Mississippi State heads to Austin on Saturday night with the kind of setup that usually invites the easy assumption: short-handed Bulldogs, top-15 Texas, Halloween stage, trouble ahead. But that’s also what makes the night interesting.
Jeff Lebby is still not revealing which quarterback will start, and he said Wednesday both candidates have handled the week well.
“Both of those guys, they’ve had a really good start to the week,” Lebby said. “They’ve got to continue that as we really dial in on a game plan, and I get ready to go call the game for whoever it is that’s going to start.”
Billy Puckett has been steady through four games, completing 41 of 64 passes for 368 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions. Michael Van Buren brings a different kind of resume, even if he hasn’t taken a snap this season. He arrives with 18 career starts and threw for 1,495 yards and 10 touchdowns at Appalachian State last fall.
The guess here is that Swann will get a chance at some point, and that he’ll help the Bulldogs put together at least one scoring drive. In a game like this, a veteran with SEC starting experience is too useful not to lean on. Mississippi State does not need fireworks as much as it needs clean series and an offense that avoids the killer mistake.
Texas, meanwhile, gave Ole Miss plenty of opening last week and still survived. The Longhorns were penalized 14 times for 134 yards, and a handful of those flags came from avoidable personal fouls.
Steve Sarkisian acknowledged as much after the game. “We had an opportunity to be closer to perfect,” the Texas coach said after the win.
That kind of discipline doesn’t always snap back immediately, especially with Texas playing its fourth straight SEC game. If the Longhorns are sloppy again, Mississippi State can steal yards and keep itself in the fight. That matters even more if the Bulldogs are asking a quarterback making his first or second start of the season to manage the whole thing.
Texas has already shown a habit of letting games hang around. The Longhorns beat Tennessee 20-17 on a final-play stop, then had to survive Ole Miss recovering an onside kick in the final two minutes before a last-play interception ended it.
And Mississippi State has seen Texas’ vulnerability before. Last October in Starkville, the Bulldogs led by 17 before the Longhorns scored 24 straight and pulled out a 45-38 overtime win.
That history makes four-quarter control a tough ask for Mississippi State with a backup quarterback in the mix. Still, if the Bulldogs protect the ball and Texas keeps handing out free yards, a one-score game going into the fourth quarter is very much on the table.
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