Mississippi State football: The Bulldogs should consider switching quarterbacks

Should Joe Moorhead and the Mississippi State football team look to another quarterback to try and get the offense moving?

For the second straight week, the Mississippi State football team has lost in embarrassing fashion. The Bulldogs couldn’t generate any sort of offense and things looked incredibly bleak against Dan Mullen and the Florida Gators.

The biggest problem about all of that is that this offense should be one that scores seemingly at will against anyone. Yes, Joe Moorhead brought a new offensive scheme and is working to get that fully implemented, but the offense shouldn’t sputter as much as it has in the past two weeks. Against Florida and Kentucky, MSU has gained a total of 403 yards.

The Bulldogs have been abused up front. Nick Fitzgerald can’t seem to get in a rhythm. MSU’s running backs aren’t getting the ball.

While Justin Strawn makes the case that changing quarterbacks won’t make much of a difference, I would argue that it’s something that the Bulldogs should actually heavily consider.

Moorhead’s offensive scheme relies pretty heavily on the quarterback reading the defense. The whole scheme seems to revolve around whether or not the quarterback is making the right decisions on the field.  As SB Nation’s Bill Connelly wrote about Moorhead and his offense in the offseason, Moorhead wants  “the QB to be [his] eyes on the field and make changes based on what [the quarterback] sees.”

(That entire article by Bill Connelly is worth a read in this moment, for what that’s worth).

There’s several issues with the offense that Fitzgerald can’t fix, such as the offensive line getting demolished the past couple of weeks. That responsibility is not totally on Fitz to maintain. He can’t control whether or not the right and left tackles will continually get beat.

But there’s still concerns that need to be addressed about how he’s playing right now.

Fitzgerald was once touted to be a great quarterback. He’s an incredibly dynamic runner, but there were always some issues regarding his abilities as a passer. However, nothing is working right now for Fitzgerald and the offense is suffering. Through four games, Fitzgerald has thrown for 640 yards, 4 touchdowns, and 2 interceptions. He’s run for just 318 yards and 5 touchdowns.

When asked in the postgame press conference if the Mississippi State football team would make some personnel changes on the offensive side of the ball, Moorhead mentioned that the Bulldogs “are leaving no stones unturned” and “making sure they get the best eleven on the field.”

That should include the quarterback position.

Should the Mississippi State football team make a change at quarterback? Let’s go through some of the options for the Bulldogs.

All stats via Sports-Reference.com