STARKVILLE, MS – With some sports gradually beginning to return, college football is the one the most are eagerly anticipating the most. If it does return, one story to keep an eye on is former Stanford Cardinal transfer K.J. Costello and his potential impact in the SEC under new Mississippi State Bulldogs head coach, Mike Leach.
Costello, a 6’5, 222-pound quarterback out of Coto De Caza, CA, passed for 1,038 yards, six touchdowns and three interceptions, was a two-time captain at Stanford who started 25 games over the course of three seasons, struggled thru injuries after earning second-team All-Pac-12 honors for Stanford in 2018, when he started all 13 games and passed for 3,540 yards, the second-highest single-season total in team history, per ESPN senior writer, Adam Rittenberg.
In perhaps his best season as a starter, he completed 65.1% of his passes with 29 touchdowns, and led the Pac-12 in both pass efficiency (155) and yards per attempt (8.57). In Starkville, Costello joins a QB room that returns freshman quarterback Garrett Shrader who started four games as a freshman in 2019 and had 1,170 pass yards, 587 rush yards and 14 total touchdowns (eight pass, six rush) and junior QB Keytaon Thompson who appeared in 20 games over two seasons.
What may make the Bulldogs a dark horse contender in the always top-heavy SEC West is the arrival of Costello and his familiarity with Leach and his four wideout, pass-happy Air Raid system, that he faced while out west. In a world of uncertainty and the unexpected, Costello and Leach could become the SEC’s pigskin odd-couple version of Felix and Oscar.
What may also help them both is catching perennial NFL factories such as LSU (14) and Alabama (9) in back-to-back weeks—whom graduated a total 23 players—in the 2020 NFL Draft, and are likely in reloading modes under Nick Saban and Ed Orgeron and with Auburn coming to Starkville the following week with a young sophomore QB under center in Bo Nix, Hail State has a somewhat favorable schedule heading into their ‘Egg Bowl’ rivalry game with Ole Miss down in ‘The Grove’.
Leach also gets key starters back on offense in defense in RB Kylin Hill (242 carries, 10 touchdowns and 1,350 yards – third in the SEC), leading tackler LB Erroll Thompson (84 tackles), DL Marquiss Spencer (6.5 tackles for a loss, two sacks) and 6’5, 210-pound WR Osirus Mitchell (29 catches, 430 receiving yards) could emerge as Costello’s No.1 target and a lethal red-zone option.
The Bulldogs also caught a big break from the scheduling gods in having four of their first five games at home—with the exception of a out-of-conference clash with N.C. State in Raleigh—against New Mexico, SEC West rivals, Arkansas and Texas A&M and Tulane.
With all the stars lining up for what could be a breakout year for Costello, based on the above, he could very well be this year’s Joe Burrow in transferring from one school deep into the heart of Dixie and lighting it up in a pass-happy, spread offense the way that the now-former LSU signal-caller, Heisman Trophy winner and national champion did in arriving from Ohio State under now-Carolina Panthers offensive coordinator, Joe Brady.
Considering his extensive resume in working with quarterbacks ranging from Kliff Kingsbury, Graham Harrell to current Jacksonville Jaguars star, Gardner Minshew, I think it’s safe to say that Costello is going to be in good hands under Leach and that Hail State is going to be a problem in 2020 deep in the heart of Dixie.