I looked back and graded the offense this morning. You can find that here.

Now let’s look back at the defensive performance against Mississippi State on Saturday. Then we’ll move on to the matchup with Arkansas.

This group gets a B+ from me.

Attacking the offensive line and getting to Michael Van Buren was one of the big opportunities last week against a poor offensive Bulldog team and the Tigers didn’t really do that.

Johnny Walker did most of the damage with one sack, two QB hits and three hurries, for just him, I’d say an A, he did fantastic on true-pass sets (no play action, screens or rollouts).

There were only six true pass sets with Walker on the field and he created four pressures on them, excellent work.

The rest of the group just didn’t do that much.

Chris McClellan had three hurries, Kristian Williams had a strip sack, no one else did much.

I would give the group a C for the overall performance, but it's boosted because the strip sack leading to the defensive touchdown was the moment the game flipped. So they get upgraded from a C to a B+ for having the key moment in the game.

Now I’m going to stick with a C.

The Tigers allowed 147 rush yards and 6.7 yards per carry on 22 attempts.

The total is right about Mississippi State’s average per game (146.9), but the average is way up from what the Bulldogs are used to (4.2).

A big part of that was 10 missed tackles in run defense. Tackling has been an issue the past few games and that didn’t go away Saturday.

The biggest offender was Triston Newson with four misses on eight total attempts, while Marvin Burks missed 2-of-3 tries in run defense.

It didn’t end up being a major issue because of how the game played out, the Bulldogs had to go away from the run to play catchup, but it could have been if the offense hadn’t played as well.

I’m going to go with a B here.

The Tigers allowed just 191 passing yards on 16 completions. There was one deep pass allowed, a 49-yard completion against Toriano Pride, but I didn’t consider that one poor coverage. Pride was right there, that pass was just placed perfectly, there’s only so much you can do sometimes.

Joseph Charleston had the only batted pass, there definitely could have been more there, but the Tigers did a pretty good job rebounding from a poor performance against South Carolina in allowing big plays in the pass game.

The Tigers allowed only 48 yards after the catch, which is huge considering how many they allowed just a week before.

The tackling in pass coverage was fine, Caleb Flagg missed 2-of-3, but there were only five total missed tackles in coverage.

Overall, good but not great. So a B.

I’m going to say a B.

Allowing 20 points against an offense that scored 31 against Georgia, 24 against Texas A&M and 25 against Arkansas is a pretty good performance.

Run defense could have been better, but with the two big plays in the third quarter making up most of the day, it really wasn’t that bad a performance. Same with the pass coverage.

The yardage numbers look a lot better without that three-play stretch for the Bulldogs.

Head to the story thread to talk about how you grade the performance or the Tiger Walk to discuss so much more.

You can follow me on X @kyle_mcareavy for even more of my thoughts and updates.