Disappointing, stagnant, inconsistent.

That’s how I’d describe Mississippi State’s offense in the first 2 years with Joe Moorhead.

That’s coming from someone who called Moorhead a “home-run hire” and predicted that he’d win 10 games in his first season in Starkville. There’s no bigger Moorhead believer than I am, yet when his team scored 10 measly points at Tennessee, I admitted I was having serious thoughts about Moorhead being more suited to be a coordinator than a Power 5 head coach.

Critical, I’ve been. Lose to Ole Miss and critical, I’ll be.

But if Moorhead loses the Egg Bowl in front of the home faithful, I won’t be calling for athletic director John Cohen to make a change. That might be an unpopular opinion, especially if Matt Luke is the coach celebrating as the rest of the country piles through their Thanksgiving leftovers. The optics of that, I realize, wouldn’t be good.

Still, though. Has Moorhead been so bad that he deserves the boot after 2 years? Like, is MSU about to pay a coach with a winning record north of $10 million ($9.5 million to Moorhead and his staff would have buyout figures to cover) after a 13-12 start?

MSU has been disappointing. But there’s a fine line between “disappointing” and “dumpster fire.” Florida State and Arkansas were dumpster fires. Their teams were totally undisciplined and played like they didn’t believe in their head coaches. That’s why they were fired before the end of their second seasons. Before that happened, only once in the past 30 years had a Power 5 coach been fired before the end of his second season for performance-based reasons.

Moorhead’s team was in the Playoff Top 25 heading into the postseason last year and they were picked to finish 5th in the division heading into this year.

Should they have won more games? Absolutely, but all of their losses this year came to teams that are bowl eligible.

Here’s the other thing that’s worth mentioning; Moorhead’s biggest question mark was how he was going to recruit the Southeast. Last year, he signed the No. 24 recruiting class in America. This year, his class is ranked No. 21 with 22 commitments, all but 1 of whom are from the Southeast.

Obviously none of that will matter if Moorhead can’t develop guys, and fast. He knows that. He knew that when he took the job. He knew that people were going to be skeptical, and his mission was always going to be to let his offense do the talking. That hasn’t happened yet, and now people are more skeptical than ever.

I know that there’s a group of people reading this who would love nothing more for Christmas than for Moorhead to decide that he’d rather be at Rutgers.

My guess? That’s not happening.

Anybody who spent any time around Moorhead knows that he’s confident, competitive and that he bets on himself at every turn. That’s why he left his head gig at FCS Fordham to become a coordinator at Penn State. That’s why he left the area of the country where he spent most of his career to pursue his dream of being a Power 5 head coach.

Nobody wants this as bad as he does, which won’t determine if he succeeds or not, but it will determine his decision to stay or go. You know, assuming MSU will have him for another year.

Cohen’s bizarre appearance on “The Paul Finebaum Show” last month didn’t exactly give Moorhead the unconditional vote of confidence that there’d be a Year 3:

Regardless of how you feel about Moorhead, we can all agree that was cringe-worthy, right?

Look. Even if Cohen has buyer’s remorse, 2 years is simply not enough time to punt on an average team at a place like MSU. Moorhead will know more than anyone that his job will be on the line in Year 3. Shoot, he might think his job is on the line on Thursday night.

“You don’t want to downplay the emotional aspect of it, but after the 1st quarter, all the Knute Rockne stuff goes away and it comes down to execution,” Moorhead said about the Egg Bowl. “I don’t believe you can quell the emotion, but we want our play between the whistles and between the lines. This is a game our administration wants to be played between the whistles.

“I understand the magnitude of it, President (Mark) Keenum clearly expressed that when I got the job. We’ve got to do everything we can to make sure that trophy stays put.”

If last year’s postgame on-field shouting match was any indication, Moorhead isn’t just firing off coach-speak. His Egg Bowl initiation showed why he was ready for this heated rivalry. Another Egg Bowl win would give Keenum and Cohen confidence that MSU is still the undisputed state champs.

But a loss shouldn’t serve as Moorhead’s coup de grace. Not yet.