Mississippi State football now has the worst passing offense in the SEC

We’re three weeks into the 2023 Mississippi State football season and the Bulldogs currently have the worst passing attack in the Southeastern Conference.

After running the brilliant and beautiful Air Raid offense with Mike Leach, the 2023 version of the Mississippi State football team doesn’t seem remotely committed to airing things out. After three weeks of play, the Mississippi State Bulldogs have the worst passing offense that you could possibly find in the SEC this season.

Mississippi State is currently averaging just 165.3 passing yards per game. That sits at the bottom of the SEC. To go with that, the Bulldogs have attempted just 75 passes so far this season. That’s second-worst in the conference, just one pass attempt more than what Alabama has at 74.

The Bulldogs have totaled just 496 passing yards through three games (dead last in the SEC). Alabama is the next-worst passing offense in the conference with 588 passing yards per game. Miss. State and Alabama are the only two teams in the conference to be averaging fewer than 200 passing yards per game.

That’s not the sort of stat that the Bulldogs want to have in common with the Crimson Tide right now.

Mississippi State football: Bulldogs’ passing offense is the worst in the SEC right now

MSU is completing 60 percent of its passes, which isn’t last, but it is 12th in the 14-team conference. So, we’ve got that going for us right now.

This is a stark difference from where the Bulldogs were with Will Rogers playing for Mike Leach. Under Leach’s guidance in 2022, Mississippi State averaged 311 passing yards per game (though there were still some notable offensive issues that needed to be addressed for the Bulldogs to have even more success than the eight regular season wins MSU got last season).

Rogers completed 68 percent of his passes for 3,974 passing yards and 38 touchdowns against 8 interceptions. So far this year, in three games, Rogers has thrown for 492 yards and five touchdowns against zero interceptions, but he’s only completing 59.5 percent of his passes.  Totally unrelated stat, but it’s worth noting that Rogers had eight games of at least 400 passing yards prior to this season.

Given the offensive woes, it shouldn’t shock anyone that the Bulldogs are sitting at the bottom of the SEC West right now.