TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Don’t worry: Mike Leach’s dinosaur rant had a point.
If you’re confused by that sentence, join the club of Mississippi State media members wondering where Leach was going when his postgame press conference wandered roughly 65 million years off track.
The Bulldogs coach detailed long-ago forays into Sinclair gas stations as a child, forcing his parents to pull over so he could collect free dinosaurs — a clever marketing ploy.
And he found a way to relate it to Mississippi State’s inability to catch the football against Alabama.
“If you don’t use a certain part of your body, as time evolves over century upon century of natural selection, the part of the body disappears and even that animal might disappear,” Leach said. “I’m genuinely fearful that on our team, if me and the other coaches don’t get them right, then about a generation from now, their kids and their grandkids won’t have hands. From a lack of use, those hands will just disappear.”
The harsh words came after Mississippi State had trouble hauling in passes all night against the Crimson Tide in a 30-6 loss in Tuscaloosa.
Quarterback Will Rogers went just 30 of 60 for 231 yards, but his receivers did him zero favors.
Jaden Walley failed to hang onto two key fourth-down passes, but he wasn’t the only one.
Rara Thomas caught only eight passes on 15 targets for the Bulldogs. Rufus Harvey was targeted nine times and had five receptions, Caleb Ducking had two catches on six targets, and Justin Robinson had only one catch despite being targeted eight times.
Lideatrick Griffin had the worst drop of all, botching a sure touchdown catch in the third quarter and letting the football fall to the turf. Griffin had only two catches on seven targets.
For Leach, it was further fodder for postgame criticism.
“I don’t want all of a sudden, a guy’s driving across this country, and then they get to Starkville, Mississippi, and all of a sudden there’s these athletic-looking, friendly guys — because we have great guys — who don’t have any hands,” Leach added. “I hope that that’s not the case. But that’s where we’re headed right now.”
Alabama, of course, did its best to affect Mississippi State’s passing game.
The Tide made several nice plays on the ball, including DeMarcco Hellams’ break-up of the first fourth-down pass to Walley and Brian Branch’s play on the second.
But Leach pushed back against the idea that
“If the ball hits you in the hand, what difference does it make if a seventh-grader is throwing it or an All-Pro?” Leach said.
He laid out how things are supposed to work: “Ball flies through air, hits hands. Catch.”
It wasn’t that easy for Mississippi State, though.
Instead, the Bulldogs head back to Starkville after two straight losses with a bye week awaiting them.
“We have to correct this,” Leach said. “We have to correct this. I think that in the end that it’s going to be best for all these guys that they have good hand development and they don’t evolve to where they don’t have hands. We definitely didn’t use ours, and so there certainly wasn’t any genetic reinforcement on our part that we should maintain our hands.”
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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