Mississippi State football will apparently be without Nick Fitzgerald for the first week of the 2018 college football season
According to Joe Moorhead, Nick Fitzgerald will not be the starting quarterback for the Mississippi State football team during week one of the 2018 season. In fact, Nick Fitzgerald is apparently suspended from the Mississippi State football team for the first week of the season.
According to Brett Hudson, a beat writer covering MSU, at Mississippi State football’s press conference with Joe Moorhead, Keytaon Thompson will be the starting quarterback this week due to Nick Fitzgerald’s suspension.
The suspension will only last one week, but it’s still huge news that was completely unexpected. Fitzgerald is apparently being suspended for the first game of the season due to a “violation of team rules” that occurred several months ago.
And that leads to Keytaon Thompson getting a second consecutive start at quarterback for MSU. It’s not clear as to what exactly Fitzgerald did to earn this suspension, but Moorhead is taking it seriously.
Joe Moorhead announces Nick Fitzgerald has been suspended for the season opener against Stephen F. Austin
— SEC Mike (@MichaelWBratton) August 27, 2018
This suspension isn’t likely going to be a huge deal for the Bulldogs in the long term. Fitzgerald will be able to return to his starting job as the Mississippi State Bulldogs go to Manhattan, Kansas during week two of the season.
However, this is rather big news and could impact MSU in week two. Keytaon Thompson is getting all of the first team practice reps. That’s huge given that Fitzgerald’s injury kept him out of most of the 2018 spring practices. Every rep is important right now.
The only bonus to this is that Fitzgerald will be well rested going into the game against Kansas State. MSU will be able to keep him out of harm’s way against Stephen F. Austin and should be able to use a rather vanilla game plan to keep Kansas State guessing when the Bulldogs go to play them during week two.