Mississippi State football: Bulldogs must trust Keytaon Thompson after LSU loss

After another frustrating loss, the 2018 Mississippi State football season won’t come close to matching the lofty preseason expectations. MSU must make a change for the future.

The Mississippi State football team isn’t going to meet the hype that it had coming into the season. There’s no way that the Bulldogs, at this point, can win nine games. There’s no way at this point, the Bulldogs can challenge Alabama and Auburn for the SEC West. Both of those were supposed to be achievable goals for this team this year.

Instead, the Mississippi State football team continues to find new ways to struggle on offense and new ways to lose games. Because of that, it’s time for MSU to try something new and to build for the future. Punt the rest of the year and focus on next season. Joe Moorhead needs to make a change now.

It’s time that Moorhead went ahead and gave Keytaon Thompson a legitimate shot at the starting quarterback job.

Statistically, Nick Fitzgerald is in a decline.

Nick Fitzgerald is not the player that he once was. He hasn’t been able to replicate the level of play that he performed at back in 2016 and he’s been in a decline in production since his sophomore year.

In 2016, Fitzgerald threw for 2423 yards, 21 touchdowns, and completed 54.3 percent of his passes. He only had 10 picks and ran for another 1375 yards and 16 touchdowns. Last year, in what was an injury shortened season, Fitz threw for 1782 yards, 15 touchdowns, and completed 55.6 percent of his passes. He threw 11 interceptions but ran for 984 yards and 14 touchdowns.

Before tonight’s game against LSU, Fitzgerald completed 49.6 percent of his passes for 709 yards and had just 4 touchdowns against 3 picks. He also had 513 rushing yards and 7 touchdowns. Things were decent for him, but he wasn’t any good and has struggled to adopt Joe Moorhead’s offense.

Against LSU, things completely fell apart. Fitzgerald only completed 8 of his 24 passes for 59 yards and 4 interceptions. He ran for 131 yards on 23 carries, but that couldn’t make up for how poorly he played through the air.

This change at quarterback would be for MSU’s future.

Nick Fitzgerald has been given plenty of chances. It looked like he and Joe Moorhead turned things around against Auburn, who has a good run defense. The game plan was built around Fitzgerald running the ball far more than he’d throw it and it led to success for Fitzgerald and the team.

But now, Mississippi State needs to do something to fix this. The reason for fixing this should not be on the rest of this season. The Bulldogs have a near impossible task if they want to turn this year around. The reason MSU needs to make a change at quarterback is for the longterm health of this football program.

Fitz has proven that he won’t be able to pick up Moorhead’s offense. Moorhead has attempted to adjust to Fitzgerald’s strengths, but that still limits the potential of the offense. So, because Fitzgerald can’t thrive in this situation and Moorhead either won’t or can’t adjust the offense even further, it’s ultimately pointless to continue to ride with Fitzgerald.

Next season, Fitzgerald will no longer be on campus. He won’t be playing for the Bulldogs beyond this year. Moorhead is going to have to replace him at some point. Why not go ahead and give Keytaon Thompson a shot here?

What do you really have to lose at this point?

This season, as it stands right now, has been wasted. The Bulldogs are going to have a hard time getting past six wins this year and bowl eligibility might become a struggle for MSU if the offense continues to regress.

Thompson is going to be the future of this program (unless freshman Jalen Mayden or current MSU commit Garrett Shrader somehow leapfrogs him going into next year). If this offensive scheme takes considerably amounts of time to adjust to, give the future of Mississippi State football an opportunity to fully adapt to it.

Give him live reps and a chance to develop.

If the Bulldogs are going to lose games, it might as well be for the benefit of winning games in the future. Otherwise, this season will have been wasted for nothing.

Joe Moorhead and the Mississippi State football team have struggled this season. The Bulldogs need two more games to become bowl eligible. This is a year that MSU should have accomplished so much more.