2026 Missouri Football Opponent DEEP DIVE: Mississippi State Bulldogs
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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 Nate Edwards doesn’t like you or your team.
Catch up on previous 2026 opponent previews!
Speaking for myself, I’ll never forget that Mississippi State is part of the SEC. Obviously being a founding member helps, but Ole Miss always stands out as a “very SEC program” and it’s an easy mental hop to remember their rival and know that Mississippi State is part of the conference as well.
But State always feels like an overlooked SEC program, given that their football history is not nearly as robust as their rival or their neighbors in Alabama and Louisiana.
However, there have been plenty of talented teams and successful seasons in Starkville, and even in the recent past! Given their reputation as a tough program that seemingly lacks a lot of SEC-level resources, their track record since 2005 has not been nearly as bad as an outsider would think.
It is pretty wild that the three State coaches who were given more than a year at the helm were all able to build legitimately great teams at a school that, historically, has been considered the weakest program of the SEC.
- Dan Mullen hit a #1 ranking with his 2014 Bulldog team, and an overall ranking of 8th in SP+
- Joe Moorhead’s first year saw him flip a 2017 roster that ranked 18th in offense and 24th on defense into a 20148 team that ranked 45th on offense and 1st in defense, ranking 10th overall in SP+
- Mike Leach had his best team in 2022, ranking 11th overall thanks to the 24th best offense and 20th best defense
And then Leach died and his replacement, Zach Arnett, didn’t maintain course over one year and now we’re in the Jeff Lebby era. Which hasn’t been great.
Here’s what Mississippi State did last year:
Imagine starting the season 4-0, losing a tight game in overtime to a ranked Tennessee squad…and then only winning one more game for the rest of the year, including the bowl game that you only achieved because a bunch of teams chose not to participate in bowls. There were two one-score losses to lowly Florida (yikes) and a ranked Texas team in overtime, but other than the first Lebby SEC win over a terrible Arkansas squad, it was just a miserable season. Cruelly stretched out even further because they raised their hand to fill a bowl slot. That sucks.
I’m not a fan of Lebby but even his most diehard supporters have to be wondering if a 7-18 record over two years is worth it. Yes, there was growth from 2 wins to 5, and even a substantial jump from 88th in SP+ to 58th. And while I’m all for giving coaches time to build, even I’ll admit the clock on a rebuild is much shorter when you can bring in as many new guys as you want with no penalty. For his sake he better hope that the administration is patient and there’s another substantial leap in quality this year.
Coaching Staff
Jeff Lebby – 3rd Year – 7-18 (1-15)
My insistence on not talking about Jeff Lebby in any context (besides THE one context) continues for a third-straight year. Here’s the repost from the previous two years (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!
Assistant Staff
Lebby continues to be his own offensive coordinator, but replaced his quarterbacks coach with a guy coming off of the disastrous 2025 Oklahoma State season, and his wide receivers coach with a guy coming off of the disastrous 2025 Virginia Tech season. Bold choices, let’s see if it works.
On the defensive side, Coleman Hutzler is out and replaced with former Mississippi State defensive coordinator (and one year head coach) Zach Arnett. You don’t often see a guy get fired by a school and then come back in a different capacity, and yet Brent Pry at Virginia Tech and Zach Arnett at Mississippi State are doing so in the same cycle. Arnett’s defenses were some of the best in recent State history and he’s familiar with playing defense for an air-raid style offense. This is seriously a great move for the Bulldogs, tempered only by my questioning of “how long does Arnett want to work for the school/boosters that moved at warp speed to fire him after one year?”.
Roster Movement
Yes, that’s 39 players who were playing for Mississippi State in 2025 and are playing elsewhere in 2026.
Pair that with the 20 players who graduated and 8 players who declared early for the NFL Draft, and that means the Bulldogs lost 67 players from their 2025 roster.
There were only 114 players on last year’s roster! They lost 59% of their entire team!
Remember, State lost 37 players to the portal from the ‘24 team, and 24 players to the portal the year before that.
Do the math: that’s an even 100 players that portalled out of Starkville over a three year time frame, plus the natural attrition of graduation and early NFL declarations.
