The SC State Bulldogs have hit a snag on offense as they try to repeat as MEAC Champs and return to the Celebration Bowl. Head coach Buddy Pough said it’s going to be a challenge to figure it out.
Time is of the essence as SCSU is currently 1-4, including its most recent 20-14 loss to FAMU. During that game, SC State was held scoreless until the 4th quarter and put up a lackluster 85 total yards of offense in the first half. The 4th quarter flurry of 14 points included some big plays from quarterback Corey Fields Jr. to wide receiver Shaq Davis, but there are still more question marks than hope according to Pough.
“I can tell you that we’ve got issues offensively and we are trying to figure out whether you need to throw it all in the trash can and try to start from scratch,” Pough said. “But it’s kind of hard to do that in the middle of the year.”
It starts with the quarterback position because while Fields Jr. has shown flashes of brilliance this season, he has not been as consistent as SC State needs him to be and Pough said that has to be addressed. He’s currently completing just 41 percent of his passes through the season’s first five games.
“Well, he has his good days and his bad. He has his medium days and his bad. He hadn’t had very many good ones here lately,” he said. “…he had a good rhythm a time or two but his percentages are down so low and when you lack consistency where we do then, you kind of you want to try to figure out why. I don’t know what that is and I can tell you that, I think a lot of us got to do with the fact that we struggling to run the football.”
Pough went on to elaborate that a lack of consistent run game has forced Fields to carry more of the offensive load than he needs to which has led to some uncharacteristic mistakes. He added that everyone’s going to have to do their part to take some of the pressure off him.
“It’s the offensive front first and then our backs, I’ve got to get our backs out there and really rolling,” he said. “We had an instance where we had a player today, we practiced it one way and ran it in the game another way. So we’ve got to get everybody on the same page…when you can’t run it, when you can’t do much of anything, it’s on everybody.”
SC State will host Virginia University-Lynchburg on Saturday before starting MEAC play the following week.