The Basics
Team: Mississippi State Bulldogs
Location: Starkville, Mississippi
Enrollment: 23,563
Head Coach: Jeff Lebby (7-17)
Record: 5-7
Wins: Southern Miss, ASU, Alcorn St., NIU, Arkansas
Losses: Tennessee, Texas A&M, Florida, Texas, Georgia, Missouri, Ole Miss
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Transfer portal rank: 18th (4 4-stars, 28 3-stars)
SOS: 13th
SOR: 56th
Mississippi State has been through a lot in the past few years—the tragic passing of Mike Leach in 2022 had a huge impact on the trajectory of the program, and the Bulldogs have been trying to get things back on track ever since. With the basketball program still trying to recover fully from Skip Prosser’s death in 2007, Wake Forest is one of the few fanbases that can truly empathize with just how difficult that can be. It seems like Head Coach Jeff Lebby has done a pretty good job getting things trending back in an upward direction already, winning 5 games in 2025 after a 2-10 season in his first year. Don’t let their record fool you, 3 of Mississippi’s State’s 7 losses came against top 10 teams (all of which are in the playoff) and 3 of the other 4 were 1 score games against SEC opponents. This should be a great game.
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Offense
Points per game: 30.5 (45th)
Yards per game: 398.4 (58th)
Run/pass split: 58% / 42%
Rush yards per game: 161.7 (66th)
Pass yards per game: 236.8 (59th)
3rd down conversions: 44% (37)
Sacks allowed per game: 3.33 (128th)
Turnovers per game: 1.3 (79th)
Based on the offensive profile from GameOnPaper, the Bulldogs are very good at explosive plays and late down success rate, but pretty average at everything else on the offensive side of the ball. That could be changing however, as Mississippi State turned to a new quarterback for their final game of the season against Ole Miss—it looks like that will remain the case for their game against Wake Forest. After starting for the first 11 games of the season, Blake Shapen was benched in favor of true freshman Kamario Taylor in the Egg Bowl, and it seems as though Shapen has no interest in returning to the team to finish out his career in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl.
If you think Mississippi State might be easier to beat with a true freshman making just his 2nd career start, you would be wrong. Taylor is a 6-4, 230 pound former 4-star recruit that can absolutely punish defenses with his legs—in his first against #6 Ole Miss, Taylor ran the ball for 173 yards and 2 touchdowns.
If you didn’t know ahead of time that he was making his first career start in Mississippi’s State’s biggest game of the season, you probably wouldn’t have been able to tell. From the opening kick, Taylor looked extremely comfortable under center and was almost statuesque standing in the pocket and going through his progressions. In his first drive as the starting QB, Taylor took the Bulldogs right down the field on a 10 play, 97-yard drive that he finished off with a 22-yard touchdown run.
Joining Taylor in the backfield is a tandem of running backs in Fluff Bothwell and Davon Booth that ran for a combined 1,192 yards and 13 touchdowns this season. Bothwell should be well known to at least 1 member of the Wake Forest staff, as current Wake OC Rob Ezell coached him as the OC at South Alabama last season—Bothwell ran for 13 touchdowns and over 7 yards per carry as a freshman with Ezell calling the plays. At 230 pounds, Bothwell is a little bit more of a powerful, physical runner compared to Booth, who is more of a speed guy at just 205 pounds.
That duo helped the Bulldogs rush for over 200 yards in 4 of their 12 games this season, and adding a dynamic running threat like Kamario Taylor to the backfield will only make their jobs easier. As Mississippi State was already running the ball on nearly 60% of their plays this season, I expect that the Bulldogs will be relying even more heavily on the run with Taylor under center in the Mayo Bowl. Wake Forest should be ready for a done of read option style plays and RPOs that make use of Taylor’s threat as a runner.
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The passing game was less definitely less effective than the ground attack with Taylor at QB—against Ole Miss, Taylor completed just 15 of his 31 pass attempts (48%) for 178 yards and 1 interception. That being said, the Bulldogs do have 2 big threats through the air in 2nd Team All SEC WR Brenen Thompson and TE Seydou Traore. Thompson was 2nd in the SEC in receiving yards this season, catching 53 passes for 948 yards and 6 touchdowns. At 5-9, 170 pounds, he is a Chris Barnes/Greg Dortch style speedster that can blow by just about any DB, so playing tight man coverage on him may not be the best option.
