Mississippi State Football: Changing quarterbacks is addressing the symptoms, not the illness

There are a lot of Mississippi State football fans who want a change at quarterback, but it won’t cure the ills of the team.

The Mississippi State football team has gotten off to an abysmal start in SEC play. The Bulldogs are averaging just over 200 yards a game against SEC opponents and have scored a total of 13 points in those two games.

As is often the case when a team is struggling, fans of Mississippi State football want to change quarterbacks. Nick Fitzgerald has struggled, and a lot of people are ready to move on to Keytaon Thompson.

I’m not opposed to a quarterback change. But people need to understand what a quarterback change will and won’t do. A quarterback change will prepare the team better for the future. It will not fix the problems the offense has had so far in 2018.

The Mississippi State football team has bigger problems than just the play of their quarterback. The biggest problem the team has is they are trying to run an offensive system that does not play to the strengths of the players on the roster.

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Nick Fitzgerald is not going to be a down field passer like Joe Moorhead wants him to be. And Keytaon Thompson won’t be any better to begin with if a change is made. If you put him in at quarterback now, he might be better by the time 2019 rolls around, but the offense isn’t going to function any better simply because they put another player in at quarterback.

Joe Moorhead has to make the hard decision to change the offense that plays to the strength of roster of the Mississippi State football team. That means changing his offensive philosophy to feature Kylin Hill and Aeris Williams more. It also means less Read Pass Option play calls. It means having your offensive line go from the passive blocking scheme they have been utilizing to the aggressive mauling style they were recruited  to execute.

Changing the offense to one that plays to the strengths of both Nick Fitzgerald and Keytaon Thompson will allow whoever is playing quarterback to have more success. If Joe Moorhead wants to build his team to execute the offense he ran at Penn State, then recruit in such a way he can do that in the future. But the team he has now simply cannot execute that offense.

Make no mistake about it, there are changes that need to be made. But changing quarterbacks won’t fix the big picture problems of the Mississippi State football team.