Mississippi State Coach Jeff Lebby On Bulldogs’ Defense

First-year coach Jeff Lebby held his weekly press conference on Monday and spent a lot of time talking about his team’s defense. Here are the highlights of what he said.

Texas A&M Aggies head coach Mike Elko and Mississippi State Bulldogs head coach Jeff Lebby speak after a game at Davis Wade Stadium at Scott Field. / Matt Bush-Imagn Images

STARKVILLE, Miss. – Mississippi State’s defense, despite signs of improvement in recent weeks, isn’t very good.

The Bulldogs (1-7, 0-5 SEC) rank 129th amongst FBS teams in total defense, 124th in scoring defense and 125th in rushing defense (after allowing Arkansas 359 rushing yards). They haven’t recorded a sack since their game against Texas a month ago.

The offense has performed better, but not enough to make up for Mississippi State’s defensive shortcomings.

So, it wasn’t surprising that coach Jeff Lebby spent more than half of his Monday press conference answering questions about his defense. Here’s the highlights of what he had to say:

On if the defense’s struggles are a personnel issue or a coordinator issue…

It's a group thing. At no point in time will it ever be one person. I've talked about that a ton individually being the best we can possibly be so, collectively, we have the opportunity to go play the way we need to play. Again we had shown great improvements the three weeks before Saturday. Saturday we did not we did not play the way we needed to play on the defensive side of the ball.

On the defense’s struggles to make in-game adjustments…

It's pre-snap. When we're making an adjustment on the sideline after somebody has done something that we haven't seen on tape we coach it, we teach it and we correct it in the moment. We have to be able to take that meeting, which is literally a meeting in between drives, and be able to go apply it. We have to be able to do that from the sideline to the field even though you're not getting another rep of it like you would in practice.

On possible changes based on injured and unavailable players…

Really, we're trying to make sure we're staying tight from a game plan-standpoint; trying to give our guys the ability to go play free, to go play fast and have clean eyes. We're going to continue to do that and try to continue to limit some of the mistakes.

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