Seydou Traore, not to be confused with the Utah basketball player by the same name, caught 34 passes for 358 yards and 5 touchdowns this season. At 6-4, 235 pounds, the redshirt senior moves incredibly well for his size, making him a bit of a matchup problem for opposing defenses—he has a size advantage on any DB and a speed advantage over most LBs. He is a bigtime threat on play action plays around the goal line, so the Deacs will need to make sure they are accounting for him in the redzone.
One issue that really held back Mississippi State’s passing game this season was pass protection—Bulldog QBs were sacked a whopping 40 times this season for -285 yards, making them the 6th most sacked team in the nation. I would guess that having a super mobile quarterback like Kamario Taylor will probably help reduce that number a little, but he was still sacked 3 times in his first full game against Ole Miss. That should be welcome news to guys like Langston Hardy (7.0 sacks) and Nuer Gatkuoth (6.0 sacks) on the Wake Forest defensive line who are looking to boost their sacks total in their final game of the season.
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Defense
Points allowed per game: 29.2 (96th)
Yards allowed per game: 405.8 (104th)
Rush yards allowed per game: 189.5 (119th)
Pass yards allowed per game: 216.3 (60th)
3rd down defense: 39.6% (71st)
Sacks per game: 1.67 (99th)
Turnovers Forced per game: 1.4 (51st)
The first thing to note about the Mississippi State defense is that the Bulldogs just recently fired Defensive Coordinator Coleman Hutzler after 2 years of being at the bottom of the SEC in scoring defense. The Bulldogs rehired former DC/ interim coach Zach Arnett to take his place, but Jeff Lebby has already said that Arnett would not be calling plays or involved in the game planning for the Duke’s Mayo Bowl.
After a quick glance at the Mississippi State defensive profile from GameOnPaper, the first thing you should notice is that the Bulldogs are not good against the run. Their Rush EPA/Play, Stuff% (rate at which the DL stuffs the run), line yards (yards attributed to OL) and Opportunity% (rate at which the OL produces 5 yards of rushing) are all among the worst in the nation.
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If you don’t care for all the fancy advanced stats, I can tell you that Mississippi State gave up 150+ rushing yards in 7 of their 12 games, including 3 games of 200+ yards (TAMU, Arkansas, ASU) and 2 games of 300+ rushing yards (Missouri, Georgia). On the season, the Bulldogs gave up 189.5 rushing yards per game (119th) and allowed opposing ball carriers to rush for 4.9 yards per carry (117th). In their final 4 games of the season, Mississippi State gave up an average of 263.5 rushing yards and 40.8 points per game, which is a trend that should be very beneficial for a Wake Forest team whose offense is very reliant on their ability to run the ball. I assume that Demond Claiborne announcing via Instragram his decision to go to the NFL draft means he will not be playing in the bowl game, so it will be up to Ty Clark III and Robby Ashford to lead the charge for the Wake Forest rushing attack.
The pass defense was only a little better for the Bulldogs this season, and a large part of that is due to 3rd team All-SEC CB Kelley Jones. At 6-4, Jones has elite size for a corner, and that size doesn’t seem to come with any cost to his speed or agility. He finished the season with 2 interceptions and an SEC high 11 passes defended—the next closest player for the Bulldogs had 4.
This is a guy who can completely take an offense’s best receiver out of the game, and that is probably why ESPN’s Mel Kiper is projecting him as a 1st round pick in the NFL draft, should he forgo his remaining eligibility and declare. As of right now, I have not seen where he has opted out of playing in the bowl game, but it is not uncommon for highly projected draft picks to do so. We will have to wait and see on that front.
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Overall, I think this should be a pretty good game between two teams trending upwards after a few bad years. The Bulldogs didn’t beat a whole lot of good teams this season, but Kamario Taylor has the potential to be a real star in the SEC—I fully expect Mississippi State to be a much better team offensively with him under center. On the other end, the Deacs should be able to exploit a Mississippi State defense that hasn’t been able to stop the run in a full month’s worth of games. With the rushing ability of Ashford and Clark, the Deacs could be poised for their 5th 200+ yard rushing game of the season. With the way the Wake’s defense has played this season, if the Deacs can hit that 200-yard rushing mark, I have a hard time seeing them losing this one. With both teams probably relying heavily on the run game, this could be a very short game with very few possessions, so whichever team is able to make the most of their chances and avoided turning the ball over should end the game with a mayo bath.
It’s fun to be bowling again!
Go Deacs!
