Mississippi State kicks off the 2021 season at 3 p.m. Saturday at Davis Wade Stadium in Starkville.

The Bulldogs will face Louisiana Tech in the first game of the season, MSU’s first regular-season nonconference contest since a 45-7 win over Abilene Christian on Nov. 23, 2019.

For perspective on Mississippi State’s first opponent, The Dispatch spoke with Ben Carlisle, the publisher of BleedTechBlue, Louisiana Tech’s Rivals.com site. Carlisle is in his fifth season covering Louisiana Tech.

Note: This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What are your overall thoughts on Louisiana Tech coming into 2021?

Carlisle: You look back at 2020, and it was a difficult season not only for Louisiana Tech but really across college football. Louisiana Tech finished its 2020 season at 5-5 overall. They fell 38-3 to Georgia Southern in the New Orleans Bowl. They’ve added 13 transfers. The big name is probably Austin Kendall, the West Virginia transfer quarterback. He’ll start on Saturday against Mississippi State. They’ve added three offensive linemen from the transfer portal. They added two running backs: Marcus Williams Jr. from Appalachian State and  Keyon Henry-Brooks from Vanderbilt. I think there’s some optimism on the offensive side of the ball. The defense returns 15 of its top 16 tacklers on that side. The lone guy that’s not back is Milton Williams, and he was picked 73rd overall by the Eagles in the NFL draft earlier this year. They added three SEC transfer defensive backs — Myles Mason from Arkansas, Baylen Buchanan from Tennessee and Elijah Hamilton from Vanderbilt — to try to shore up the back end some. There’s some optimism. Obviously, it’s going to be a tough beat to go on the road to defeat Mississippi State, especially considering that Tech is a 23.5-point underdog right now. But they are optimistic about the season, hoping that they can get all these transfer pieces to really fit into what they want to do on both sides of the ball.

How do you feel like this Louisiana Tech team matches up with Mississippi State as far as what they do best?

Carlisle: We’ve seen these two teams meet in 2015, 2017 and 2018. Mississippi State’s always been a very difficult matchup for Louisiana Tech mainly due to their physicality up front. After last year, Tech’s offensive line had so many issues up front. They couldn’t run the ball. They couldn’t protect their passer. So how can that offensive line hold up against such a physical front six that Mississippi State has? I think that if Tech is going to have some success offensively, they’re probably going to have to throw the ball early on to see if they can get those linebackers away from the line of scrimmage a bit and then allow Williams and Henry-Brooks to perhaps find some room in the run game. It’s a really difficult matchup for Louisiana Tech. I know Will Rogers is back for his sophomore year at quarterback for State, so can David Blackwell, in his second year as the defensive coordinator, put Rogers in some different spots to perhaps confuse him, force him to turn the football over? But at the end of the day, I think Mississippi State’s talent ends up overcoming Louisiana Tech in a game that, even if it is close into the middle of the third quarter, I think Mississippi State wins pretty comfortably.

Yesterday, we asked some Mississippi State players about the three quarterbacks: Aaron Allen, Luke Anthony and Austin Kendall. What do you think each of them does best, and what do you think helped Kendall win the starting job?

Carlisle: I think the main thing that helped Kendall win the job is he’s older, obviously a sixth-year senior in college football. I know he didn’t play a lot at Oklahoma, but he’s been in a College Football Playoff environment. He’s been in those big games. He played in some big games at West Virginia. The game’s kind of slowed down for him a bit at this point in his career. You could kind of tell early on in fall camp that it was his job to lose. He was in command of the offense. He’s a little more athletic than I thought he would be from the quarterback position. Now, do I expect him to run the ball 10 or 15 times on Saturday? I don’t. But I do think that his ability to move around in the pocket gives Louisiana Tech a little bit more comfort at that position. I think his experience, having been in the college game for so long, is ultimately what allowed him to win out in the job. He’s had a really solid fall camp, and I know this staff is excited to see him on the field. You talk about Luke Anthony: He’s still working back from a knee surgery that he had in late June, so he didn’t really factor into the competition as much. If he would have been healthy, I would have imagined he would have been right in there with Austin Kendall. Aaron Allen’s a fourth-year kid. He had his moments last year: Tech beat UAB, the Conference USA champion, in double overtime in Ruston. He led two late scoring drives in that game to push it into overtime. He’s got some talent; he’s just been really inconsistent with the football, puts the ball in danger too much from a turnover perspective. The room is deep, but I think Austin Kendall has firmly planted himself as the starter.

Louisiana Tech has finished .500 or better in every season so far under Skip Holtz. Do you think that will continue this year, and what do you think their record will be?

Carlisle: I think you’re looking at probably an 8-4 team. If things go right, they could win nine games. I think they’ll be up toward the top of Conference USA, competing with UAB and UTSA for the West Division in the league. Skip’s done a really good job. We talked a lot back in 2013 when he was hired about building a program, and I think that’s something the Louisiana Tech fanbase has yearned for for so long. It’s always been a stepping-stone job whether it was Derek Dooley leaving for Tennessee or Sonny Dykes leaving for California. That’s been the big thing from this program: the ability to get high school kids in, and they kind of grow up behind the scenes, so to speak. You don’t necessarily see them on the field until their third, fourth, fifth year on campus before they make a big impact. I think that’s been the big thing Skip Holtz has done so well here in Ruston, and I would expect that they’ll put together another solid season: 7-5, 8-4, competing for the top spot in Conference USA.

Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.