I have no idea how you build culture and camaraderie when you have that extreme of roster churn in three years but I’m also not paid $4.3 million per year to figure that out.
39 out, 25 in, and they targeted every position group except running back and specialist. Do you remember Jaden Rashada? He was the guy who committed to Miami (Florida) for (allegedly) $9.5 million, then flipped to the Florida Gators on signing day. But the news item here is that, before he enrolled for their spring semester, he asked out of his letter of intent, claiming that the $13.9 million NIL deal that the Gator Collective promised him fell through. So he went to Arizona State and sued Billy Napier, becoming the first college athlete to sue his coach over an NIL deal.
Of course, Rashada didn’t stay at Arizona State, as he then went to Georgia and then spent last year at Sacramento State, where he was injured early in the year and was limited in play time. So now he’s in Starkville, Mississippi. Wild times, man.
State targeted bench players or under-utilized guys at power programs and are seemingly hoping that a change of scenery and system can optimize the production.
Also, former Mizzou receiver Marquis Johnson wound up on this roster. Boo, sir. Boo.
The 23rd-best recruiting class in the country ranks 11th in the SEC. I know I write that at the beginning of most of these sections but I do so because it’s bonkers how well this conference recruits. You might recognize one-time Mizzou commit Micah Nickerson among this group, but otherwise it’s a lengthy list of four blue-chippers, three JUCOs, and a bunch of 3-star projects that will either grow into the system or portal out in a year. It’s just the nature of the sport in this age.
I do appreciate that they nabbed a 3-star rated long snapper. Not many of those walking around. Dalton Toothman is also an elite-tier name to have on the team.
Offense
Question: what does the 39th overall offense look like?
Answer: it can look like many things but Mississippi State’s 39th-ranked 2025 offense was interesting.
I feel like I’ve been doing these previews long enough – and you’ve been reading them long enough – that you and I have a similar approach to how to break down the qualities of an offense. Let’s start from the top!
52nd ranked rushing attack. Ok. That’s not great for a power program but it’s fine, especially if they compensated by being a good passing team!
Nope. 102nd in passing SP+. Ouch, that’s rough. But maybe they excelled in either standard downs or passing downs specifically?
No again! 69th in standard downs, 76th in passing downs. And before you ask the efficiency/explosiveness question, the Bulldogs ranked 67th in overall efficiency and 50th in overall explosiveness.
Truthfully, the 39th overall offense was ok at a lot of things, not ok at a lot of things, but hovered near great territory in a few big areas. Such as, 25th in points per scoring opportunity. Or the fact that they had the 87th expected turnover margin but managed to flip expectations and finish with the 47th actual turnover margin. Also, having an EPA per drop back at 73rd but ranking 13th in yards per successful drop back means the passing game was all or nothing; SP+ doesn’t like that sort of thing but it can absolutely keep crummy offenses moving the ball when they shouldn’t be able to do so.
Here’s what State will be utilizing on offense this upcoming season.
Quarterback
Alright: so what does the State offense want to do with their quarterbacks? First they brought in the ancient A.J. Swann. You might remember him from his Vanderbilt days that feel like the occurred 20 years ago but actually occurred from 2022-2023. Swann flashed as a freshman but never got past that initial flash. He has never played a full season, never thrown for more than 2,000 yards, and only run for a total of (sack adjusted) 123 yards over four years. Swann is a safe, one-year rental.
Then there’s the aforementioned Jaden Rashada. Seemingly all the talent in the world but has yet to earn an FBS starting quarterback job, and also has never completed a full season. The ceiling should seem high but we’re also in Year Four: if we haven’t seen it yet, will we?
Then there’s Kamario Taylor. To me, this is the dude. If you remember Mizzou’s game against State last year, you’ll recall that the Bulldogs did next to nothing on offense…unless Taylor was in there and running around like a football terrorist. If this staff has the patience to build an actualy, long-term offense Taylor should be the guy, but he also has the longest learning curve to round out.
Lots of options here, it’ll be interesting (and telling) on what they want to do this year by the QB that they pick.
