Mississippi State Football Film Study: the Arnett Era Comes to an End

Mississippi State football took one of the more humiliating losses we’ve seen from them in a long time. And that loss ended up being the final nail in the coffin for Zach Arnett’s tenure as head coach. What went wrong?

Mississippi State football has had a miserable season. In a year with fairly high expectations, the Bulldogs are 4-6. They’ve looked unimpressive in their wins and mostly pathetic in their losses. The offense has, in many cases, appeared totally incompetent. The defense simply looks outclassed by opponents.

Saturday’s loss to Texas A&M was the most extreme example of this. The Aggies rolled Mississippi State 51-10. State ran back the opening kickoff for a touchdown, but that would be the extent of positive play we saw from the Bulldogs in this game. They managed just a single field goal for the remainder of the game. An Aggie offense that had already been mediocre at best previously and was on its third-string QB had little issue moving the ball.

MSU was totally embarrassed by A&M. And despite the Aggies’ total domination, they still chose to fire HC Jimbo Fisher the next day! Do you know how bad you have to be for your opponents decision makers to find a 41-point victory over you with a third-string QB so insignificant that they still chose to go ahead and fire their own coach?

Pretty freaking awful.

Well, Mississippi State AD Zac Selmon had seen enough. On Monday morning, it was announced that less than a year into his tenure as MSU’s HC, Zach Arnett had been relieved of his duties. It was a decision that came to the surprise of no one that follows the Bulldogs. It’s been crystal clear for weeks now that Arnett simply was not ready for this spot. It’s unfortunate given his important role in the program over the last three years and the tragic circumstances that led to him taking over, but nothing was moving in the right direction.

Mississippi State had to make a change.

Obviously no one is all that interested to relive this game. No one is really curious as to what went wrong on specific plays to lead to the final result. But there’s obviously significance to this result given that it was the end of Zach Arnett’s tenure.

Here are a few of the plays that put a disappointing bow on a short but frustrating era of Mississippi State football…