Mississippi State and Arizona have never met in a football game.
But they have plenty in common as they prepare to meet for the first time on Saturday night in Tucson.
Both teams are led by offensive and passing-minded head coaches.
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Both teams rely heavily on their quarterbacks, even more than is inherent with any football team.
Both teams are 1-0 and have reason to be optimistic that they will be better than they were last season.
Let’s start with the coaches.
State head coach Mike Leach has been one of the more prominent passing-game architects in college football.
Jedd Fisch is only in his 2nd season as Arizona head coach, but before that he had 5 NFL jobs and 4 college jobs as an assistant, all of which had something to do with quarterbacks, the passing game or offense coordination.
Bulldogs quarterback Will Rogers already is a record-setter in his 3rd season as Leach’s quarterback.
Wildcats quarterback Jayden de Laura, the Pac-12’s Offensive Freshman of the Year in 2021 at Washington State before transferring to Arizona, originally committed to play for Leach at Washington State, 3 months before Leach accepted the Bulldogs job.
So de Laura is capable of doing what Leach wants his quarterbacks to do, and he demonstrated that by throwing 4 touchdown passes against San Diego State last week as Rogers was throwing 5 TD passes against Memphis.
The 38-20 victory against the Aztecs enabled Arizona to match its win total from last season, so a better record than last year seems pretty likely. But the Wildcats seem poised to leap past last year’s record after opening the season with a road victory against a program that won 12 games a season ago.
Simple math says State isn’t likely to win a bunch more games than the 7 it won last season, but it too had an impressive victory in its opener and seems capable of winning 8 or more games.
In addition to the similarities, these teams also feature notable differences.
The first involves contrasting reasons for their shared expectations for improvement.
Arizona wasn’t going to get much better by leaning primarily on the roster that produced the worst conference record in the Pac-12 last season at 1-8. So Fisch brought in 50 new players, including 11 veterans through the transfer portal.
De Laura was joined in the transfer portal by former UTEP wide receiver Jacob Cowing, who had 8 catches for 152 yards and 3 touchdowns in the opener.
The Bulldogs, meanwhile, are pinning their hopes for improvement on the return of 16 starters from a team that was 4-4 in the SEC last season.
Speaking of conferences, this is Leach’s first game against a Pac-12 opponent since taking over at State.
This is the longest road trip that the Bulldogs have made in 6 years and kickoff won’t come until 11 p.m. EDT.
But the State players’ body clocks shouldn’t have much trouble adjusting to the 2-hour time difference. The game in Starkville last week was interrupted in the first quarter by lightning and the subsequent delay lasted more than 2 hours.
The Bulldogs didn’t seem fazed by the delay, so they don’t figure to be fazed by Mountain Standard Time.
The prediction
The optimism entering Fisch’s 2nd season, the encouraging performance in the opener and the enthusiasm of the home crowd will have the Wildcats confident and excited.
They’ll make some plays in the passing game –- but so will Rogers and the Bulldogs. Whereas Cowing made the lion’s share of plays among the Arizona receivers last week, Rogers distributed his passes among 12 teammates, 5 of whom caught touchdown passes.
State appears to have one of the better defenses in the SEC and it should prevail despite a strong challenge from the Wildcats.
Mississippi State 33, Arizona 24.
Les East is a New Orleans-based football writer who covers LSU for SaturdayDownSouth.com. Follow him on Twitter @Les_East.
