STARKVILLE — What needed to be a “get right” game for Mississippi State only further exposed the fact that the Bulldogs are a highly flawed football team.
MSU once again started slowly on offense and had no answers for Toledo on defense, and it led to a 41-17 defeat that was even worse than the score made it look.
The Rockets averaged 7.3 yards per play in the first half, and quarterback Tucker Gleason — who entered the game with a completion rate below 50 percent against Duquesne and Massachusetts — was 18-of-22 for 218 yards and two touchdowns in the opening two quarters. Toledo finished the first half 5-for-7 on third down and 1-for-1 on fourth down as the Bulldogs (1-2) could not win on the line of scrimmage and left the Rockets’ receivers with tons of space.
The offense was just as bad, if not worse. MSU’s offensive line was completely manhandled by Toledo’s front, leaving quarterback Blake Shapen with very little time to get rid of the ball. Shapen was sacked three times in the first half and five times in all, and four of the Bulldogs’ first five drives resulted in a three-and-out.
MSU, trailing by 25 with a minute and change left before halftime, started to string together some chunk plays on offense using tempo and eventually reached the Rockets’ 13-yard line with one second on the clock. Instead of attempting a field goal, the Bulldogs opted to go for the touchdown, but Shapen threw his first interception of the season to Avery Smith in the end zone, a fitting end to a disastrous half of football.
After MSU was stopped on fourth-and-short in its own territory on its first drive of the second half, Toledo (3-0) further extended the lead on Gleason’s second touchdown pass to Newton. A 9-yard pass from Shapen to freshman Mario Craver later in the third quarter gave the Bulldogs their first touchdown of the night, and he connected with Kevin Coleman for another score in the fourth.
Takeaways
1. This wasn’t the ‘Showtime’ offense that was promised. Head coach Jeff Lebby arrived in Starkville with a reputation as an offensive mastermind, with success as a coordinator at Oklahoma, Ole Miss and UCF. This is now back-to-back games where MSU has been out-schemed on that side of the ball in the first half and managed just three points before intermission. Play-callers almost always script a certain number of plays to start the game, so whatever Lebby and company have pre-planned has not been working in the slightest. Execution is a big piece of it, too, but the Bulldogs are running out of time to fix things.
2. The defense looks incapable of stopping anybody right now. Toledo scored touchdowns on four of its five first-half possessions, each of them covering at least 60 yards. MSU’s young secondary was missing cornerback Kelley Jones on Saturday night, and Brylan Lanier, who moved over from the star position to fill in for Jones, went down with an injury as well. Injuries or no injuries, the Bulldogs were simply carved up by Gleason and his receivers, particularly Junior Vandeross III and Jerjuan Newton. And this is far from the toughest offense MSU will face this year.
3. The season is already on life support. Southeastern Conference play begins next weekend with a home game against a Florida team that has also struggled so far, but after that the Bulldogs play the top two teams in the country — Texas and Georgia — both on the road. Five of the top seven teams in the AP Top 25 are on MSU’s schedule, with four of those games away from Davis Wade Stadium. The Bulldogs’ bowl chances are slipping away just three weeks into the 2024 campaign.
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