Mississippi State’s Mike Leach: Some Players ‘Afraid’ of Alabama

After a blowout loss in Tuscaloosa, the Bulldogs coach discussed the Tide’s reputation and launched into an epic rant about dinosaur hands.

Mississippi State dropped its 15th consecutive game to SEC West rival Alabama on Saturday night, much to the chagrin of Bulldogs coach Mike Leach. The contest was never all that close, with Mississippi State finally scoring on the last play from scrimmage to bring the final score to 30–6.

Leach hasn’t beaten Nick Saban and the Tide since he arrived to Starkville in 2020 and his teams have been outscored 120–15 combined in those three matchups. After Saturday’s loss, the Bulldogs coach admitted he thought some of his players were afraid of Alabama’s reputation, which resulted in yet another disappointing performance.

“I’ll tell you one thing they do that gives us trouble,” Leach said, per BamaCentral. “We’ve got some guys that are afraid of the jersey that says Alabama on it. We spent a lot of time frightened of their jerseys. You want to scare some of the guys on our team, put an Alabama jersey on, it’ll scare the hell out of them.”

When asked how he’d get his team to overcome its fear of Alabama, Leach shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he began, “maybe we have to hang them in their lockers because there are other really good teams that we’re not afraid of their jerseys, but we’re afraid of Alabama’s jerseys.”

The loss dropped Mississippi State to 5-3 and 2-3 in the SEC, while Alabama improved to 7-1 and 4-1 in conference.

As is the case with most of Leach’s media sessions, he didn’t stop there. When asked what the team’s focus was headed into the bye week, the Bulldogs coach launched into an epic rant about dinosaurs, gas stations and future generations not having hands. 

“Well I think we need to use our hands better,” Leach said, initially focusing on the question. We don’t move our hands very good.”

At that point, Leach took quite the departure.

“You know, when I was a kid and I was in grade school, there was this nice big dinosaur guy,” Leach explained, per BamaCentral. “I can’t remember the gas station, but they would give you a free dinosaur [toy] if you filled up there. That’s back when they had commercials on TV and then they would give something to the kids like me.

“And then the idea was that you should raise hell with your parents every time you’re in the station wagon. We had one, a good classic like one off the Wonder Years, one of those fake woody ones, you know, fake painted-on wood. But then the best is it would always without exception the finish and the varnish on it would peel. So then it looked more bogus than ever.

“So we had one of those, and of course I tried to sit way back, in that jump seat back there, so you could pretend you were in a spaceship or something, and, but anyway, so they’d have these commercials and they’re hoping to get the kids to raise hell, ‘Let’s go to this gas station.’ I can’t remember what the gas station it was, and they’d give you a little dinosaur, you know.

“And you’d go to grade school and all that, and they’d start talking about evolution like as in if you don’t use a certain part of your body, as time evolves over century upon century, in natural selection, that part of the body disappears and even that animal might disappear.

Finally, Leach brought it back around to football. 

“I’m genuinely fearful that on our team if me and the other coaches don’t get them right, that about a generation from now their kids and their grandkids won’t have hands. Because from a lack of use those hands just disappear. Maybe they’ll be like this, like those dinosaur hands like this,” Leach said, imitating a dinosaur’s short arms.

“And you’ve got like a tyrannosaurus rex, which is clearly really good at eating things, with big ol’ jaws and all that stuff, certainly athletic and can run. Those hands are like this. I think we took a very, very, very big step as a team, which we have to correct this. We have to correct this because, you know, I think that its best in the end for these guys that they have good hand development and that they don’t evolve to where they don’t have hands.”

Mike Leach “When I was in grade school I was a big dinosaur guy” pic.twitter.com/qPyjMjKyiI

— Jack Byers (@JackVByers) October 23, 2022

Mississippi State players will look to find their hands these next two weeks in practice before returning to action on Nov. 5 against Auburn. 

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