Running Backs
Fluff Bothwell was awesome at South Alabama, racking up 832 yards and 13 touchdowns on 111 carries while not having much talent around him. He then transferred to Mississippi State and got demonstrably worse in everything, going from 7.5 yards per carry to 4.8 and seeing his touchdown total cut in half. Part of that was on Fluff: his yards after contact went down from 4.35 at USA to 2.96 at State. But the other part is blocking: his USA line provided 3.14 yards before contact and, at State, Fluff was getting popped at an average of 1.81 yards. He was just as effective in the passing game at both schools so this might be an issue of experiencing an upgrade in defensive quality he went against and a downgrade an offensive line quality. Regardless, he’s back for a second year, while his partner Davon Booth is now a Cleveland Brown. There were no portal additions here so it looks like State is good with the guys they have. Let’s hope a year of acclimation can get Fluff Bothwell back to the levels he achieved as a freshman in the Sun Belt.
Receivers
The Bulldogs lose 2 of their top four targeted receivers, and they didn’t target a lot of different receivers last year so the impact of those losses is bigger than other teams. Anthony Evans is a legit DUDE, with one of the best catch rates on the team, even if the YPC and YPT aren’t super impressive. Adding the mercurial Marquis Johnson to the lineup will be an interesting experiment as he’ll most likely be looked to provide a clear #2 target despite not being able to provide that consistently at Mizzou.
Offensive Line
Seven of the eight offensive linemen the Bulldogs used last year are gone, which is not great because they’re gone, but also kind of good because, as a unit, they stunk (here’s your reminder that Missouri took two of those offensive linemen). State loaded up on transfer linemen to fill in the gaps but only one of those transfers has had extensive starting experience. It’s going to be a lot of inexperience lining up this year; if the transfers click then this will be a genius move but it’s hard to see that happening.
Defense
Coleman Hutzler’s firing as defensive coordinator after two years in Starkville was completely justified. He inherited a defense that ranked 51st in Zach Arnett’s one year in charge and immediately tanked it to 98th. But, hey, it was the first year with a new head coach and new personnel: this stuff happens.
Hutzler “improved” that 98th-ranked unit to 85th last year.
What did they do well? Um…they were the 11th-best defense in 3rd-and-11+ situations. Mkay.
What were they ok at? Well…their tackle success rate was 86%, good for 57th in the country.
What were they bad at? Everything else.
109th against the run. 102nd against the pass. 95th in turnovers generated. 94th in points per scoring opportunity. 88th in efficiency allowed. 89th in explosiveness allowed. 104th on standard downs. 78th in passing downs. On and on and on…one of the worst power-level defenses out there.
How do you fix that? Well, changing the coordinator is a good start. As previously mentioned Zach Arnett is a solid defensive coordinator who is familiar with running a defense that is paired with the type of offense Jeff Lebby likes to run. He can act as a coach for that side of the ball and, most likely, effectively manage that side without Lebby or anyone else worrying.
State also returns a lot of pieces from last year’s group. Plus they added two standout defensive backs in Marcus Williams from Rice and Quentin Taylor, Jr. from Iowa State.
I’m not crazy enough to think that all of this is going to fix their problems but even if Arnett can get this unit to, say, 65th in the country? Huge improvement, will definitely help win a game more, if not two.
So what does it all mean?
There’s a ton of “newness” around this Mississippi State program and this schedule gets progressively harder as the season goes on. Look at the preseason SP+ rankings of their opponents! It goes 132, 45, 24, 20, 11, 10, 12, 6. In that order. And then there’s the reprieve of the 31st, 26th, and 16th best teams to close it out. On the one hands that’s good for a team that will need some time to gel; on the other, there is literally zero let up once they get into conference play and it’ll be very easy for this group to get discouraged if/when their last win was the third week of the season.
I would give you Lebby’s record on the road but that’s over analysis at this point. He’s won one (1!) conference game in two years, and that was when he barely beat a terrible Arkansas team. Eli Drinkwitz feasts on bad teams and, for everything I see here in June, this is going to be a bad SEC team. Unless I’m missing something obvious Mizzou should continue its run of comfortable wins over State and get prepared for their own version of the SEC schedule gauntlet.
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