3 burning questions after Mississippi State Football’s Egg Bowl defeat

Can the MSU offense bounce back next season?

This season has been so rough for the Mississippi State football team in so many ways, but the offense has been dreadful and a sore subject all throughout the year. As Mississippi State moves on from its Egg Bowl loss and Will Rogers has entered the transfer portal, it’s worth wondering what the future of MSU’s offense looks like.

And honestly, that will depend on who is hired.

For example, let’s say Jeff Lebby is the next head coach, we’re going to see a veer-and-shoot system brought to Starkville, but this roster is not at all ready as it’s currently constructed to run that offense (especially at the tempo that Lebby likes to operate). A transfer portal dump and swap might be necessary to retool the roster significantly.

If someone like Sumrall is hired, you likely see something of a more gradual change. His strengths are in operating a strong defense and his first season as a head coach featured a modest offense, but things have picked up considerably in his second year with the Troy Trojans.

Sumrall’s OC, Joe Craddock, seems to operate a more “conventional” spread system (that is far more effective in year two than it was in year one), but who knows what Sumrall would do at OC anyways?

There are going to be a ton of questions here. It seems likely that you need a good offense to really thrive in Starkville and Sumrall’s early results seem to indicate that he’d be willing to let his OC have some solid autonomy.

But we don’t even know if Sumrall will be the head coach. We don’t know what the head coach will do. We don’t know who the head coach will be.

So, who knows if the offense can bounce back next season?