STARKVILLE — Week One of the 2025 college football season is finally here, and with it a new opportunity for Mississippi State to shake the disappointment of a 2-10 campaign in 2024.
Head coach Jeff Lebby and players spoke with the media on Monday about a number of topics around fall camp and the upcoming game, and in particular, they addressed the difficulty of scouting their first opponent after circumstances that have become common in the new era of college football.
Southern Miss will host MSU on Saturday with a roster that features more than 40 new transfer players. Many talented Thundering Herd players followed head coach Charles Huff from Marshall to Southern Miss, including dual-threat quarterback Braylon Braxton and shutdown corner Josh Moten.
The prospect of scouting the Golden Eagles is complicated, but something the Bulldogs have approached by covering all bases.
The Marshall Plan
A common talking point from Lebby and the players was the unknowns that come with trying to scout Southern Miss.
The Golden Eagles are led by first-year head coach Huff, who arrived after parting ways with Marshall despite winning the Sun Belt Championship. Many players followed Huff to Hattiesburg, and thus a team that finished 1-11 in 2024 now features four Group of Five All-American selections and a Davey O’Brien watchlist quarterback in Braxton.
“I think there are some unknowns, I really do,” Lebby said. “You think about it from a personnel standpoint, there’s some differences, but again, I expect to see six, maybe seven starters for Southern Miss defensively coming from Marshall. You would think there’d be some carryover, people study themselves nonstop. Week One, it’s always a little up in the air.
On top of the roster turnover, offensive coordinator Blake Anderson arrives after working for more than a decade as a head coach at Arkansas State and Utah State.
With the mix of offensive minds and personnel, the Bulldogs have had to cover all bases to build an understanding of what concepts they may come across on Saturday.
“Offensively, their coordinator and how that situation is set up for them, not calling it last year, you’ve got to go back a couple years to watch that tape,” Lebby added. “Have a familiarity, understand his identity and what he wants to do, but until you get out there and see him, there’s some unknown.”
Wide receiver Brenen Thompson noted that the film study was split for the offense, about half Marshall tape and half Southern Miss tape. USM coordinator Jason Semore followed Huff from the same role at Marshall, and with many of the same players, there is a decent understanding of what the Bulldogs will be up against.
“I think they won 10 games last year, so there’s a lot of guys on that team that have carried over and they know how to win,” quarterback Blake Shapen said. “They’re a team that’s going to play hard, they know how to execute the right way. They’re skilled, so for us, (it’s about) going out there, being the best that we possibly can be. Executing the right way is going to be huge for us.”
Defensive growth
The Golden Eagles aren’t the only team to undergo significant roster changes. The Bulldogs feature several newcomers in starting or rotational roles, particularly on defense. Defensive backs Jahron Manning and Jayven Williams, linebacker Jalen Smith, and pass rusher Malick Sylla are a few of the contributors listed as starters on the Week One depth chart.
The unit has had to grow quickly with new players, and now faces the challenge of figuring out a Golden Eagle offense with several unknowns.
“It’s difficult because their offensive coordinator came from Utah State in 2023, and then a lot of those guys come from Marshall,” Kedrick Bingley-Jones said of USM. “So we’ve been watching a combination of both and trying to get a feel on who they’ve got. A few of their offensive lineman came from Marshall, and obviously their quarterback, who’s a really good player who plays hard and is smart. We’re trying to break those things down and be able to decipher who’s playing and who’s not.”
The key for the Bulldogs will be stopping the run, something the defense struggled with throughout 2024. The added depth in the front seven will only take the team so far – they have to match their opponent, as well – and the Golden Eagles offer a unique challenge in that regard.
The quarterback Braxton poses a threat as a scrambler as well as on designed runs, and the running backs room features SEC experience in former Bulldog Jeffery Pittman and Ole Miss transfer Matt Jones.
“(Braxton is) a good quarterback,” linebacker Nic Mitchell said. “He has great experience. He’s played a lot of ball and won a lot of games. He has a bigger body, he likes to run and scramble, so we’ve got our hands full, but we’re prepared.”
The offensive line is an unknown with so many transfers from G5 and JUCO programs, but there is little doubt Huff wants to run the ball. His Marshall team ranked 18th in FBS last year in rushing offense, registering 5.15 yards per rush and 201.7 yards per game on the ground. It’s a big first test for the Bulldogs, who ranked 129th in rushing defense last year, and much of the work in turning that around has to come from working on themselves.
“The first few games of the season, you don’t really know who your opponent is,” Bingley-Jones said. “They can come out or show something completely different than they did that an offensive coordinator did at Utah State, just based off his personality and who he has. A lot of our thing is just executing on our own accord. It isn’t about everybody else outside this building, it’s about what we do on defense.”
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