On a Saturday where college football was thrown into mass chaos and matchups between ranked opponents reigned supreme, the game between the East Carolina Pirates and the SMU Mustangs was largely forgotten. However, thanks in large part to the arm of Garrett Krstich, the Mustangs showed signs of life and were competitive for the first time all season.
True, the Pirates never were in too grave of danger during their 45-24 victory, but the 24 points scored by SMU doubled its total offensive output from its first four games of the season. Considering that they were 41-point underdogs coming into the game, the Mustangs had to be pleased with their performance, even if it only resulted in a moral victory, not a real one.
On the day, Krstich completed 42of his 67 passes for 339 yards for two touchdowns and one interception. Behind this solid outing from the walk-on, SMU put up a season-high 390 yards on the day. The Mustangs even seemed to be on the verge of putting ECU on upset alert after recovering a fumble on a kickoff in the waning seconds of the third quarter.
Trailing by just 11 at the time, the Mustangs had a chance to make it a one-possession game early in the fourth quarter. However, Cody Rademacher missed a 40-yard field goal and the Pirates would tack on 10 more points to avoid what would have been perhaps the most stunning upset of all on a wacky Saturday of college football.
But the main takeaway from this game for SMU shouldn’t be that it wasn’t able to pull off the upset. Instead, the Mustangs can draw plenty of positives from their AAC opener moving forward.
First and foremost, interim coach Tom Mason shouldn’t have to lose too much more sleep over who to start at quarterback. The answer, at least for now, is clearly Krstich. The junior, who started the year as the team’s fourth-string quarterback, helped the offense find some sort of rhythm for the first time all season. He also seems to have found his go-to receiver in Darius Joseph, who caught 13 passes for 100 yards and was on the receiving end of both of Krstich’s touchdown passes.
While it should be noted that ECU’s pass defense isn’t exactly stellar (it ranks 91st in the FBS, giving up 260.2 yards per game), the difference in the offense’s overall performance against the Pirates compared to the the Mustangs’ first four games is night and day.
Of course, there is still room for a lot of improvement all over for SMU, as the defense still is giving up a ton of yards and points (though this is an ECU offense that put up 70 points on North Carolina) and the offense stalled a bit in the game’s most pivotal moments.
But considering how catastrophic the first four games were for the Mustangs, they’ll take whatever positives they can get to try and build off of moving forward.
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