Power ranking the SEC after week 9: #14 - Mississippi State
The Bulldogs just ran into the Petrino buzzsaw. As Texas A&M football fans well know by now, when Bobby P is going up against a less talented team, he knows how to put up absolutely eye-popping numbers—which is what he did by running up nearly 60 points on Mississippi State.
That said, the improvement on offense remains pretty clear for the Bulldogs. After showing some potential on that side of the ball early on, but having little in the way of results, Lebby’s team is now actually putting up points consistently.
Maybe Blake Shapen would have eventually grown to be more comfortable, but it looks like Michael Van Buren is clearly giving a spark to this offense, and he’ll be tough to deal with going forward in this offense.
The defense puts a very low ceiling on this team, though. Mississippi State has a few chances left to leap up and be a stumbling block for a few teams, but if they don’t get better play out of their defense, they won’t be able to take advantage of that chance.
They get UMass at home, which seems like it should be an easy win, but this is a State team that lost to Toledo. In other words, take nothing for granted.