Bulldogs Rising
November 29, 2021 | Football, Joel Coleman
Over the last 12 games, it’s evident Mississippi State is a team with a promising future.
STARKVILLE – It was nearing midnight on a Thanksgiving night that didn't go Mississippi State's way. Head coach Mike Leach sat at his postgame press conference this past Thursday and began to reflect on the regular season that had just ended.
It's tempting in those instances for most anyone to become a prisoner of the moment – overcome with emotion at the game that'd just concluded. Not Leach. Not for a man who constantly sees the big picture.
If you looked close enough, there was a sense of pride. And why wouldn't there be when looking at the totality of the year and not simply the most recent 60 minutes?
"I think we improved more than any team in the conference," Leach said. "It wasn't satisfactory for us from the standpoint that we could have done a better job than we did. We certainly think we left a lot of meat on the bone as far as opportunities, [but] we steadily improved the entire year."
Lest anyone forget what outside expectations were for Mississippi State back in July. In the summer at Southeastern Conference Media Days, MSU was picked by those who cover the league to finish dead last in the seven-team SEC West. Yet there the Bulldogs were on Thanksgiving night battling for second.
In the last three months, the Leach Air Raid has taken off in Starkville. The Leach toughness has permeated this team, on both sides of the football in fact.
Only four schools in all of FBS football finished the regular season ranked inside the Top 25 in both total offense and total defense. MSU was one of them, along with Alabama, Michigan and Coastal Carolina.
Play the next play. Action over words. Those aren't just catchy sayings. They've become hallmarks of the Bulldogs over the last 365 days.
"I think we've grown a whole lot from the Egg Bowl last year, to spring ball, to fall camp," quarterback Will Rogers said. "We have grown so much as a team, not just on the field but off the field too."
State pulled off the biggest comeback in school history in the season opener, then trumped it in early November when they rallied from 25 points down to take down a ranked Auburn team on the road.
There were other ranked victories, too. The Bulldogs downed Texas A&M in front of about 100,000 Aggie fans in College Station. State knocked off a Kentucky squad that finished the regular season with the league's fourth-best record.
It was a season full of highlights from a team that just kept getting better, showing an amazing amount of resiliency along the way.
"The improvements and strides we've made in the last year, it's just been tremendous," linebacker Aaron Brule said. "With the guys coming back, it can only get better."
Perhaps that's the brightest spot of all. For all the positives of 2021, this is just a starting point of an ultra-promising future. Every single touchdown this season – all 47 of them – was either thrown by, run by, returned by, or caught by someone that was a sophomore or younger. Defensively, only one player off of State's two-deep went through Senior Night ceremonies this past Thursday. It's a group that largely, will be back fully intact.
The Bulldogs will all keep on growing. They'll now get more practice time leading up to the program's 12th-straight bowl game appearance. The postseason gives State even more of an opportunity to develop.
"We've made huge strides and we have nothing left to do but improve," Brule said.
From there, next season will become the focus. And if 2021 was this fun with a group so young, 2022 can't get here soon enough.
"Don't get too tired of these guys because we are going to see nearly all of them next year," Leach said.
