All The Makings Of Something Special
September 20, 2026 | Football, Joel Coleman
Mississippi State had already shown it has the skill, and Saturday showed it also has the intangibles.
COLUMBIA, S.C. โ Let's go ahead and get this out of the way.
There are nine Mississippi State football games left this season. Eight of those are Southeastern Conference battles. A lot can and will happen these next few weeks. The road ahead is a gauntlet.
But for a few moments, let's not talk about what might happen. Let's simply celebrate what has been. It has been incredible and has laid the groundwork for a memorable season in Starkville.
By now you know MSU went on the road and beat South Carolina 41-34 on Saturday. The Gamecocks needed to rally back with a couple of scores in the final five minutes to make the game's final score as close it was.
For the second consecutive week, the Bulldogs went into hostile territory, played a good football team and handled business. This one moved the Maroon and White to a perfect 3-0 with a 1-0 start in SEC play.
It'd be easy to chalk it all up to the production State has received over the first quarter of the season. There's certainly been plenty of it on both sides of the football.
However, on Saturday, the Bulldogs proved they're not only incredibly talented. They're also perfectly poised while standing in the middle of a storm. It sure seems like all the makings of something special are within this squad from StarkVegas.
"Proud of our guys," State head coach Jeff Lebby said. "There were a ton of opportunities for [Saturday's game] not to go right, and we made it go right."
There are moments in a season when you find out what you're really made of. For the Bulldogs, such a time was here midway through Saturday's second quarter.
South Carolina had built itself a 16-0 lead. The Gamecocks were controlling the time of possession. MSU's first three offensive drives ended with an interception and a pair of punts.
All the necessary conditions were there for State's wheels to fall off in the middle of Williams-Brice Stadium. Instead, by the middle of the fourth quarter, the only wheels to speak of were the ones carrying Gamecock fans away from the stadium.
MSU outscored South Carolina 41-7 over a span lasting from midway through the second quarter to midway through the fourth. How did the Dawgs turn the game completely on its head? They did what special squads do.
They didn't point fingers. They didn't blink. They just stuck together because they believed in what they had.
After quarterback Kamario Taylor threw an interception on his first toss of the ballgame that ultimately put State in a two-score hole, his teammates' comments illustrated the togetherness of this team.
"The defense came to the sideline and I'm telling them, 'It's my faultโฆI put y'all in a bad position," Taylor said. "They're like, 'Bro, we signed to come here and go through all this together โ good or bad."
From that point on, it was a lot of good and very little bad for Mississippi State.
"Our guys stayed together," Lebby said. "It's exactly who they've been. They responded in a great way.
"I think we've got a connected team and a team that believes in each other and believes in what we're doing. So proud of their effort and fighting their [rear ends] off for us."
It's fun to talk about the numbers this group is putting up.
They've scored 141 points already this year. The defense has only allowed four touchdowns, and one of those came when South Carolina was given a short, 16-yard field on Saturday.
Taylor has looked the part of a top tier college football player, accounting for 1,010 yards of offense and 12 touchdowns all by himself.
Running back Fluff Bothwell is averaging nearly six yards per carry and close to 100 yards per game.
Four receivers already have 130 or more yards and three of those guys all have three touchdowns.
All those numbers are awesome. But it's Mississippi State's intangibles โ the things there are no statistical measure for โ that have the chance to amplify Starkville's cowbells louder than they've rang in years.
If anyone wasn't paying attention to State yet, Saturday's win turned the holdouts'ย heads. It also set the stage for a showdown against Top-25-ranked Missouri this coming Saturday in Starkville.
It has the chance to be the biggest step yet for the Bulldogs, who truly believe they're only getting started.
"We haven't even played our best ball yet," Taylor said, "If we can clean this up, we're going to be very special as a team โ special on all platforms. As long as we stay together and we're a brotherhood, the world is ours, for real."
