With one minute left in the third quarter, Mississippi State trailed the 13th-ranked Florida Gators by only 10 points. From there, things went south faster than a yankee in winter.
Bulldog quarterback Michael Henig, who was in for Omarr Conner because of a chest injury that sent him to the locker room at the half, was sacked in the end zone for the team’s second safety with 59 seconds left in the third quarter.
Three minutes and one Gator-touchdown drive later, Florida scored again on a blocked Blake McAdams punt.
“We made too many mistakes in the kicking game,” MSU head coach Sylvester Croom said. “That’s my responsibility. I let the players down.”
The Bulldogs lost 35-9, though the score does not indicate the true grit and excitement of the game. Had the special teams played error-free football, the final score would most likely have been somewhere in the neighborhood of 17-13.
“It was pretty bad,” McAdams said. “We take a lot of pride in (our special teams). And it hurts.”
“It was sickening,” Croom said of all the mistakes. “There was no excuse for that.”
Offensive Woes Continue
The problems with the kicking game were amplified by the utter devolution of the Bulldog offense. True, the team played the entire second half with an untested freshman quarterback, but when Conner left the game, he had only completed two passes for 15 yards and already thrown one interception.
Henig made a gluttony of rookie mistakes, not the least of which was taking one of his four sacks in the endzone for a safety, but finished with a healthy line of 119 yards on nine of 20 passes. Florida’s defense did not give the freshman time to do much more than that.
“Florida brought the house,” Henig said. “They were sending safeties, corners, linebackers and anyone else they could.”
The Bulldog defense helped the offensive unit tremendously by intercepting Chris Leak twice and backup Josh Portis once and also recovering a Chad Jackson fumble. Those four turnovers led to zero points for the MSU offense.
Florida dominated the statistics department, logging 15 more first downs, 155 more passing yards, and more than two hundred more yards of total offense than the Bulldogs.
Rest and Regroup
With Conner banged up, and several other Bulldogs limping pass the halfway-mark of the season, the campaign’s first bye week is a welcome change from the six straight Saturdays of football the team has already endured.
“The bye couldn’t come at a better time,” cornerback Kevin Dockery said.
With very winnable games against Houston and Kentucky on the horizon, getting the team back to full strength will be an imperative part of the Bulldogs’ hope to rebound from their rough start.
“We just have to put the first half behind us,” Croom said. “On offense, we have to be able to throw the football. Our defense has made outstanding improvements, but offensively we’re not where I thought we would be.”