Or, second attempts at first impressions.
Welcome back to Rock M Nation’s annual opponent preview series of the upcoming season. Each week we will break down one opponent from the schedule in chronological order. Given that rosters are ever fluid – and this is done by a hobbyist rather than a pro – there could be some errors in history and current roster makeup. All mistakes are done on purpose and with ill intent because I don’t like you or your team.
Catch up on previous 2025 opponent previews!
As much as the Bulldogs tend to be an afterthought when folks think about excellent teams in the SEC, several coaches have shown that MSU can, indeed, hold its weight and and tangle with the big boys when the right coach, staff, and players are in alignment:
Dan Mullen did it with underdog tactics and development. Mike Leach did it with a similar underdog approach with his air raid magic and some key transfer portal maneuvering.
But when Leach passed, his successor – Zach Arnett – oversaw a precipitous decline, and, so far, Arnett’s replacement has taken that decline further into the ditch. Check out what they did last year:
As a reminder, Arnett didn’t even make it through his first year on the job as he was fired after game ten.
His record? 4-6 with an SEC win over Arkansas.
New head coach Jeff Lebby’s record at the conclusion of his first full season: 2-10. Zero SEC wins.
But, hey! At least that $4 million buyout for Arnett was super affordable!
Coaching Staff
Photo by Wes Hale/Getty Images
Jeff Lebby – 2nd Year – 2-10 (0-8)
I’m going to post what I said about Lebby last year. Content warning for sexual assault inbound:
I’m sure you all remember the sexual assault scandal at Baylor where the administration and football coaches were accused of covering up physical and sexual assaults by the football players. Well, in the whole awful episode, Jeff Lebby was the one name that surfaced publicly (other than the Briles’ themselves) in one of the victims’ lawsuits, stating that she specifically spoke with Lebby about the player in question and Lebby proceeded to do nothing about it. Lebby was also the guy that printed up and sold those infamous #CAB (Coach Art Briles) shirts in support of his former boss and current father-in-law (Jeff married Art’s daughter, Staley).
Even seven years later, Lebby is still in full throated support of Briles having done nothing wrong, even inviting him to the Oklahoma sidelines last year, creating a massive distraction and ethical questioning by Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables.
Lebby is unapologetically in support of his father-in-law and the staff he was on, despite all the evidence that those gentlemen allowed 31 sexual predators to commit 52 rapes on campus because they were good at football. He is unfit to be a leader and certainly should not have the privilege of mentoring college aged men to play a game.
But he knows how to make 11 guys score a ton of points on the football field so it doesn’t matter! Moving on!
(but so far, he hasn’t shown an ability to make 11 guys stop a ton of points being scored.)
Assistant Staff
Not much movement here, other than the additions of Phil Loadholt at offensive line and Vincent Dancy as the edge rushers coach. I’m slightly surprised that the turnover is only two dudes given the general ineptitude of the team last year.
Fun fact: Phil Loadholt is one of two college football players who threatened me in my time in college. I was standing in the tunnel of Arrowhead Stadium before the 2008 XII Championship game and the Oklahoma offensive line ran through where we were standing. I yelled out “are you all going to win today?” and he turned around, called me a tasteful slur, and said he was going to eat my children (of which I had none). So, yeah, he and I are pretty close, you could say. And now he’s a power program position coach! Proud of my guy.
Roster Movement
Hoo boy. Pull up a chair. This is a doozy.
Last year – as you can predict with a massive coaching staff change – Mississippi State lost 24 players to the portal. That’s a lot!
This year, with the coaching staff relatively the same but having gone through a dog meat season, the Bulldogs lost 37 players to the portal. Woof.
Now, in fairness, they still return 14 of the 24 listed starters from last year’s Missouri-Mississippi State game. But, also, it was a 2-win team barely playing out the stretch. Take that for what you will.
So what do you do when you lose 37 players to the portal? Well, you bring in 34 transfers to replace them, of course!
Yes, that’s almost an entire two-deep of players who were playing somewhere else last year.
Of those 37, 17 are lineman – 9 of the offensive variety, 8 on the defensive side – so you have a pretty good idea of where they think they need to improve.
Also? Six receivers to try and replace the production of one Kevin Lamar Coleman, Jr. who currently wears the black and gold of Missouri.
But the big name that everyone knows (and loves) is the former South Alabama impact running back and all-world name Fluff Bothwell. When I heard he was portalling out of South Al I was hoping the fact that Coach Batoon’s connections to the program could bring in the exquisitely christened running back. Alas, we’ll just have to settle for the one of the greatest freshman running backs of the past ten years.
And if you thought the portal activity was nuts, check out Mississippi State’s 28th-ranked recruiting class (13th in the SEC). LOOK AT ALL THOSE JUCOS. ELEVEN OF THEM! That’s a Bill Syder-esque crop of JUCO imports. And, in theory, they should be ready to contribute day one. This is one of the most massive roster overhauls I have seen in some time, especially with guys who are ready to contribute out the gate. The starters will be about half the same as last time but everyone else in a State uniform is going to be wholly new to everyone inside and outside the program.
