STARKVILLE — College football is in a state of flux.
In 2020 alone, 24 schools hired new head coaches at the FBS level. This doesn’t include the swaths of assistants, graduate assistants and other varying positions that shift with any regime change. At Mississippi State, just 10 members of the 2016 recruiting class — Dan Mullen’s final full group in Starkville — remain. Of those, players like Erroll Thompson and Kobe Jones have been elevated to captains. Defensive end Marquiss Spencer and receiver Osirus Mitchell have become integral parts on defense and offense, respectively.
Saturday, those left from the 2016 class will take the field against Auburn for one of two final games in the maroon and white before leaving with the memories and remnants of the Mullen and Joe Moorhead eras coupled with the recent developments of Mike Leach’s tenure.
“We make a lot of jokes about (being the older guys) day to day — just how old it feels and how when we were younger guys we never thought this day would come,” Jones said through an ear-to-ear grin. “And now it’s here.”
For Jones, the 2020 campaign has served as a coming-out party of sorts. A four-star recruit, the Starkville native arrived at MSU with high hopes. But slated behind Jeffery Simmons, Montez Sweat and even Spencer on the depth chart, he was used in a more rotational role until this fall.
Voted a captain by his teammates ahead of this season, Jones has proven a vocal leader in and around the locker room. In August, he was among the organizers of the team’s walk out of practice and gathering at Unity Park just off Main Street in protest of racial injustice in the United States. Standing at the center of Bulldogs in a huddle at the park, he raised his fist and bellowed, “”Black, brown, blue, whatever, it doesn’t matter. We love you all.”
But having committed to Mullen — who left after the 2017 season for the Florida job — and then subsequently playing for Moorhead — who was fired in January after just two years at the helm and despite a 14-12 record — he and his fellow 2016 classmates have endured as much head coaching turnover as any group in the country.
“The first couple of changes, it was more of a shock,” Jones said in reference to Mullen’s leaving and Moorhead’s firing. “But as it goes on, we just kind of get used to certain things and certain schemes, so we don’t really see too many surprises nowadays.”
Then there’s Thompson. Leach and defensive coordinator Zach Arnett have quipped there may not be anyone in the Southeastern Conference who’s seen as many snaps as the linebacker, a two-year captain.
Upon his arrival at MSU, Moorhead noted Thompson was among those players whose leadership qualities shone through despite playing on a defense that boasted three future first-round picks in Simmons, Sweat and Johnathan Abram. Ahead of the captains vote in 2019, Moorhead said he stressed to players it shouldn’t be a popularity contest, or who one enjoyed playing video games with in their free time. He assumed Thompson would be toward the top of the list, but he waited anxiously at the result. The team followed suit.
“It’s the kind of guy who by his actions and by his words, on and off the field, are going to be the type to represent this team and this university,” Moorhead told The Dispatch of what he hoped for in a captain. “That was Erroll Thompson from Day 1.”
Of the 10 remaining players from the 2016 class, six have proved vital in Mike Leach’s first season in Starkville. Thompson currently leads the team with 73 tackles on the year, while Spencer and Jones rank No. 1 and tied for No. 2 of defensive linemen in tackles for a loss. Mitchell, the last addition to MSU’s 2016 class, ranks second on the team in receiving yards and is tied for second with three touchdown receptions this fall.
On the offensive line, Dareuan Parker and Greg Eiland have served as stalwarts for a unit that has been a revolving door throughout this season due to injury, COVID-19 positive tests and contact tracing.
Parker’s Pro Football Focus pass blocking grade also currently sits tied for seventh of SEC offensive linemen who’ve played at least 50 percent of their team’s snaps this year, while Eiland has played the fourth most snaps of anyone on MSU’s offensive line this season despite being injured for a brief period early this season.
A one-time Alabama lean, it was a tight finish for Thompson’s services during the 2016 recruiting cycle for Mullen’s staff. Last season, the Florence, Alabama, native explained how he chose MSU given his hope of carving his own path away from the watchful — and at times overbearing — eyes of his home state.
With two games remaining and a potential slot in a bowl game up for grabs, there’s a chance Thompson finishes in the top 10 in career tackles at MSU, where he’d become the first player since 2002 to join that list. But perhaps more pressing is the legacy that he and his fellow classmates have left in the slew of two head coaching changes, three staffs and the 31 wins and counting MSU has accrued in their time in Starkville.
“Mississippi State means everything,” Thompson said Tuesday. “Changed my life as a young man and as a football player. It’s meant, really, everything.”
Ben Portnoy reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @bportnoy15.
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