Mississippi State football: 5 concerns from Joe Moorhead’s first season
By Ethan Lee
What’s going on with how the running backs were used?
Kylin Hill and Aeris Williams were two of the best players that Joe Moorhead had at his disposal on the offensive side of things this past season. However, neither of these two star running backs averaged more than 11 carries per game.
As a combined unit, Williams and Hill had a pretty good year racking up 1,258 rushing yards and 7 scores on the ground as well as 276 receiving yards and 5 touchdown catches. But they could have, and should have been the focal point of this offense.
And they weren’t.
Some of that comes down to how Moorhead’s offense operates. The bulk of the plays and formations in his scheme revolve around the run-pass option (RPO). Moorhead was on the forefront of creating the offensive system that is now widely used by colleges across the country. But one of the key aspects of his offense is “[empowering] the quarterback” and letting him decide how the offense moves based off of the reads that he makes.
That’s fine and works most of the time. But it’s difficult to get all of that going when your quarterback is having to learn a new system and is out for most of the spring and summer due to injury.
And that’s where the head coach and architect of the offense should have stepped in and purposefully designed more runs to alleviate the pressure on Nick Fitzgerald and make the decision making process simpler.
Joe Moorhead should have done more to make sure that Hill and Williams got more carries this year. Or, well, Nick Gibson would have been a solid option as well. The Bulldogs’ offense could have certainly benefitted from that sort of decision.