STARKVILLE — Mississippi State head coach Mike Leach literally sounded an air raid siren during his Monday press conference, but the Bulldogs’ offense and quarterback K.J. Costello aren’t panicking.
Following a game in which Costello completed a school record 43 passes but averaged just 7.2 yards per completion in an upset loss to Arkansas, the MSU offense is looking to find its form ahead of a road trip to Lexington Saturday.
“You’ve got to go out there and execute,” Leach said Monday. “I think that (Arkansas) did; we didn’t. We had a lot of chances that game, too, so we just have to get better. We have to be a steady, consistent team. We can’t rest on any level of perceived success, and we have to be the same team every snap, and I didn’t think we were.”
In a matter of two weeks, MSU fans have endured the ever-lasting legacy of Leach-coached teams: heavenly highs and lows so deep they never felt conceivable. The win over then-No. 6 LSU thrust MSU into the national spotlight in a way it hadn’t been since the 2014 season in which the Bulldogs reached No. 1 in the inaugural College Football Playoff rankings. But with a loss to an Arkansas team that hadn’t left a Southeastern Conference game victorious since 2017, gone were the odes to bandwagons and pipe dreams at a run to the SEC West crown.
Instead, MSU looks the part of a team caught between two extreme versions of itself.
At the center of the Bulldogs’ identity crisis is Costello. Against LSU he broke MSU and SEC single-game passing marks as he torched the Tigers’ defense to 623 yards and five touchdowns through the air. For his encore, the former Stanford signal-caller again tossed over 50 passes en route to a 313-yard, one-touchdown effort, but three interceptions and a slew of questionable decision-making grounded the Bulldogs’ previously heralded aerial attack.
Postgame, Costello shouldered the blame for MSU’s middling offensive output — though Arkansas defensive coordinator Barry Odom deserved as much of the credit for his zone-heavy scheme that saw eight Razorback defenders drop into coverage on most every play Saturday. Costello noted he knew there were missed opportunities. There was momentum to be had that wasn’t grasped.
Pointing specifically to the 14-play, 76-yard touchdown drive that pulled the Bulldogs within a score as the third-quarter clock inched under four minutes, Costello explained that, when in rhythm, the offense could move promptly and proficiently down the field. But on a night where he forced ball after ball, flashes of consistency were few and far between.
“I think throughout the game we should’ve strung together five to six drives that looked that way,” Costello said postgame in reference to the aforementioned scoring drive. “Obviously, we did not do that. I’ll be watching this tape tonight to find out exactly what I need to do to help this team win.”
Now two weeks into a 2020 season that’s been anything but normal, MSU is where it likely thought it’d be at 1-1, though perhaps not in the manner it felt it’d get there. Saturday, the Bulldogs face a Kentucky defense that has allowed 71 points through two games and surrendered 320 yards through the air against an Ole Miss passing game that ranked outside the top 100 nationally a season ago. Leach also said he expects starting running back and Columbus native Kylin Hill to be healthy after he left the Arkansas contest after just one carry and did not return.
For weeks, Costello has been lauded for his maturity in dealing with adversity. Over the summer, he endured months of rehab to right what his father believed was a fractured thumb in his throwing hand. In the loss to LSU, his four turnovers nearly spelled doom, but he responded by slamming the nail into the Tigers’ proverbial coffin by way of a 24-yard touchdown pass to Osirus Mitchell with just under four minutes remaining to put MSU ahead by 10.
Costello wasn’t his sharpest Saturday against Arkansas; that goes without saying. But for the 2020 Bulldogs to escape the dizzying ups and downs Leach-coached teams so often endure, they’ll need their quarterback to rebound against Kentucky.
“Analytical, like good quarterbacks are,” Leach said of how Costello has responded to Saturday’s performance. “… Because the only way you get to be good is to have honest evaluation, and a lot of that’s going to be painful.”
Ben Portnoy reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @bportnoy15.
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