JK’s Week 7 Best/Worst/Bold Prediction

Good afternoon, Bulldog fans! I hope you are all rested from our bye week. I also hope that our players are rested, not because I expect BYU to be some great test, but because after our last two games before the break we needed some time to lick our wounds. A 1-5 Cougar team seemingly couldn’t come at a better time, as we need to get back to winning football games. Not to say that BYU can’t win this game, but if they do, we’ve got more problems than I thought.

This should be an opportunity to avenge a brutal loss that could have easily kept us out of a bowl last year*. Brigham Young’s lone win so far in 2017 came against the not-so-stalwart-foe Portland State** in the first game of the season. They have followed that up with 5 straight losses, including a loss to the objectively-worse-than-Troy LSU Tigers. The Cougars’ offense is averaging a paltry 250 yards per game, while their defense is allowing over 350 yards per game. Simply put, this should be an opportunity for the Bulldogs to get back to being the Bulldogs from weeks 1-3.

BEST case scenario:

MSU steamrolls the Stormin’ Mormons. We beat LSU 37-7, and LSU beat BYU 27-0 while keeping the Cougars from crossing the fifty yard line. So by simple transitive property, we should beat BYU by a score of approximately 142.714 to zero. Which would be pretty awesome, but incredibly unsportsmanlike.

We get our edge back on offense. Going to Athens and Auburn in back to back weeks turned out to be a pretty awful recipe for Nick Fitzgerald and Co. But, facing a team that isn’t ABSOLUTELY STACKED on the defensive front should help get State back on track. We definitely need to build back some confidence before we play against SEC competition again.

Mississippi State doesn’t give up the explosive play. Whether it was a flea-flicker, a former walk-on kicker making our DB look like he had jello for knees, or a 58 yard pass against LA Tech, we have had some trouble avoiding the big play on defense. We need to find a way to keep our aggressive nature on defense without getting torched multiple times in a game. Playing a team with the offensive struggles that BYU has had should help.

State wins, 56-3

WORST case scenario:

We lose. I mean, there is really no excuse to lose this game. This is not the BYU team from a year ago that beat us in Provo, nor is this the same Bulldog team from 2016. The trajectories for these two teams are completely different.

State doesn’t win the turnover battle. State is a 24 point favorite in this game, but things will get a lot closer if Nick Fitzgerald continues to throw interceptions and we can’t find some interceptions or fumble recoveries of our own. We need to take care of the football, stay on schedule and score at every opportunity.

Our wide receivers don’t step their game up. Ol’ Dan is apparently trying to get more reps to our taller outside receivers like Jamal Couch and Reggie Todd. Which is a JK Certified®*** Good Thing To Do. Unless of course they struggle worse than our short guys. ... Let’s just pretend that’s not a possibility.

MSU loses to BYU, 21-19.

BOLD predictions:

Sissy bold: We have 500+ yards of total offense in this game.

Selling Coca-Cola products at your significantly Mormon, generally-caffeine-free campus bold****: Historians eventually discover that the famous 222-0 football game between Georgia Tech and Cumberland was completely made up. In the BEST case scenario I laid out above, I mentioned a score of 142.714 to zero, which is already hard to imagine. 222-0 happened because Cumberland apparently sent 16 frat boys to play against Georgia Tech’s football team. Which is still insanely hard to imagine. I mean, what’s easier to believe, that two teams played a football game of only 54 minutes and one team was able to score 222 points, or that a man in upstate New York was chosen by an angel to translate golden plates into a religious document followed by millions of people today*****?

JK’S TOTALLY COMPUTER GENERATED ADVANCED STATS NOT MADE UP ON A WHIM ACTUAL SCORE PREDICTION: DAWGS WIN 54-17.

*if we weren’t just so dang smart

**for those of you keeping score at home, Portland is not a state

***not actually registered. feel free to use that for whatever you want (which would be stupid and weird but hey, whatevs)

****this is SUPER BOLD btw

*****HEY-OHHHH finally snuck in a Mormon joke at the end there