STARKVILLE — In a year filled with absurdity and inconsistency, Mississippi State added perhaps its most outrageous entry into a season filled with randomness Saturday.
Throttling a Missouri team that had won three of its past four games 51-32, it was senior long snapper Paul Blackwell, a former walk-on and junior college transfer, who fell on an ill-timed muffed punt by Tiger returner Cade Musser in the end zone to give MSU its first score of the night en route to a season-high scoring output.
“I happened to be the one to get my hands on and it was in the end zone,” he said postgame through an ear-to-ear smile. “And I guess dreams really do come true.”
In short, Blackwell was just doing his job. His prescribed duty on punt team is to deliver starting punter Tucker Day a chest-level spiral before racing downfield in time to stand right in the face of the opposing team’s return man. Saturday, doing his job made Blackwell a hero.
As he neared Musser who stood deep inside the Missouri 20, Musser shook his hand as if to signal for a fair catch, but never actually corralled the ball. As the spiraling pigskin bounced around near the goal line, player after player dove over it. Blackwell arrived on the scene.
With his arms outstretched and leaping toward the black field paint in the north end zone, the former Pascagoula native who played his high school ball at MHSAA 1A school Resurrection Catholic and spent two years at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College before walking on in Starkville lept on top of the football for his first collegiate touchdown in his final regular season game.
“Every play, my job is to be there on a sky situation,” Blackwell explained. “So if the guy does drop the ball, I’m supposed to be the guy to recover it. So it is a surprise whenever he does drop it, but I was just executing my job because that was the game plan.”
Stepping off the pile, Blackwell hugged Day emphatically. A nervy extra point snap followed. The scattering of Cowbells littered throughout a mostly-empty Davis Wade Stadium, COVID-19 limitations aside, clanged in approval. On the sidelines, the most unlikely of players was swarmed for his scoring play.
Minutes after senior linebacker and captain Erroll Thompson was ejected for targeting, coupled with the all-too-easy 75-yard scoring drive Missouri embarked on as a result, Blackwell’s touchdown gave a seemingly defeated MSU team an adrenaline-laced shot of life.
The Bulldogs rolled from the fumble recovery on. Freshman quarterback Will Rogers completed 13 of his final 19 passes in the first half to lead MSU to its highest scoring opening 30 mins of the season. The running back conglomerate of Jo’quavious Marks, Dillon Johnson and Lee Witherspoon carried the Bulldogs to a season-high 151 yards on the ground. Freshman receiver Jaden Walley also continued to do Jaden Walley like things as he turned in his fourth-straight 100-yard receiving game.
For Blackwell, plays like Saturday don’t come often. It’s the reason postgame his phone wouldn’t stop vibrating. Family from halfway across the country and former teammates texted and messaged him and say their congratulations. A former linebacker at the high school level, he’d scored before, but never in a game of Saturday’s magnitude.
During his normal postgame routine, Blackwell is greeted at the bannister at the foot of Scott Field by his family. Saturday, he was swamped by family, friends and fans alike in recognition of his game changing score.
“I definitely think that lit a fire for us,” Blackwell said. “And it helped us execute our game plan.”
Ben Portnoy reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @bportnoy15.
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