Right when the Mississippi State Bulldogs were succeeding on the gridiron the program, and all of college football, suffered a terrible loss with the untimely passing of Mike Leach. A winner at every stop of his coaching career with an innovative game plan, Leach has the team on the rise. In his first season the Bulldogs won four games but improved to 7-6 in 2021. The 2022 season ranked as one of the best in program history. The club went 8-4 during the regular season and somehow found a way to compose themselves for a Bowl win to reach the 9-win mark for just the 10th time in the nearly 120 year history of the program. Zach Arnett led MSU to a win over Illinois in the ReliaQuest Bowl and begins his first full season as a major college head coach.
College Football Season Wins Odds
Regular Season Wins for the Mississippi State Bulldogs
Over 6.5 ( +161 )
Under 6.5 ( -180 )
Talk about being thrown into the fire. In Arnett’s first full season not only is he in the toughest division in college football, he also has to go head-to-head with opposing coaches like Nick Saban, Brian Kelly and Jimbo Fisher. Arnett was hand-picked by Leach to be the team’s defensive coordinator in 2020 after a successful stint with San Diego State. He’s not entirely a newbie having guided the club to bowl win following the death of Leach.
Roster
The bar in Starkville isn’t tremendously high, though it climbed a few inches under Leach and following last year’s 8-win regular season and 9-4 overall record. Looking to make the transition to a new coach and system a smooth one is returning quarterback Will Rodgers, one of the best in the SEC. Entering his fourth year as the starter, Rogers is already the career passing leader at MSU with nearly 11,000 yards and will stabilize a unit that’s looking for more balance.
Rogers led the SEC’s second-ranked pass offense throwing for 3,974 yards while completing 68 percent of his 610 attempts. The Air Raid made famous by Leach calls for a lot passes inflating the numbers for the one tossing the ball. Of course you have to be good in the scheme and Rodgers was, but Arnett and new coordinator Kevin Barbay would like a more balanced attack. Wanting something and actually getting it are two entirely different things.
Barbay made it work at Appalachian State last year leading the Sun Belt in scoring and second in total offense. The run game was fantastic and he has pieces to make it work at UM. It probably would’ve worked in past seasons if Leach was willing to give the ground game a try. Leading rusher Jo’quavious Marks had just 582 yards but averaged 5.2 yards a carry and scored nine of the team’s 12 rushing TDs. Simeon Price and is a nice change of pace backup. And they’ll be running behind a line that returns all five starters, though the group will also have to adjust.
With Leach’s offense garnering most of the headlines, Arnett quietly put together a top 5 SEC defense in a number of categories, including total defense, fewest first downs allowed, takeaways and interceptions. Elevated from LB coach to coordinator is Matt Brock giving some continuity to the system.
With 14 interceptions and 22 takeaways the Bulldogs finished second in the SEC. You can’t always count on creating turnovers year to year, and the unit lost nearly half of its picks with Emmanuel Forbes drafted to the NFL. There’s plenty of experience and talent on the line and at the second level giving MSU hope of another winning campaign.
Schedule
We’ll find out a lot about the Bulldogs in the first month. Following their opener against FCS Southeastern Louisiana the fun really begins. Over the next four weeks the Bulldogs play Arizona, LSU, South Carolina and Alabama. That run will be a test for a reworked secondary and new scheme. The good news is that only the South Carolina contest is on the road and the schedule lightens up afterwards. But this is the SEC.
Prediction
A lot of emotion went into the bowl game win last season and now that things have settled down Arnett will get a dose of reality. The D should keep MSU in most games with the deciding factor being how well the team responds to a new offense. If they get better as the season progresses, the softer part of the schedule is on the back end making the OVER a realistic outcome.
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