Offense
Mississippi State got the starting services of Blake Shapen for four games before losing him for the season to an injury. And while they were pretty bad with him, they were downright miserable without him as freshman Michael Van Buren did everything he could to make…anything…happen. But losing your starting quarterback without anyone prepared behind him is a death knell to any team’s season (outside maybe the top five programs in the country) so you can bet that a rebuilding Mississippi State with its third head coach in three years stood no chance. I could go through the advanced stats but…well…they were bad at everything except explosive plays. It’s easier to just leave it at that.
Quarterback
Photo by Michael Wade/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Thanks to starting in the 2020 COVID season, Blake Shapen was able to claim a redshirt for last year’s brief tour and, thus, come back for sixth year of college football and his second at Mississippi State. Other than taking too many sacks Shapen was actually a fairly decent quarterback, but a good chunk of that production was rung up on an overmatched Eastern Kentucky squad. While the Bulldogs also imported a clear backup/QB in waiting in Florida State’s Luke Kromenhoek, Shapen should have the skill set and knowledge needed to take the starting reins and, reasonably, improve on his brief first-year performance.
Running Back
Photo by Michael Chang/Getty Images
Davon Booth was State’s leading rusher last year but…let’s be honest, this is the Fluff show, baby. Booth’s offensive line wasn’t the greatest in the world but he did have excellent yards before contact (thank to the line) but terrible success rates, opportunity rates, explosive rates, and yards after contact numbers (which is largely on him).
Fluff, meanwhile, not only average 7.5 yards per carry but had a 54% success rate paired with an elite 3.1 yards before contact and god-tier 4.35 yards after contact, with not even 15% of his rushes going for zero or negative yards. I don’t know how many chances Fluff will get in Lebby’s throw first-second-and-third offense, but they should see how Bothwell he can do at the SEC level (see what I did there?).
Receivers
The Eastern Echo
Kevin Coleman received 28.9% of all passing targets, had 34.8% of the team’s catches, was responsible for 32.6% of all receiving yards, and scored 31.6% of all receiving touchdowns by himself. And now he’s a Missouri Tiger.
State does return their best tight end and 4th-most targeted receiver, but they went into the portal and brought in as many interested parties as they possibly could to run routes and catch balls, including Eastern Michigan’s top two targets. None of these guys really stood out (EMU is not renowned for it’s offense, after all) but, in theory, if you throw enough numbers at a problem you should be able to have at least one of them fix the issue.
The issue being: catching the ball reliably. Only one State receiver had a catch rate over 60%. You can guess which one that was.
Offensive Line
Photo by Bryan Lynn/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
More whole cloth imports on the offensive line, joining returning starters Albert Reese IV at tackle, Jacoby Jackson at guard, and late-season starter Luke Work. Former UTEP lineman Brennan Smith is a good get, as is Jesse Ramil out of James Madison. But a lot of these guys were tackles so they’re either a.) going to lose out on playing time for their preferred spot, or b.) move to a new spot as part of State’s new “best five”. It’ll be interesting to see who slots where, especially with the influx of JUCO linemen as well.
Defense
While the offense stunk up the joint on a historically bad level, the Mississippi State defense was even worse than their counterparts without all the convenience of blaming an injured quarterback.
State was bad at everything. Like, bottom 100 in the country bad. “One of the six worst teams in defending the run AND pass” bad. It was so bad that opposing offense simply ran the ball on them over and over with the Bulldogs unable to really do anything to stop it. Their havoc rates were awful – especially with the third worst havoc defensive line in the country – so you can now see why they went so hard on the portal for new blood. The secondary didn’t see much action because of how porous the run defense was but, even when they did see a pass, they were terrible at coverage, representing the third-worse pass defense in the nation. In theory that means that there’s no where to go but up, but I find it hard to see any improvement stemming from the mass of transfers they brought in, the majority of whom barely saw the field last year.
So what does it all mean?
Five years into this whacky new world, the data shows that you can not just import a new team through the portal and expect to get better…but it certainly seems to be the exact thing Lebby and friends are trying to do.
They do return their quarterback and running back and add one of the best backs in the nation. But the State offense is predicated on passing to open the run, and the hard reset at receiver is going to make that a tough plan to execute.
Similarly, there’s a very low chance that the defense can get worse but its hard to imagine 20+ transfers and JUCOs working well together and generating massive improvement. In 2026? Sure! 2025? No way.
Missouri beat that last iteration of this team so handily that Eli Drinkwitz was openly talking shit to them on the field. It might be a brand new two-deep but it’ll be one without much to play for in November, on the road, after likely getting bisected by Georgia. My prediction here is a beatdown of substantial enough magnitude that Lebby gets the “you’re not allowed to lose to Missouri” clause that all SEC teams have and gets canned on the field.
I’m just glad Missouri can finally beat Mississippi State in something!