(Photo from HailStateFB on X)
- With a freshman quarterback making his first career starts against top-five teams Texas and Georgia, both on the road, it’s not about the final score.
Stats are for losers, it’s often said.
Pearls of wisdom like that are rooted in truth. Those who gravitate quickly to the stat column have often come up short in the score column.
But for Mississippi State, stats have a little more meaning right now.
With a freshman quarterback making his first career starts against top-five teams Texas and Georgia, both on the road, it’s not about the final score.
Those wonderful underdog stories that we so enjoy are rare. For the Bulldogs, in Year 1 of a rebuild with a first-time head coach, success is measured differently.
And they found success in a 41-31 loss at No. 5 Georgia Saturday, namely in that freshman quarterback, Michael Van Buren.
The Bulldogs were down 17 at the half. They’d only scored 10 points, and the stage was set for Georgia to pull away. The Athens Bulldogs were halfway to their 34-point spread.
It’s a sad tale State had seen before this season.
This time it was different.
Van Buren showed poise and confidence.
The Bulldogs flirted with 400 total yards in spite of their inability to run. While they looked overmatched from a physicality standpoint on the ground, they protected enough.
In the off-season Blake Shapen, the Baylor transfer, was considered a premiere get for Jeff Lebby’s restoration project.
Van Buren, a three- or four-star freshman signee considering the recruiting service, was considered the quarterback of the future.
In the modern era of college football the future can’t be assumed. Players come and go, and rosters can look drastically different from year to year.
Maybe Shapen comes back with a medical redshirt, maybe not. Maybe Lebby links up with the Portal’s next big thing.
The season-long job interview
The only certainty is that for now Van Buren is like an interim coach with a season-long job interview.
He’s got a chance to cement his status as the quarterback of the future. He can change how Lebby views the off-season and the Portal.
And he’s off to a good start.
Van Buren, experiencing the big-game yips perhaps, missed some open throws and completed just five of his first 15 pass attempts before settling down and hitting nine straight.
He finished 20-for-37 for 306 yards with three touchdowns.
He threw his first interception of the season, and while that’s never good, it says something that a freshman thrust into a role he wasn’t repped for in the preseason has mostly protected the ball well through two starts and three appearances.
Van Buren, right now, is a bright spot. It would have been great if he could have become this week’s Diego Pavia with a Vanderbilt-Alabama level of upset.
Van Buren didn’t get that but he got meaningful snaps with the game undecided.
The Bulldogs were clearly behind the 8-ball, but there was still drama.
Van Buren led third-quarter touchdown fives of eight plays, 80 yards and eight plays, 75 yards.
The Bulldogs started the fourth quarter at No. 5 Georgia 10 points back with the football, and the freshman drove State from its 21 to near midfield before it was forced to punt.
Those are snaps that matter, much more valuable than a touchdown pass against down-the-depth-chart players in the final minutes of a blowout.
That’s video that Lebby can work with.
Speaking of Lebby, if Van Buren continues to flourish it validates the reason the well-respected offensive coordinator was hired in the first place. He’s had that quarterback whisperer glow about him.
Nothing special at the start, but now…
There was nothing special about State’s offense at the beginning of the season once the Bulldogs got past their FCS game against Eastern Kentucky.
In this new phase of Lebby I the focus on offense has changed to Van Buren’s development. There was little to no chance they were going to win at Texas.
And while Van Buren got meaningful reps in the second half, State made Georgia sweat but it wasn’t the most pressure those guys have faced this year.
They were still in control, and they showed it driving 81 yards in 16 plays, most of it on the ground including Trevor Etienne’s 1-yard touchdown run on fourth down. They chewed clock and put the game out of reach.
Georgia maintained its grip, but Kirby Smart and his players knew they’d been in a game. They felt it.
Toledo, Florida and Texas didn’t feel it as much.
The important thing for the Bulldogs is that in the second half their quarterback of the future was feeling it.
Parrish Alford
