STARKVILLE — Mississippi State’s preseason football practice schedule came together with actual football activity as an afterthought.
MSU started its preseason camp Tuesday, making it the first Southeastern Conference school to do so. From what coach Dan Mullen can gather from conversations with other head coaches, MSU is also one of the first in the nation. He said Tuesday at MSU’s team media day that the early schedule is in the interest of player safety.
He outlined the process for scheduling that way: Mullen took the calendar to the training staff and the strength and conditioning staff and asked them how they would lay out a practice schedule.
“Don’t worry about school, install, whatever,” Mullen told them. He then took that to his coaching staff and asked them how they want it laid out for installation purposes. The end result has MSU starting preseason this early with programmed days of rest in between; that way the team can start earlier but still only practice 29 times before the season opener against Charleston Southern.
“There are days on the new schedule where the players are completely off; we can’t even do a life skills meeting with them,” Mullen said. “I guess we’ll do some extra film study, play golf, I don’t know what we’re going to do.
“It’ll be a big learning curve for us as a staff this year and whether we like it or not.”
Simmons’ expectations for Jones
The preseason darling of the MSU defensive line has been sophomore Jeffery Simmons. His 40 tackles in 12 games ranked 10th on the team a year ago and his four quarterback hurries ranked him second. The likely anchor for the interior of MSU’s defensive line knows he cannot improve on the team’s bottom-half ranking in the conference in sacks by himself, and he has identified a key source of help.
It’s Starkville product Kobe Jones. If Jones lives up to Simmons’ billing, he would do so in his first year of college football after a redshirt year.
“Kobe Jones, his motor, that’s helping defensive linemen out,” Simmons said. “With his motor coming off the edge, maybe I won’t get double-teamed on the inside every play. I hope he develops more as a player during training camp and I feel like he will.”
Season opener kickoff time set
The SEC Network released its football broadcast schedule for the first three weeks of the season, included in that schedule MSU’s season opener against Charleston Southern.
MSU will open its season against the Bucs on Sept. 2 at 3 p.m. The announcement made MSU’s first three kickoff times set, with a 6:30 p.m. start against Louisiana Tech for the second game (Sept. 9) and a 6 p.m. start at home against LSU (Sept. 16) for the conference opener. All other games remain to be determined with the exception of the Egg Bowl, which will kick off at 6:30 Thanksgiving night.
Malik Dear, Jamal Peters update
MSU wide receiver Malik Dear, who injured his knee during spring practice, is not expected to practice in the opening weeks of preseason practice, Mullen said.
Mullen said Dear is going to continue his rehab in Starkville and be revaluated around the end of August to project his potential availability for the season.
With Dear unavailable, MSU is left with just one of the three players on last year’s team to catch 20 or more passes: Donald Gray.
In the periods of Tuesday’s practice open to the media, defensive back Jamal Peters was not practicing with the team and working out off to the side as injured players generally do. Peters was among the team’s leaders in passes defended a year ago and is in the mix for a playing time battle that extends through nearly the entire secondary.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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