BATON ROUGE, La. — The highlight is impressive and, from LSU’s point of view, a little scary.

Mississippi State quarterback Nick Fitzgerald takes a shotgun snap and shows a handoff to speedy running back Brandon Holloway going left, all the while keeping his eyes on South Carolina’s right defensive end, Dante Sawyer, who crashes down to go after Holloway.

Fitzgerald reads that and pulls the ball out of Holloway’s stomach and takes off running right where Holloway should have been had he stayed disciplined in the zone-read option. Instead, the 6-foot-5, 230-pound Fitzgerald plows over a cornerback, absorbs a hit from linebacker Bryson Allen-Williams that darn near knocks Fitzgerald’s helmet off and keeps his feet down the right sideline for 74 of his 195 yards rushing in what would eventually be a 27-14 Mississippi State win.

That’s the challenge LSU faces this week when Fitzgerald and the Bulldogs visit Tiger Stadium. Fitzgerald, the latest of the SEC’s line of big, physical running quarterbacks, a la Tim Tebow, Cam Newton and Dak Prescott, will test LSU’s discipline and the approach against such offenses from new Tigers defensive coordinator Dave Aranda.

“Really, how I defend it will depend on what the coaches want,” said outside linebacker Arden Key, one of the key players whose movements — whether he crashes to take the handoff or stays home — could be one of the keys for Fitzgerald in the option game. “You just have to stay with your keys.”

That’s easier said than done against a Dan Mullen offense.

He was Tebow’s offensive coordinator at Florida before building Mississippi State to respectability on the back of Prescott, the current Dallas Cowboys starter who had mixed success running the offense against LSU during his Mississippi State career.

In LSU’s 21-19 win over the Bulldogs last year, Prescott hurt the Tigers in the air, but in a season where he rushed for 588 yards, he was held to minus-19 by the Tigers. But the year before, he rushed for 105 yards and a touchdown and passed for 268 yards and two more in MSU’s 34-29 win at Tiger Stadium.

If anything, the Bulldogs look more reliant on the quarterback run this year. Fitzgerald and backup Damian Williams, a Louisiana native who got most of the snaps in a 21-20 season-opening loss to South Alabama, have combined for 299 of the team’s 529 rushing yards, while also throwing for 321 yards.

MSU coach Dan Mullen said Fitzgerald is different from Prescott.

“Nick is a different style of runner than Dak was,” he said. “He’s faster than Dak and a little bit more explosive than Dak with the ball in his hands. I don’t know if he’s as physical as Dak was. It’s a little different style of running.”

That said, Mullen said the success of Fitzgerald against the Gamecocks was more about good reads than highlight-reel plays.

“You look at what he did, he set a school record for rushing by a quarterback but it wasn’t like he was making dynamic runs and making seven people miss,” Mullen said. “He made good reads, and the line blocked well. If you execute well, I think you can see that he will have success.”

That would make for an interesting matchup with LSU. Before coming to Baton Rouge, Aranda’s Wisconsin defenses were consistently among the nation’s best and had a reputation for being one of the most sound and disciplined groups in the country.

But this season, as his new team has learned his scheme, its biggest flaw has been the occasional blown assignment leading to big plays.

In Saturday’s 34-13 LSU win, Eli Jenkins, Jacksonville State’s dual-threat quarterback, rushed for 82 yards, often on zone-read runs similar to what Mississippi State runs. And in both the JSU game and the 16-14 loss to Wisconsin, missed assignments hurt the Tigers.

LSU coach Les Miles lamented being out of position against Wisconsin. And against JSU, the Gamecocks’ lone touchdown came on a 76-yard pass made possible when two LSU defenders made ill-advised attempts at both going for the interception, leaving the receiver wide open.

“If we eliminated some of the broken coverages, angles to the ball, we could certainly have trimmed the score significantly,” Miles said.

As Fitzgerald showed on his highlight-reel run against South Carolina, blown assignments this week can again lead to big plays.

LSU defensive end Lewis Neal said Monday that defending MSU’s signature play is not difficult.

“You just have to play your assignment,” he said. “It’s not hard.”

What might be hard over the course of a long game is fighting the temptation to, as LSU was guilty of last week on JSU’s long touchdown pass, try too hard to make a big play. Or, as Sawyer was guilty of on Fitzgerald’s big run, over-zealously chase the wrong would-be ball-carrier.

Aranda has the reputation of coaching sound units. If LSU has its most sound game of his three at LSU, perhaps the Tigers can duplicate the success it had against Prescott last year.

If not, perhaps Fitzgerald will add to his growing résumé.