Ole Miss vs. Mississippi State: Box score rundown

While it’s not necessarily a shocker that another Egg Bowl deviated from fans’ expectations, that doesn’t make processing what happened Thursday night any easier.

A gut-wrenching injury to Nick Fitzgerald in the first quarter turned the game upside-down and, understandably, was the leading story line for many. Mississippi State’s offensive ceiling was considerably lowered once true freshman Keytaon Thompson stepped onto the field.

Ole Miss, with its own emergency backup quarterback, needed to make up for what was sure to be an overall inefficient night by going for broke on offense, and they delivered. Five huge plays, coupled with a plus-three turnover margin, contributed to a Rebel victory.

Bill C.’s numbers gave Matt Luke’s team a win expectancy of 46 percent, so the upset wasn’t entirely rooted in dumb luck. Ole Miss still had to take advantage of the situation to pull this one off.

It was known heading into the game that Ole Miss wasn’t going to be super efficient against Todd Grantham’s defense, but the degree to which they relied on sudden bursts in between stretches of stagnation was absurd.

The measure for big plays in the table above doesn’t come close to telling the whole story. The Bulldogs stayed on the field longer, so it’s not surprising that they gained chunks of yards more often than the Rebels. But the few times Ole Miss did find success moving the ball, they capitalized as much as they could, scoring on gains of 22, 77, 63, and 46 yards.

That kind of explosiveness wouldn’t have been enough on its own to pull off the upset, as State also coughed up the ball five times, with four of those turnovers happening in Rebel territory.

(Embed isn’t working for some reason, so here’s a link to the graph.)

Ole Miss’ all-or-nothing approach on offense is further highlighted by how the majority of their drives ended. The 12 possessions that didn’t result in a touchdown gained an average of 6.8 yards (excluding the final drive to kneel). Meanwhile, the Bulldogs put together seven scoreless drives that went for 25 yards or more. In other words, yardage is meaningless if you can’t finish.

After Jordan Ta’amu and the offense found some room early in the game, the prospect of building methodical drives went out the window starting in the second quarter. At the same time, Wesley McGriff’s did a solid job of keeping State’s offense off the field through three quarters, albeit against a true freshman quarterback.

Eventually, though, the Bulldogs did find a rhythm once they started taking care of the football, as 32 of their 94 overall plays were in the final quarter. Given Ole Miss’ inability to burn clock coupled with the defense’s inevitable collapse, it’s not all that surprising that Thompson had as many chances as he did to lead a comeback.

When it came to what Mississippi State excelled at against Ole Miss, there were few surprises. They were going to run the ball well, regardless of who was under center, and they were going to underperform when backed into obvious passing situations.

While the Rebel offense wasn’t exactly efficient in any way in the Egg Bowl, this game was part of a season-long trend of finding more success on the ground than through the air.

It can’t be said enough how badly the Rebels needed those downfield looks — and bursts from Jordan Wilkins on the ground — to work out. There have been a few occasions in 2017 in which the majority of their total yardage fell under how we define big plays, but it never came close to 92 percent before the Egg Bowl. That mark of 25 yards per successful play is the team’s season high by a long shot.

Take away Ta’amu’s three biggest completions, and he averaged just a half-yard per dropback (including sacks). Again, a lot of that had to do with their screw-it-go-deep strategy, as State’s defense wasn’t going to allow any easy pickups. Those big passes still happened, and it required a bit of patience to set up one-on-one situations.