State potentially has best the QB and the best LB in the SEC.
DATELINE
Hoover, Ala.
What a difference a finish can make.
A year ago, Mississippi State came to SEC football media days off an 8-5 season in 2012, and expectations were muted.
Coming off a 2013's 7-6 record, the Bulldogs arrived here Tuesday at SEC football media days with expectations soaring.
The difference? MSU finished 2012 losing five of its last six, including a 41-24 Egg Bowl loss to Ole Miss and 34-20 trouncing by Northwestern in the Gator Bowl.
But the after the injury-plagued Bulldogs salvaged 2013 by closing with overtime wins over Arkansas and Ole Miss, they crushed Rice, 44-7, in the Liberty Bowl.
And so the very first question asked of MSU coach Dan Mullen here was prefaced by the statement, "the buzz around the program seems to be at an all‑time high."
Mullen is embracing the "buzz," which has a lot to do with MSU potentially having the league's best quarterback (Dak Prescott) and best linebacker (Tunica, Miss., native Benardrick McKinney).
"I think how last season ended, with a lot of young guys coming back on our team, our team immediately put a lot of expectations on themselves," Mullen said. "Right from day one of the workouts, the winter conditioning, of what they wanted to accomplish this year, what they felt they could accomplish.
"So we've talked to them about it, embrace all those expectations. Our expectations are to find a way to get to Atlanta. That's what we can control and compete for that SEC championship this year."
Both 2012 and 2013 illustrate the importance of taking the long view. State clearly wasn't as good as that gaudy 7-0 record suggested in 2012, but was in fact much better than the 4-6 record suggested last year, either.
"I think last year we played (Texas) A&M in kind of a high‑scoring game, I think it was 51‑41 was the final," Mullen said. "The next week we end up in the fourth quarter, had a true freshman quarterback playing Alabama, not the best situation to get your first action as a college football player. But Damian Williams gets thrown in trying to win the game in a close, low‑scoring game against Alabama in the fourth quarter.
"I think after that game, we look back, we played Auburn earlier in the year, didn't know what type of team they were going to be at that point in the game, ended up losing to Auburn at the end of the game. The team was able to look back and say, 'We can score points against teams in this league, we can play great defense against teams in this league when we need to. We've played tight games against some of the best teams in the country. We're pretty good.'"
McKinney, who played quarterback in high school, is appearing on every preseason watch list there is for a linebacker. He said the expectations are built around the process he's seeing in Starkville, with players leading voluntary workouts.
"The leadership got together, it was about 11 of us," McKinney said. "We talked and said we need to do extra work if we want to compete with big teams and go to Atlanta. Dak and I got the offense and defense together and said we were going to put a little more work in."
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