Mississippi State football fell flat against No. 5 Alabama in a 49-9 home loss on Saturday at Davis Wade Stadium.

Now, the Bulldogs should get a bit of a rebound in the middle of their SEC schedule.

MSU (3-3, 1-2 Southeastern Conference) will travel to face Vanderbilt (2-5, 0-3 SEC) at 3 p.m. Saturday. The Commodores’ last conference win was Oct. 19, 2019, against Missouri.

To get a read on the Commodores, The Dispatch spoke with Aria Gerson, Vanderbilt beat writer for The Tennessean in Nashville. Gerson is in her first season covering the team.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Vanderbilt nearly scratched out a conference win last week at South Carolina. With that performance in mind, do you expect the Commodores to get an SEC win at some point this season for the first time since 2019?

Gerson: I think it’s possible, and I think if they’re going to do it, it will have to be in the next couple games, whether that’s Mississippi State or Missouri. Those are the easiest teams remaining on their schedule. It’s one of those things where a lot of things have to go right at the same time for them in order to get an SEC win, and things would have to go wrong for the other team. Against South Carolina, Vanderbilt forced four turnovers, which is not something that they’ve normally been doing. If something like that happens again, I do think it’s possible that they could win a game. I just don’t know that I would pick it as the most likely outcome.

Mike Wright started in place of Ken Seals at quarterback and performed well. Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea said Wright will be the starting quarterback Saturday against Mississippi State; how do you expect him to fare against MSU’s defense?

Gerson: The interesting thing with Mike Wright is I’m really curious to see how he’ll do against a team that actually prepares to face him. Against South Carolina, Vanderbilt knew at the beginning of the week that Ken Seals was going to be out, and they didn’t tell anybody. It didn’t even leak to the media until the day of. South Carolina prepared to face Ken Seals, and then they got Mike Wright, who has a completely different style as a quarterback. Mike Wright’s a lot more of a runner; Ken Seals isn’t. South Carolina prepared to face a pocket passer, and they got a dual threat. I’m really curious to see how Mike Wright does against a team that’s actually prepared for a running quarterback. I certainly think that he’s capable. He looked a lot better in the South Carolina game than he did in some of his other appearances that were mostly in garbage time in the fourth quarter — blowouts and whatnot. I do think it’s a little bit of a different situation for him.

By total yards, Vanderbilt has one of the 20 worst defenses in the country. Mississippi State couldn’t score a touchdown against Alabama, but how much better do you think the Bulldogs’ offense will be this week?

Gerson: Vanderbilt’s defense is really interesting because of a couple of trends they have. First of all, they tend to be very, very bad early in games. They’ll give up two quick touchdowns to basically everybody they face. But they tend to settle in. They tend to make good adjustments. A lot of times, that’s too late because Vanderbilt’s offense isn’t good, either. Against South Carolina, they gave up two touchdowns right away on the first two drives, and they didn’t give up any touchdowns after that until the very last drive of the game. I think that Mississippi State needs to score fast. They need to score early. The other thing that Vanderbilt does is they give up a ton of big plays. That’s because the personnel they have on defense is not particularly fast, so against a team that can utilize speed, Vanderbilt’s corners and safeties will just get completely beat downfield. They’ve gotten a lot better at putting pressure on the quarterback and having havoc plays. They had almost none at the beginning of the season, but in the past few games, they’ve actually been a lot better at that. I do think they are improving on defense. There are some things that they do well, but I think with Mississippi State using an Air Raid, they need to take advantage of that speed — throwing the ball downfield accurately and scoring fast. If they do that, the offense probably should be able to find a groove against Vanderbilt’s defense, but they just need to avoid turnovers and havoc plays that Vanderbilt started creating against Florida and South Carolina.

If you’re comfortable making one, what’s your prediction for how Saturday’s game will play out?

Gerson: I think that Mississippi State will win fairly comfortably. You saw against South Carolina, that game was actually pretty low scoring. I don’t know how high-scoring (Saturday’s game will be), especially with Mississippi State’s offense being a little bit inconsistent. It feels like they’ve almost been better on defense this year.

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