Halftime hadn’t even ended when Marc Votteler pulled out his phone. Mississippi State was battered, Arizona State was running wild and the first year of the Jeff Lebby era already felt doomed.
One urgent text to an assistant in MSU’s front office summed up the crisis: ‘We need a list of every defensive lineman who can play and has SEC size.'”
MSU was six quarters into the Jeff Lebby era, and Arizona State was mauling MSU’s front, ripping off 208 rushing yards. The Bulldogs? Minus-13 on the ground.
“That room was so far away from where it needed to be a year ago,” Lebby told CBS Sports. “It didn’t give us a chance.”
Votteler’s assessment of the situation was correct, and the course correction he set in motion in September 2024 was prudent: the Bulldogs are now 4-0 for the first time in 11 years, heading into their SEC opener against No. 15 Tennessee (3-1, 0-1 SEC).
The Bulldogs struggled to a 2-10 debut under Lebby, the program’s worst season in 20 years, and were particularly weak along the defensive line, finishing with the worst rush defense among power conference teams (216.9 ypg) and the nation’s second-fewest sacks (10).
“There was great disappointment, obviously,” Lebby said. “I knew even while we were in the middle of the storm, the deck we were playing with, but I was never gonna say it, I wasn’t gonna talk about it. To me, it wasn’t the right thing.”
MSU also struggled offensively, ranking 14th out of 16 SEC teams in rushing.
“The line of scrimmage on both sides needed to be completely overhauled. That was No. 1,” Votteler said. “When I think about Mississippi State, I think of dominant defensive linemen, like (the NFL’s) Chris Jones and Jeffrey Simmons. We had to get the line of scrimmage looking like we were an SEC team again.”
Votteler’s staff built a color-coded document of more than 200 transfer targets. Green meant go. Yellow meant more homework. Red was a no. The staff worked the list throughout the entire season.
When the dust settled, the Bulldogs brought in 34 transfers, including 16 along the offensive and defensive lines. Two now start along the offensive line – former Akron left tackle Jayvin James and former Colorado right guard Zack Owens – and the Bulldogs hit big with Coastal Carolina’s Will Whitson, who had two sacks in the first two games but was lost for the season in Week 2 with a knee injury. Depth is considerably better along the defensive front, however, which allowed Trevion Williams to move outside after playing tackle “out of necessity” last season, Votteler said. MSU’s three leaders in sacks are all seniors.
The best additions have arguably been at the receiver position. Oklahoma’s Brenen Thompson and Georgia’s Anthony Evans III might be the fastest duo in the country and lead the Bulldogs with 291 and 290 receiving yards, respectively.
“It scares defenses, scares opposing teams,” Evans said. “We hear it all the time. They let us take everything underneath because they don’t want to get beaten over the top.”
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Blinding speed
In the rematch against No. 12 Arizona State earlier this season, Thompson had 133 yards and two touchdowns, including the game-winner with 30 seconds remaining, in which he found a soft spot in the middle of the field and then burned the Sun Devils’ secondary on the way to a touchdown. Thompson is tied for third nationally with four plays of 40-plus yards.
“I’ll be honest,” said quarterback Blake Shapen, “I’ve never thrown the ball to somebody as fast as him. You’ve got to be to get the ball up and down to not underthrow him because he’s flying.”
MSU has clocked Thompson and Evans at 23 mph on its GPS system. “If you know anything about coach Lebby, he wants speed,” Votteler said.
Lebby was acutely aware of Thompson and Evans’ abilities when the portal opened. He recruited both during his tenure as Oklahoma’s offensive coordinator, coaching Thompson for a year and recruiting Evans, who ultimately opted to play at Georgia instead. Both said Lebby was among the first phone calls they received when they entered the portal. In mid-January, they met with Shapen for dinner at Lebby’s house during a recruiting visit, laying out what could be possible if they played together at MSU.
“I wouldn’t say we were dreaming,” said Evans, “but we were envisioning the future. And you see it’s happening right now.”
Teammates maintain Thompson is the fastest player in the country.
“I believe that,” Thompson said. “There’s a lot of fast people in college football, but ultimately I’ve been the fastest on every team I’ve been on up until this point.”
The former track star in the 100 meters was teammates with speedster Xavier Worthy at Texas previously, and Thompson says he beat the Longhorn in a foot race. That’s notable, of course, because Worthy broke the NFL Combine record in 2024 with a time of 4.21 seconds in the 40-yard dash.
Shaking off injury struggles
The player who makes the offense click, however, is Shapen, the former Baylor quarterback who won a Big 12 championship as a starter after beginning the season as a third-stringer in 2021. His career has mostly been defined by injuries since then, with start-and-stop campaigns that began with an AC joint injury in the aforementioned Big 12 Championship Game.
In Week 4 last season, he fractured the scapula in his right shoulder in a 45-28 loss to Florida.
“The pain was instant,” Shapen said. “Right when I got hit, I knew something was wrong, but for some reason, I thought it could have been another AC joint thing where I could just play through it, which was delusional. It was probably all the adrenaline going through me at the time, but I came off the field and tried to stay loose. The first ball I threw, I heard a crack in my upper back.”
The injury, Shapen says now, was a blessing. If he played in one more game, his eligibility would have been exhausted. Instead, he sat out the rest of the season, rehabbed and was given a sixth year to play.
“Physically, he’s the best he’s been, heaviest he’s been, strongest he’s been,” Lebby said.
What’s next?
It didn’t take long for Lebby to realize his second season in Starkville was set up to be more successful than his debut. Midway through spring practices.
“We were different and it felt different,” he said. “It was nowhere close if you compare the two.”
As for what the Bulldogs can accomplish this fall, that remains to be seen. The schedule is difficult, and the Bulldogs are double-digit underdogs Saturday against Tennessee, but it appears Lebby has navigated the ship out of the storm. For a program that has dealt with considerable heartbreak – from head coach Mike Leach’s shocking death in December 2022 to a 1-15 record in the SEC over the last two seasons – this fall carries more hope than futility.
“We’re not even close to where we want to be,” said Lebby, “But we’re so much further ahead.”
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