How Head Coach Zach Arnett Responded To Mississippi State's 41-14 Loss To LSU

What Mississippi State head coach Zach Arnett said in the postgame press conference about how he felt his team performed against the Tigers.

Over the weekend, Mississippi State football suffered a brutal 41-14 loss to the LSU Tigers. After the game, head coach Zach Arnett shared why he thought the Bulldogs had a poor performance, and what he expects to see from the team in their next game.

He started off by addressing how the Tigers played, then compared it to how the Bulldogs performed.

"They played faster right from the jump, and they dominate that football game. So I've done a very poor job of in my evaluation of where we're at as a football team. And we have to decide how we want to respond to this, because obviously, you got two ways you respond to defeat like this," said Arnett. "And we're either going to do the hard things and the necessary things in order to get better, or we're not losing like this becomes commonplace. So we have decisions to make, as coaches as players everyone on our program we got decision making how we're going to respond to this”

Throughout the game, one of the main challenges MSU faced was gaining yards. The offense simply did not run their routes right, had incomplete passes, failed to keep the defense off of them, and made all around a lot of mistakes.

Playing like this causes coaches to look at the plays their calling, who they put on the field, and how they can make their offense better.

“We got a lot of good leaders on this team and veteran guys have played a lot of football game right around and the reality is is is as frustrating as this loss is and feels right now. It counts the same whether it's a one point game or there's one loss on record."

Arnett knows he has a strong team, the issue is utilizing each in order to get the best results. However, although the Bulldogs face defeat, Arnett believes that they still need to keep their head high.

"Our guys played a whole lot of football games. And they know they know that one game does not define a season. And so we're gonna show back up to work and we got a chance to go played a heck of environment next week was a really good football team. I expect to have a team who shows up, fired up excited to play and hopefully executes a lot better. We did today that we gotta come up with a plan to execute.” 

Arnett has faith in the team. He knows that he can get them to be at the level they need to be at. This week may have just been a shock for them, being that it was the first conference game of the season.

"We have to decide how we're going to respond to this. And there's gonna be plenty of outside noise. There's gonna be plenty of outside noise. When we play critics/ We can either decide to listen all that and let it be a distraction and we're not gonna get any better. . ." 

With a big loss came a lot of outside noise from fans and media. Although the negative is direct and harsh, Arnett feels strongly about both his response and the team's response to the flack.

"We can go to work, and we can study the film and we can be critical of ourselves a lot more critical of ourselves than any outside noise. And we can go back to work, then we give ourselves a chance to get better and compete. So hopefully we will choose that course of action."