Hand up. I didn’t expect to write that headline heading into the final week of October.

I spent the entire offseason talking about how I believed Joe Moorhead, with the roster that he inherited, would win 10 games in his first season at Mississippi State. With an offense that looked built to succeed with Nick Fitzgerald and a defense capable of hanging tough with virtually anyone, I liked those chances.

I wasn’t as high on Jimbo Fisher’s roster. Maybe part of that was because a 7-win team that had uncertainty at quarterback and an offense that ranked 70th in percentage of returning production, I wasn’t buying the belief that Fisher was going to elevate the program in Year 1.

As I sit here ahead of their matchup in the final week of October, I can admit it. I was dead wrong.

It’s Fisher who maximized his roster, and Moorhead who didn’t meet my high preseason expectations.

On the surface, that might not seem like such a crazy realization to come to. Fisher was the one with the ring who inked the $75 million contract while Moorhead got his first Power 5 head coaching job and subsequently talked about rings. That’s not to say that Moorhead is destined to come up short of those lofty goals, but at 1-3 in the SEC with the conference’s most experienced roster entering the season, that’s not happening in 2018.

Fisher heads into Starkville with the upper hand, even if nobody was necessarily comparing the two coaches in the preseason. They’re obviously in very different situations with very different resources.

But paychecks and resources didn’t dictate the most noticeable difference between the two coaches in Year 1. That is, one offensive-minded coach developed a quarterback and one offensive-minded coach did not. Fitzgerald looks like the game is too fast for him and Mond looks like the game slowed down.

Credit: Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports

Nobody would have said 10 months ago that Kellen Mond was a better quarterback than Nick Fitzgerald. Heading into Saturday, nobody would argue that Fitzgerald is better than Mond. More accomplished? Sure. But better to go out and win a game? Mond is clearly the guy.

That wasn’t the case before Fisher and Moorhead took over:

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And obviously Mond played in fewer games than Fitzgerald, but that was because he was benched in favor of Nick Starkel. Mond has been the unquestioned starter this year under Fisher while Fitzgerald now looks like the one who’s in jeopardy of losing his job.

Look at these 2018 numbers and it’s clear that Mond has been the better player with his new coach:

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The rushing numbers are worth bringing up because while Fitzgerald has clearly regressed as a passer, he’s still the all-time SEC leader in rushing yards for a quarterback. That’s probably the only reason that Moorhead hasn’t turned to Keytaon Thompson yet because let’s call it what it is: Those passing numbers are atrocious. A fan base that had envisions of Trace McSorley 2.0 is instead witnessing one of their most prolific quarterbacks in program history play the worst ball of his career.

Mond, on the other hand, has looked significantly improved from the jump this year. His connection with Jace Sternberger looks like a foreign concept for an A&M fan base that’s not used to seeing tight ends catch passes. And unlike Fitzgerald, who has yet to throw a touchdown pass or lead the Bulldogs to more than 23 points in an SEC game, Mond has still been solid in conference play.

As a result, the Aggies are riding a 3-game winning streak into Saturday’s contest. The perception is that Fisher will be in the SEC Coach of the Year discussion. It certainly hasn’t hurt Fisher that his lone losses are to Alabama and Clemson, which both look like Playoff locks. And that Clemson loss went down to the wire at Kyle Field, earning Fisher a standing ovation.

If Moorhead can’t win Saturday, the cries of disappointment will drown out the cowbells that welcomed him to Starkville. They’ll continue to wonder why their defense, which was the top scoring defense in the country before the LSU game, is doing all the heavy lifting when all offseason they heard about a new coach who was going to take the offense to new heights.

By the way, regardless of how this one turns out, both Moorhead and Fisher deserve credit for bringing in top-shelf defensive coordinators. Bob Shoop’s defense has done everything it could to give MSU’s struggling offense a fighting chance. And all Mike Elko has done is lead the nation’s No. 2 run defense. That probably doesn’t bode well for an MSU offense that is as one-dimensional as it gets.

Still, it’s MSU that opened as the 3-point favorite. Perhaps part of that stemmed from the fact that MSU went into Kyle Field and blew the doors off the Aggies last year.

On that day, Fitzgerald had nearly 250 yards of offense and 3 touchdowns while completing 57 percent of his passes. Mond, on the other hand, was 8-of-26 for 56 yards and 2 interceptions until Starkel replaced him in the second half. Those would be stunning numbers if they repeated Saturday. The more likely scenario is that they’ll trade places. Even MSU fans couldn’t argue with that.

Certainly there are no guarantees at this point. As Aggies fans know all too well, things can go downhill in November.

It’s been an uphill climb for Moorhead, one steeper than most imagined a few months ago. That Year 1 climb certainly doesn’t look as daunting as it once did for Fisher.

Something tells me we’ll get a few reminders of that Saturday.