Mississippi State Claims Golden Egg 24-22

I haven’t been great with my college football predictions this season. I predicted Ole Miss would defeat LSU at LSU, for instance, and I thought Mississippi State would steal a victory from Alabama. Wrong on both by a mile. This year’s Battle for the Golden Egg, though, I hit accurately with MSU defeating Ole Miss 24-22 in a game that I think achieved classic-egg-bowl status. Both teams played hard and with emotion. It was raining for most of the game, boosting the element of chance, and Ole Miss came very close to pushing the game to overtime with a last-ditch 99 yard drive. It was a lot of fun to watch.

MSU employed the strategy I wrote about in my prediction post. The MSU defensive players choked off the Ole Miss run and challenged quarterback Jaxson Dart to move the ball with the pass. MSU ran zero blitzes on pretty much every defensive play, and the Ole Miss running backs could not move. Bringing into the contest a season rushing average of about 230 yards per game, Ole Miss was stuffed and compiled a mere 78 rushing yards.

Dart, I will say, rose to the challenge and kept Ole Miss in the game up until the very end. Trailing 24-16 in the fourth quarter, Ole Miss recoverd a fumble by the MSU quarterback Will Rodgers on the Rebels one-yard line and marched 99 yards to score a touchdown, making the score 24-22 and setting up a two-point conversion attempt to tie the game. It was high drama. Mississippi State was one yard away from putting the game out of reach, but the Rebels recovered the fumble and coverted two fourth down plays. One of those conversions was a string pass from Dart to receiver Jordan Watkins that should have been impossible to catch, but Watkins somehow pulled it in. A few plays later Dart found a wide-open Dayton Wade for the touchdown, setting up the two-point conversion attempt to tie the game. The Ole Miss magic wore off, however, when the Rebels ran an ill-conceived shovel pass play that was swatted down by an MSU defender, sealing the win for the Bulldogs.

It was one of the best football games I’ve seen in recent memory. It had everything. Sacks. Fumbles. Interceptions. High drama. Personal fouls. Both teams playing to win. I think this game deserves to take its place as one of the classic Battles for the Golden Egg.

While I of course would have loved to see Ole Miss win the game, I find it hard to begrudge Coach Leach his first Egg Bowl trophy, something he sorely needed to solidfy his position at MSU.