STARKVILLE — It’s a good news, bad news situation for Geoff Collins and the Mississippi State defense.
In his first year as the sole defensive coordinator of the Bulldogs program, Collins says he’s pleased with the effort and weekly performance of his youthful defense even including their 34-16 loss at South Carolina Saturday.
“The thing that was upsetting was it seemed like every big play they had was the result of a missed tackle in the backfield,” Collins said. “Whatever situation we get put in as a defense, we have to hold them out of the end zone.”
The bad news this week that “hold them out of the end zone” plan must include a plan for the defending Heisman Trophy winner Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel, who is leading a offense that hasn’t scored less than 41 points this season.
One of the things Collins learned about playing an offense led Manziel’s Aggies group comes from reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘Blink – The Power of Thinking Without Thinking’. Collins figured out this summer he’ll wants his 11 players on defense to instinctively know where to go on defense before the snap and not react to the offense’s speed.
“It’s all about precognitive thinking with our guys on defense when facing Manziel,” Collins said. “We have to get our guys to respond and essentially in a cerebral way get our guys to play the game out in their mind before anything on the field Saturday ever happens.”
MSU coach Dan Mullen had to acknowledge that even evaluating the defensive performance against the No. 11 Gamecocks is nearly impossible after the five turnovers given up by the Bulldogs offense. MSU held South Carolina to eight three-and-out possessions, the most by any of their opponents this season, and but for two plays took away the big-play capability of the Gamecocks passing game all afternoon.
“When you look at it defensively 50 percent of their possessions were three-and-outs, which is what you want,” Mullen said. “Unfortunately we gave them the ball three times deep in our own territory, which that’s hard to defend from.”
After holding South Carolina’s to 1-for-11 performance on third downs, MSU (4-4, 1-3 in Southeastern Conference) has held its last five opponents to 18-for-65 on third down (27.7 percent). MSU yielded four passing touchdowns for the first time since the Egg Bowl and Ole Miss’ five TD passes on Nov. 24, 2012.
“Losses are terrible. Wins are great but now, how you get to them is why I say it’s never as bad or never as good as it seems,” Mullen said. “How you got there is usually pretty close, but the end result is very drastically different and the process of getting there is very close.”
Mullen even admitted that the first passing touchdown Saturday and only big run from South Carolina sophomore Mike Davis was a result of a coaching malfunction where players weren’t lined up in the proper defense for that situation.
“To be a great defense, no matter what situation you are in, you have to make big plays and stop them even if the offense turns it over and they are on the 1-yard line,” MSU sophomore linebacker Bernardrick McKinney said. “The defense has got to make a big play to get the offense back on the field. I feel like that the defense should have made the plays even if the coaches put us in a bad position.”
Mississippi State was credited with five quarterback hurries. In the last three games, the Bulldogs have 16 quarterback hurries, an average of 5.3 per contest. South Carolina threw for only 147 yards and during the last two league contests, MSU has allowed 312 aerial yards after surrendering 679 passing yards in the first two SEC tilts. The Bulldogs limited the Gamecocks to 12 first downs. MSU entered the game ranked 14th among all FBS programs in first downs allowed with 129, an average of 18.4 per game.
“I’ve told our guys that improving on third down and through the air is great but defenses get judged on two things: keeping teams out of the end zone and creating turnovers,” Collins said. “We’re not doing either of those things in the last three weeks of play.”
On the road to winning the 2012 Heisman Trophy, Manziel made Collins’ defense look silly while totaled 440 total yards (311 passing, 129 rushing) and two touchdowns in a 38-13 victory over the Bulldogs in Davis Wade Stadium.
“The biggest and maybe most hilarious thing about that game is I don’t know if everybody knew who he was at the time of our game in Starkville,” Collins said. “He had a coming out party against Louisiana Tech, then played well against us and then went to Tuscaloosa and everybody knew his name. There’s no secret at this point and time with him.”
Manziel threw four touchdown passes and ran for two more scores in less than three quarters to lead No. 12 Texas A&M to a lopsided 57-7 win over UTEP last weekend.
Manziel threw touchdown passes of 44, 15, 17 and 26 yards and had TD runs of 10 and 49 yards before being taken out of the game with 7:39 left in the third quarter. Manziel has accounted for 33 touchdowns on the season, 25 passing and eight rushing.
“What Manziel and (A&M head coach Kevin) Sumlin do a great job of making sure the offense is going so fast that all the indicators we teach them look like a blur,” Collins said. “So then adding on that we’re on the road in a hostile environment, my job is to make sure our players are operating mentally at a high precognitive level. They have to be able to process the information given naturally.”
Follow Matt Stevens on Twitter @matthewcstevens.
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