STARKVILLE — Mississippi State has a quarterback competition on its hands.
Speaking with reporters Thursday after the Bulldogs opened spring practices, head coach Mike Leach noticeably mentioned that incumbent starter Will Rogers will have to “earn” his job over a plethora of signal-callers, including Southern Miss transfer Jack Abraham.
“He’s one of those guys that’s a self-starter when he works and you trip over him in the film room all the time,” Leach said of Rogers. “So I mean, that’s a good quality. He’s got to win his job, too. That’s what spring is all about. All the jobs are open, and then they find it out.”
While no frontrunner has been named, it’s presumed Rogers heads into camp with the edge given the final two months of the 2020 season he had. After spelling an ineffective K.J. Costello, Rogers completed at least 63 percent of his passes in four of his final six games. He also became the first passer in school history with three consecutive 30-completion games and sits tied for sixth in 300-yard passing games.
Thursday, Leach made specific mention of Rogers as a player who’s become increasingly vocal since last fall, something that’s come with an added maturity and simply a full offseason within the program. With the departures of linebacker Erroll Thompson and defensive end Kobe Jones, MSU is in need of a new set of vocal leaders, and Rogers seems poised to embrace that role.
But for as good as Rogers was down the stretch and for what he’s shown early, including guiding MSU to a win over No. 24 Tulsa in the Armed Forces Bowl, he figures to have stiff competition from Abraham.
A near dinosaur by college football standards, the former Southern Miss quarterback has played at three schools in five years since graduating from Oxford High School in the class of 2016. Abraham passed for more than 7,000 yards in 27 career games in Hattiesburg and is one of just three players in program history to throw for more than 3,000 yards in a single season.
His most prolific year at Southern Miss came as a redshirt sophomore when he finished third in the country with a 79.3 adjusted completion percentage according to Pro Football Focus when he was under the guidance of air raid disciple Shannon Dawson — now the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach under Dana Holgorsen at Houston.
“We’re right in the thick of it now as far as seeing who can do what, because they’re new faces,” Leach said of the competition. “I haven’t coached a number of them, and so we’ll see that. We got some good film today. I was encouraged by how they threw the ball.”
With just one practice in the books, there’s no real timeline in terms of naming a starting quarterback according to Leach. Five players, he said, repped at quarterback during the first full day of spring ball. But for whoever comes out of the spring, there’s still the expectation that the competition will persist into the fall.
Leach said Thursday he’d ideally head into the summer with his quarterback competition whittled down to two passers, though things figure to change again in the fall when four-star passer Sawyer Robertson arrives on campus.
Robertson comes to MSU as the highest-rated quarterback prospect to sign with the school in the 247Sports composite rankings era. As a sophomore, he completed 313 of 483 throws for 3,564 yards and 43 touchdowns to just seven interceptions, while he tossed another 3,914 yards and 44 touchdowns the following fall.
The Bulldogs also have three-star freshman quarterback Daniel Greek already on campus. Greek, the son of a coach who’s spent years running a variation of Leach’s air raid, was the less heralded of MSU’s 2021 quarterback signees but possesses enough experience in the scheme to carve a niche this spring.
“When we get to (fall) camp, we’re gonna do the same thing again,” Leach explained. “So you want to give everybody as many resources as you can to compete, but regardless who we feel like is ahead in spring, we’re going to do it again the first week of camp.”
Ben Portnoy reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @bportnoy15.
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