5 infuriating stats from Mississippi State football’s loss to Auburn

49 – the number of passing yards to wide receivers other than Zavion Thomas

The Mississippi State Bulldogs absolutely needed a big game from Zavion Thomas, who has shown he can be a special wide receiver in Maroon and White. Thomas torched Auburn’s secondary as he caught nine passes for 112 yards and a touchdown. He couldn’t be stopped and that was great to see.

But unfortunately, Mike Wright was only really able to connect with Thomas. Because for some reason, outside of Thomas’ receptions against the Tigers, Wright only had 49 passing yards.

Without even going into Mike Leach’s philosophy on how to have a truly balanced offense (this isn’t it, by the way), only being able to connect with one wide receiver is not going to put the Mississippi State football team in position to win many games.

Wright isn’t exactly known for his passing and while there were a few great moments from the Vanderbilt quarterback, he was off target and unable to complete more than 50 percent of his passes. And that’s frustrating to see in a game where the Bulldogs fell behind early.

A run-first offense just doesn’t really give MSU the opportunity to mount much of a comeback, so when you’re down 24-3, teams are going to rely on a passing attack more often than not. And when you can’t really spread the ball around to multiple receivers to keep the defense on their heels, you’re going to have a hard time keeping up.