd, and people making crowd noise, and helping us get that home-field advantage, which has helped us to be successful over the years."
On running back Aeris Williams…
"Aeris was hurt all week last week. He didn't practice so that puts you two tailbacks down. Guys were getting reps in practice and did a good job and we had to roll them in all week at practice and wanted to get guys rolling into the game. You have [Brandon] Holloway out. Aeris was not at 100 percent, but I think by the time the game was coming around he was ready to go. They played well. We just have to have everybody ready to roll through."
On offensive lineman Darryl Williams…
"We got the word that everything would be ok, but we didn't know a time frame on anything so we set up for one of the trainers to stay with him. They stayed in a hotel that night, then he flew back. We had John Clark, our Assistant AD, he left the sidelines to call his mom. Awhile before he even left the field we tried to get the mom on the phone just to let her know he was alert and had movement in his hands and feet. Obviously, we didn't have much medical detail to give her, but he was alert and moving, so we tried to get her that information as soon as possible. Then after we got to the hospital and got more tests done. They were in constant communication with his family."
On wideout Keith Mixon…
"You saw a playmaker. As a tailback in high school, not a guy that was big, but a guy that was electric with the ball in his hands. He had actually come to one of our football camps, played a little running back and receiver, did both and we just got to see him catch the ball, what type of ball skills he had, with great quickness and explosiveness. It's hard to teach a guy sometimes, 'here's the ball, go do something special with it.' You can teach how to block and how to run certain routes and top-end routes and the technical aspect of things and fundamentals of playing the receiver position. It's hard to coach a guy to be electric with the ball in his hands. So we saw that and thought he's the guy that in lot of ways is similar to a Brandon Holloway. Brandon Holloway came. We moved him to receiver, was in the return game early in his career and ended up settling at tailback. I think Keith, though, has adapted really well to the receiver position and being a slot receiver that also has the dimension of coming in the backfield, because he was a high school running back, and being comfortable running the football."
On wide receiver Malik Dear…
"He didn't play one snap of running back. We was playing the same position he's played the entire year. He and Keith (Mixon) both play some of the same positions. We move those guys around to find different ways to give them the ball. But in the same way, he didn't play one position in high school, he played all kinds of different positions. There are guys that have success through the air -- you have a guy like a Chad Bumphis that can do that or, you know played different positions in high school. Percy Harvin was that way. You can move him around on the field. They're dynamic players with the ball in their hands that have played multiple positions, so they're comfortable if you motion them into the backfield. They're comfortable running the ball as a running back. I haven't lined them up as quarterbacks yet, but Malik played a lot of quarterback in high school. You can do that stuff, and you move them around in the slot, you motion them from the backfield out to a slot position to create matchups. There are guys you're just trying to create mismatches with."
On offensive lineman Deion Calhoun's possible return and freshman Michael Story replacing him against Kentucky…
"Deion (Calhoun) will be questionable again this week for us, but I thought Michael [Story] actually handled it fairly well, in that being his first start. I didn't see any glaring issues. Sometimes, especially guys in their first start, play well, but then they'll have critical errors, something where you can tell it's somebody's first start and they just go the wrong way or jump offsides, some mental errors that way. I didn't see that from him, he handled the situation fairly well."
On consistency…
"We're up and down at times. We're consistently inconsistent right now. At times we played really well. We ran the ball for a ton of yards the other night. We're very run efficient, a lot of the time running for a lot of yards can be deceiving where you have three 80-yard runs and do nothing for the rest of the night. We're very run efficient at times, and then at other times we weren't run efficient. Offensively, as a whole, we're fumbling the ball, we're kicking it backwards, and we're going the wrong way. That gets frustrating, and it's not just at one position, it's across the board. Your seniors have to do a good job of setting the tempo for the guys on the team in setting the standard for everybody. There are guys who are working at that. We've had a lot of injuries in the senior class, and I think it leads to some inconsistency."
On possible returns for running back Brandon Holloway and safety Kivon Coman…
"Neither of them have practiced yet, so it be a later in the week decision."
On keeping the team motivated…
"You've got to win. I's just the confidence of winning the game. We found a way to lose games on the last play of the game three different ways too. It's not like 'uh-oh, here we go again with just this situation.' We've lost on the last play of the game in overtime. We've lost on the last play of the game with our offense on the field, and the last play of the game with the defense on the field. So we've managed to kind of cover it all. I've never been in this situation where in a single season I've lost three games on the final play; not just the final drive or the final possession, on the final play of the game in one season."
