STARKVILLE — Restoring confidence.
That’s what the Mississippi State football defensive coaching staff has to do this week after Samford totaled 627 yards of offense, including 468 yards passing. The Football Championship Series team hung close with MSU, mainly because of quarterback Devlin Hodges. He was 42 of 69 and had four touchdowns.
MSU safeties coach Maurice Linguist said the worst thing they can do as coaches and as a team is overreact or under react. He said there are a number of things to correct, but he is encouraged by a few things he saw, including three interceptions.
MSU’s defense will have its hands full again as MSU (3-5, 1-3 Southeastern Conference) plays host to No. 7 Texas A&M (7-1, 4-1) 11 a.m. Saturday (SEC Network) at Davis Wade Stadium.
“The biggest thing is just correcting mistakes from last week. No. 1 is attitude and effort and just making sure, mentally, we’re in the right place,” Linguist said. “So much of football is energy, it’s effort, it’s where your mind is with things.
“We’ve got guys that can cover, we’ve got guys that can rush the passer and do things well that we’ve seen. It’s how you do it on a consistent level.”
MSU is ranked 10th in the SEC in scoring defense (30.0 points per game), ninth in total defense (418.6 yards) and 14th in pass defense (263.9). Texas A&M is ranked second in scoring offense (38.4 points) and in total offense (498.8 yards). The Aggies, which are ranked No. 4 in the College Football Playoff poll, are fourth in pass offense (249.6 yards).
Graduate transfer quarterback Trevor Knight is second in the SEC in total offense with 2,397 yards (299.6 per game). The Oklahoma transfer is 144 of 270 for 1,868 yards, 13 touchdowns and six interceptions. He is second on the team with 529 yards rushing and has a team-high nine touchdowns.
Josh Reynolds has 30 catches for a team-high 586 yards and six touchdowns. Christian Kirk leads the team with 54 catches for 446 yards and six touchdowns, while Ricky Seals-Jones has 13 catches for 220 yards.
“They’ve got a few athletes and some weapons,” Linguist said. “You look at some games and they put up some points against some pretty good defenses already. You ask yourself, ‘What are the things we have to do and what are going to be the secondary things?’ They’re going to have an answer and then how are we going to respond to that answer. It’s a little bit of a chess match and we’ve got to make sure we correct some mistakes we had.”
MSU first-year defensive coordinator Peter Sirmon said he recruited Kirk while at the University of Southern California.
Effort and attitude have been a big talking point for MSU football coach Dan Mullen. Sirmon said he was not happy with the effort his defense showed last week because the results were not what they wanted.
Restoring confidence starts at practice according to Sirmon.
“It’s the same thing you do every week: you start new,” Sirmon said. “There’s things that we do poorly and there’s things that we do well. Obviously when you’re giving up yards, there’s significantly more things that you need to improve on. It’s a developmental business with a week-to-week test. Right now, we’ve got to push through it.”
Before the season got underway, the MSU secondary received some bad news. Senior cornerbacks Tolando Cleveland (torn anterior cruciate ligament in left knee) and Cedric Jiles (borken right arm) suffered injuries in the preseason. Cleveland is out for the season, while Jiles missed four games before returning Oct. 8, against Auburn.
Senior safety Kivon Coman (right ankle) has missed the last three games, but he was at practice for the first time Tuesday and is expected to play. He was encouraged by what he saw from the secondary in practice.
“You practice like you play and we had a great practice (Tuesday). If we continue that through the week, we’ll have a great gameplan Saturday,” Coman said.
Coman has 28 tackles (2.5 for loss), two interceptions, one pass breakup and three passes defended.
Linguist said getting Coman back will help a young secondary and he will provide leadership. Linguist said Coman’s teammates have already responded to Coman’s return in a positive way and he said that is encouraging.
Sophomore safety Mark McLaurin, who has 35 tackles (1.0 for loss), one interception, three pass breakups, four passes defended, one quarterback hurry and one fumble recovery, said last week’s performance was not indicative of what they can do as a secondary. He said mistakes happened because of a lack of communication and poor tackling.
“We will use that as motivation,” McLaurin said. “We know we’re not that type of secondary. We have to come out this week and play a great game in the secondary.
“We just knew that we had to come in this week and work even harder. We know we can tackle and we’ve always been a great secondary at tackling, so this week we know that we have to come back out and show what we can do.”
Linguist said correcting mistakes is like playing cards: trying to figure out what the next move is. He is anxious to see how the secondary responds this week, but in the meantime, he and the coaching staff will continue to pump them up.
“We’ve got to keep pressing the button, keep encouraging, keep motivating and keep the attitude and the energy high,” Linguist said.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Ben Wait on Twitter @bcwait
Ben Wait reports on Mississippi State University sports for The Dispatch.
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