New Football Assistant Head Coach Anthony Tucker Reveals Teaching Style

Assistant head coach and running backs coach Anthony Tucker details three principles that "will be a theme in our room."

New Mississippi State football head coach Jeff Lebby had the tough assignment of hiring a coaching staff just a couple of days after he himself signed with the Bulldogs. Lebby kicked off his regime by appointing former Indiana co-offensive coordinator Anthony Tucker as the assistant head coach on Dec. 1.

The 47-year-old has been coaching at the college football level for 14 years and helped lead his many teams to four conference championships and appeared in nine bowl games. Perhaps his most notable tenure came in 2018-20 at UCF, as the running backs coach helped pull the strings to the best three-year rushing stretch in school history.

Tucker revealed the coaching style that's led to all of his success and how he plans to use it at Mississippi State.

"The thing that we'll talk about always is uncommon character, uncommon toughness and uncommon effort," Tucker said. "Those are the three things that will be a theme in our room and will be reflected on who we are as people, our character, how we prepare the callus that we build on a daily basis mentally and physically and how we play the game. When you turn on the film, the effort piece and the toughness piece will be reflected in what you see."

In addition to being Lebby's assistant head coach, Tucker will take charge of the running backs once again. The Bulldogs lost starter Jo'Quavious Marks to the transfer portal, but Tucker is very much looking forward to teaching the remaining/incoming running backs in Lebby's style of offense.

"The running back position is involved in all of it. The running back is obviously involved in the run game and stands next to the guy who is taking the snaps every play so he is involved in the run game and protection. What we do is pretty dynamic so you could see that running back anywhere on the field. He's going to be involved in every aspect of what we're doing offensively."

When it comes to looking over every position on the field, Tucker is even more excited to instill his three principles.

"We're going to put pressure on every blade of grass on that football field, sideline to sideline and down the field," Tucker said. "Everything that we're doing is about imposing our will, controlling the tempo the way we want to control the tempo and making defenses have to make some hard choices."