Mississippi State head football coach Sylvester Croom said he and his coaching staff knew that Kyle York’s throwing shoulder wasn’t fully recovered from the surgery it endured.
“It’s obvious his arm is not 100 percent,” Croom said after the 31-13 loss at Vandy. “We knew that coming into the game.”
So, why was he asked to throw 32 passes, including several deep passes?
Mississippi State’s first series of the game foreshadowed events to come. After picking up a first down the Bulldogs decided to throw a 40-yard pass to Tee Milons. The pass, which looked more like a punt coming out of the sore shoulder of Kyle York, was vastly under-thrown and intercepted.
Instead of calling short and quick high percentage passes that epitomize the West Coast offense, the coaches in the press box calling the plays kept calling the long ball.
The punt-like tosses kept on coming like the Mississippi State fans kept on leaving Vanderbilt Stadium.
York would throw two more interceptions and a ton of incompletions on silly play calls that asked him to heave passes 30-plus yards down the field when the Bulldogs should have been running former SEC player of the week Jerious Norwood.
Norwood carried the ball six times in the first quarter for 51 yards–an outstanding 8.5-yard average.
Vanderbilt’s rushing defense was 93rd in the nation coming into Saturday’s game. The Bulldogs exploited that in the first quarter.
The Dawgs rushed the ball 12 times for 69 yards, averaging over five yards a carry. York threw seven passes in the first quarter, completing four short-yard patterns that wound up gaining 38 yards and four first downs.
But in the second quarter the play calling went to hell. Norwood only touched the ball three times and the Bulldogs rushed the ball a mere five times total in the second quarter. They passed the ball 11 times.
For those who might argue the Bulldogs had to play catch-up … all 11 passes in the second quarter were thrown when the Bulldogs trailed by only 10 points. Ten points with an entire second half to play is way too early to begin playing catch-up.
Even before the Dawgs trailed by 10, they were behind by only three at the start of the second quarter. Fred Reid fumbled the kickoff after Vandy’s first touchdown. This pinned the Dawgs deep against their own end zone at the 2-yard line.
On first down the Bulldogs rushed Norwood for a gain of two. Instead of calling a high percentage play on second down, the coaches called another deep pass to the slowest wide receiver on the field, Will Prosser (and he’ll admit that). No doubt Prosser can catch the ball and he is a very big target, but to be able to catch the long ball that was underthrown, Prosser had to push off to make the catch.
It wasn’t a major push, but the official had no problem throwing a flag for offensive pass interference penalty that annulled the 96-yard touchdown.
The third quarter was even worse. The Dawgs rushed the ball three times the entire quarter and they passed the ball six times, two of which were intercepted.
One of those was by true freshman quarterback Mike Henig, who attempted four passes on three series.
Norwood practically disappeared. He rushed only three times in the entire second half and once in the third quarter.
With patience being asked from Bulldog fans, the coaches should demonstrate equal patience with play calling.
At this rate the Bulldogs are following the path of the 1-10
(Tech and 10) 1988 team. Coincidently, that team was the last time State lost to Vandy.
In that season the Bulldogs won their first game over Louisiana Tech, as MSU did this season over Tulane.
The 1988 squad then dropped their next 10 games, getting wiped out by Auburn and LSU.
Sound familiar?
Tulane and 10 is six games away.
Ross Dellenger is the football beat writer. He can be reached at [email protected].