The Mississippi state football team has a fine head coach in Dan Mullen, and they are enjoying their longest string of success in the history of the school. Their football program was often one that just got beaten up by teams like Auburn and Alabama, and now this team is good enough to scare or beat these premiere programs.
Dan Mullen has done a great job at this school primarily because he knows how to coach quarterbacks. He keeps finding people on the scrap heap from Dak Prescott to Nick Fitzgerald, and he will likely keep his job as long as he can find somebody to run his offense.
What is the difference between Mullen and someone like Gus Malzahn at Auburn?
Mullen recruits
Dan Mullen recruits people that he believes will be easy to coach in his offense. He is not going for the singular talent that will make everything easy, and he does not assume that one five-star player can fix his offense. Dak Prescott was once just a guy who happened to be on The Bulldogs roster.
Now Dak Prescott is the quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys. He can thank Dan Mullen for that. Mullen has found a new player in Nick Fitzgerald who just carved up a very good defense at LSU, and that player can probably take the Bulldogs a long way this season.
Gus Malzahn claims to be a genius
Gus Malzahn has carved out a persona that makes him look like a genius, and it is the primary reason why he still has a job at Auburn.
He is trying to convince everyone that he is so much smarter than everyone else, but he clearly is not very good at recruiting. He keeps snapping his fingers and claiming that the latest savior for the Auburn Tigers was not the right guy. He makes it look like it must be the fault of the player, but Mullen is having more success overall at a worse location.
Mississippi State is in Starkville, Mississippi and it is not really near anything. At least you can get on I-85 and drive to Atlanta in a couple hours from Auburn. It is easier to recruit at Auburn, but the guy who is in the middle of nowhere in Mississippi seems to be getting all the talent. Clearly, Malzahn is not who he claims to be.
Nick Fitzgerald: draft pick
Nick Fitzgerald could become the next darling prospect that is on the mind of every NFL team in need of a quarterback. We are going through this discussion every week about who teams like the Jets would like to have, and the Jets could fall in love with Fitzgerald for the future if they think Sam Darnold will stay in school. Dan Mullen, then, is the quarterback whisperer.