On having success in second and third quarters as opposed to first and fourth quarters…
"Inconsistency, because if you go by game, we've dominated a fourth quarter, we gave them 21 points in the third quarter the other night. There's so many different inconsistencies, how we started the game off offensively, our first play we fumble, so you're second and long, the second possession. The first play we fumble. You're second and long, on the next possession, I think we get two straight penalties against us. And other times we're just moving up and down the field at will, so I think a lot of things we do we hurt ourselves, throughout the year. When you have young players and guys that are growing and developing when you really hurt yourself, sometimes that's harder to overcome. When you have a veteran team it's sometimes easier. You make a mistake and hurt yourself, guys shake it off quickly, no big deal, and they understand the situation. They're ready, 'hey, we have a first and 25, that's alright, we're going to convert this and get back into rhythm on that drive.' Not like 'Ok, well, do we have to get it all back on one play? What are we doing?' And so inconsistencies, to me, are hurting us."
On freshmen playing time…
"When we realized we were going to lose Will Coleman for a majority of the season, even though he's in a very limited role, that opened up a spot for Marquiss [Spencer] to get on the field. It's them putting themselves in position, how they perform on the practice field, that you have confidence that their ready to go play, and then other times it's a lot of opportunity. Injuries, a lot of things outside of your control will sometimes give certain guys more opportunities than others. You have to make tough decisions. Right now we have five games left this year. We have a bunch of guys really banged up and you have to make some decisions if 'Do I want to pull someone's redshirt off of them with five games left in the regular season?' Especially because you're looking at the injury reports saying 'When he comes back, that guys reps are going to be cut way back down again," and so there's a lot of things that go into all of that."
On cornerback Jamal Peters' injury late in game against Kentucky…
"He has a bone bruise, talking to trainers. They're hopeful. An injury like that, he should be able to play this week."
On Samford quarterback Delvin Hodges…
"He's an excellent quarterback, a very accurate quarterback. He has a great, really quick release, has some really good receivers too that he gets the balls to, and he can make different types of throws. He's got good touch on the deep balls. He can rip it into a tight space. They do a nice job spreading things out, a lot of run-pass options, and he does a good job of making good decisions on the field. And you watch him, he's such a phenomenal athlete and I think people think about that, they think of running quarterbacks. He's not a running quarterback, but he keeps plays alive, uses his athleticism to throw the ball, keeping plays alive scrambling around. He's hard to sack. He's an excellent quarterback, one of the best quarterbacks we've probably faced so far this year."
On running back Nick Gibson…
"He sees things very well, makes very smooth, natural cuts, and he's working still to be a consistent player. You turn and hand him the ball, you feel pretty good. Pass protection, routes, all the things you need to do and knowing all the different schemes, all that stuff, he's still working making sure. He's detailed in becoming an every down player. He had a good week of practice last week, ran the ball well in practice, and we we're banged up so we threw him in there, gave him a couple carries to hopefully continue to see improvement on him in the total picture in being that total back."
On defensive struggles…
"It's a little bit of everything. You have a bunch of injuries, combined with a bunch of young players combined with a new staff on the defensive side of the ball. I guess altogether it adds up. You can see it, you don't want it, and we have to continue to work, continue to improve on it. The nice thing is, I see a lot of improvements out of guys. You see a lot of really good things, then there's head-scratchers. I'll turn on the film and I'll show you four plays of them running the same play four times against the same defense four times, and I'll show you two tackles-for-loss and two 30-yard gains, and really it's inconsistency of performance of guys. Sometimes we're making great plays, getting off blocks and winning at the line of scrimmage. It's just young guys, and sometimes they're executing, sometimes they're not."
On quarterback Nick Fitzgerald…
"When you throw the ball high a lot of the times, you're rushing a throw and then there's a lot of different reasons that that can happen. One, protection, you're shifting in the pocket. Two, you're getting to a third or fourth read in progression, you got there a little bit late. Three, a receiver doesn't run the right depth of the route and you're just trying to get the ball out fast. So a lot of times what will happen sailing is you're trying to hurry up, to try and speed things up you over-stride on your step. A lot of times, as soon as you over stride you sink, because overstriding is going to raise your front shoulder and going to cause the ball to sail on you. So a lot of that is just lower body mechanics and how fast you're processing the information and that everybody else is getting their job done too.
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Players Mentioned
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