Why MSU must lean on Fitzgerald at QB
STARKVILLE – Mississippi State’s offense is borderline broken. Two straight games of barely managing to eclipse 200 yards from scrimmage suggests so.
Senior quarterback Nick Fitzgerald has much to do with those outputs, but he shouldn’t be the fall guy. The entire offense is flailing, and Fitzgerald can only do so much to prevent it from falling into further futility.
That’s why the Bulldogs have to roll with Fitzgerald, their senior leader and a guy who spent hours on end studying the playbook to prepare for this season. It might not look like he did based on the last two weeks, but that’s not all his fault.
“That’s 11 guys on the field,” offensive coordinator Luke Getsy said. “That’s not Nick.”
By most measures, Fitzgerald is having his worst season as a passer and a runner. He holds the worst completion percentage and the worst yards per carry he’s ever had. Was that expected? No. But is it really that surprising? It shouldn’t be.
Learning a new offense isn’t easy, and physically performing it in game situations is even harder. Fitzgerald admitted that he’ll never be an expert at running head coach Joe Moorhead’s offense.
“With the new offense, I’ll never really get to the graduate level of the offense,” Fitzgerald said. “I’ll understand the basics and what we’re doing, why we’re doing it and how we’re going to do it.
“I’m trying my best to learn it all, but coming from a quarterback, having a spring and an offseason to learn a whole new offense is tough. We’re doing what we can.”
Fitzgerald said sophomore Keytaon Thompson has the time needed to one day be a master of Moorhead’s offense. But that day isn’t now. Given Thompson’s inexperience – he has two career starts to Fitzgerald’s 29 – it wouldn’t be wise to throw him into the fire that currently blazes in Starkville.
Thompson is essentially a younger Fitzgerald anyway.
Like Fitzgerald, Thompson struggles with accuracy. He’s completed just 47 percent of his passes at Mississippi State, which is a lower figure than Fitzgerald’s mark of 49.1 percent this season.
And when it comes to running, the reads in Moorhead’s offense are much more complicated than what Thompson learned under former head coach Dan Mullen.
If Fitzgerald – who needs 144 rushing yards to break Tim Tebow’s SEC rushing record for a quarterback – is struggling to make the right reads, then Thompson probably would too.
But Moorhead said that isn’t part of the problem. Getsy concurred. They said Fitzgerald is making the right reads, but a combination of bad blocking up front and potentially poor play calling has resulted in Fitzgerald’s 1.4 yards per carry in the last two games.
“It’s not my job to call plays,” Fitzgerald said. “That’s way above my pay grade. It’s my job to go out there and execute the ones that are called.”
Getsy said Fitzgerald has attacked the game plans and that he “knows exactly what he needs to be doing.” Moorhead agreed, but he said the entire team – Fitzgerald included – needs to play better than it did against Florida. From Fitzgerald, that’s what he expects to happen.
“I think Nick has responded to the last two outings in a positive manner,” Moorhead said. “I think we’re going to continue to see him improve moving forward.”