Three games into the season, Joe Moorhead’s offense had to have looked like a revelation to Mississippi State fans. The team had racked up over 600 yards of total offense twice during that span, something that had only been done a total of five times in the program’s 114-year history prior to Moorhead’s arrival.

Fast forward two weeks and the offense looks like it is clueless against SEC defenses as the Bulldogs have put up a combined 13 points in the previous two games against Kentucky and Florida.

One of the biggest issues from last weekend’s game was the lack of touches the team’s running backs got in the second half. For whatever reason, Mississippi State abandoned the run game and basically froze out Kylin Hill and Aeris Williams against Florida. The result was zero points and one dud drive after another in a humiliating 13-6 home loss to Dan Mullen’s new program.

During his Tuesday media availability, the team’s offensive coordinator, Luke Getsy, was peppered with questions about his struggling unit. Here’s what Getsy had to say when asked if the team plans to run more designed run plays, in essence taking away Nick Fitzgerald’s option to keep the ball.

“Only if it’s advantageous to us. It really is, and Coach (Moorhead) does a good job of that stuff, he really does,” Getsy answered. “He’s done a really good job of putting our guys, 99 percent of the time in the best position to have success. Now, we have to execute and that’s each position coach making sure their players know what to do, and that’s each player taking accountability and knowing what they are supposed to do and execute their assignments.

“We have to do a better job executing our assignments before we can ever change who we are, and honestly, we feel really good about who we are. We are not going to change, this culture, it’s critical right now that we put our foot in the ground right here and stay true to what we want this culture to be.”

Getsy kept his composure during the press conference, but it did appear for a slight moment he’s grown tired of answering questions about Mississippi State’s lack of success on offense.

“I think we are strong enough to stay on our path, I really do,” Getsy said. “Yes we need to put more points up, yes we need to gain more yards – we can’t walk away from a football game with 200 yards of offense. That can’t happen again. But the reality is we know this works, it has worked, it’s been proven to work. We have to get the execution level up to where it needs to be.”

That sounds nice, and he’s accurate when he makes those statements, but the reality is that this offense has yet to prove it can be effectively run against SEC defenses. That doesn’t mean that it can’t, but until it shows that ability, fans in Starkville and around the league will continue to question the future of this offensive system in the league if the disastrous results continue to pile up.