I’m not really sure where to begin on this game.

The end result was dominating, but the Aggies took three quarters to get there, at least from an offensive standpoint. The defense dominated the whole game just like the week before.

Five games into the season, the Aggies are 5-0, but haven’t even come close to playing a perfect game. That’s good and bad.

The offense carried the team for most of the first three games, but the defense has carried it for the last two games. I didn’t see the defense doing a 180 after the bye week, but I’m glad to see it.  

We’ve been Jekyll and Hyde five games into the season.

Before I go any further, I must say that that was a well-coached Mississippi State team. They’re short on talent, but the Mississippi State coaching staff did everything they could to give their team a chance to win. The problem was that they didn’t have the horses.

To make matters worse, they didn’t have their two starting tackles against us. They came in with lesser talent, and then, to make matters worse, they didn’t even have all of their talent.

What I saw from the Mississippi State coaching staff was light-years ahead of what I saw from the Auburn coaching staff. Coaching absolutely matters.

For three quarters, Mississippi State kept it to a two-score game.

Ultimately, the Aggies wore down the Bulldogs and walked out with an impressive score.

Three things stand out to me from this game:

1) The overall effort of the Aggie defense
2) The running game
3) Concepcion and Craver are difference makers

I won’t break down each unit on both sides of the ball as I usually do; instead, I’ll focus on those three things.

Much of what I would write about this game would be a duplicate of last week. It’s basically the same game as Auburn, except Miss State had a little more offense, and our offense finally landed big punches in the fourth quarter.

The Defense:

For the second straight week, the Aggie defense just dominated their opponent.

The Aggie defense held the Bulldog offense to 219 total yards, 44 of which came on a perfect touchdown pass. The Aggies also kept that number down thanks to four sacks and five tackles for losses. Those nine plays removed 49 yards from the Bulldogs’ offensive ledger.

This was a duplicate effort from the previous week against Auburn, where guys were flying around making plays. York and Sanford led the defense at linebacker. The defensive line was disruptive yet again.

Cashius Howell took advantage of their backup tackles, amassing three sacks.

Mississippi State converted one third down on 10 tries. They didn’t try a fourth-down conversion.

It was yet another dominant performance by the Aggie defense.

I have no clue if this type of defensive play is sustainable. We might have played the two worst offenses on our schedule.

Either way, it’s great to see the Aggie defense dial it up when the competition is inferior. At worst, at least this Aggie defense knows and understands how to play dominating defense.

We’ll find out on Saturday if this defense is sustainable when Florida comes to town.

I’ll take a coaching staff getting a defense ready to take care of an inferior offense over some other performances we’ve seen in the past.

This type of defensive performance is why we hired Mike Elko. Kudos to him and his staff for dialing up the defensive play when it looked like a significant question mark in the season’s first three games.

The Running Game:

The offensive line was inconsistent yet again.

They had their penalties and then obviously got stuffed at the goal line.

Real quick—I’m torn about the decision-making there. We went up the gut four plays in a row and only gained one yard when we needed two. It’s insanity to keep trying the same thing repeatedly with no results. At the same time, at some point, you hope your offense can will its way to gaining a yard when it’s genuinely needed.

I’d rather try it in a game like this where you have a good chance of overcoming getting stopped in that moment.

If we see something like this again this season in a close game against an equal opponent, I’ll scream to the heavens. I hope Elko and Klein saw that as a serious warning sign.

Back to the overall running game discussion – Le’veon Moss was in and out of the game yet again.

Reuben Owens stepped up in a big way, rushing 21 times for 143 yards. It goes without saying that he looked the best he’s looked in an Aggie uniform. He showed a lot of confidence and burst.

In addition to Owens, you had Craver with two rushes for 35 yards, including a touchdown. Reed rushed 6 times for 34 yards, including a touchdown. Jamarion Morrow had a nice rush of 23 yards. Concepcion had two rushes for 22 yards.

And Boerkircher converted another third-and-short for a first down. Maybe he should get goal-line carries…

It took a bit to get the running game going, but I’m glad our offensive line could lean on the Mississippi State defense and open up holes. We averaged 5.5 yards a carry, which is a solid number.

You can’t fault 300 yards of rushing. That’s how you impose your will. Even if it took us three quarters to do it. At least it happened.

We had almost twice the possession time as Mississippi State. Which is why things looked like they did in the fourth quarter.

Concepcion and Craver:

There’s a decent chance we win this game if these two guys aren’t on our team.

However, with them on our team, this game became a no-doubter in the fourth quarter.

These two dude are absolute difference makers.  

The stat sheet from this game doesn’t show their importance in receiving yards, but their presence changes how a defense has to defend us.

They “only” had 141 yards of receiving, with Concepcion having 80 yards and Craver having 61 yards. Concepcion had two touchdowns through the air, and Craver had a 42-yard reception in addition to his two carries and score on the ground.

It doesn’t seem like much compared to some of their games, but the dudes produced yet again.

They’re being focused on by defenses and still producing.

Having these guys on the field can be credited with many of those 300 yards of rushing. They’re a nightmare for defenses to worry about, so they can’t focus on shutting down the run.

These guys are flat-out dudes and continue to change the trajectory for the 2025 Aggie Football season.

They continue to be my team MVPs for the season, and it’s not even close.

I can keep going on, but you’ve got eyes and watch the games.

Don’t be griping about the Transfer Portal when we’ve got these two guys on our roster.

Looking Forward:

I still feel like we’ve got a couple of losses on our schedule somewhere. I don’t know when, but we will have a game or two where nothing clicks.

I can’t point to it on the schedule right now because everyone on our schedule has serious question marks. That includes LSU and Texas, which I thought were sure losses coming into the season.

We can still lose those games, but I am much more confident that we can win them.

For now, I want to get through Florida and Arkansas to go to Baton Rouge 7-0.

As much as I want to look forward to Atlanta and the College Football Playoff, I just can’t.

Let’s BTHO Florida and worry about Arkansas after that.

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