With the 2025 college football season just two months away, national outlets are beginning to prognosticate what will happen this fall. Brad Crawford of CBS Sports put out his best and worst case scenarios for each SEC team in 2025, and his outlook for Mississippi State football isn't exactly the most promising.
Crawford's best case scenario for the Bulldogs doesn't entail bowl-eligibility. He sets Mississippi State's best case record at 5-7, highlighting September matchups with Arizona State and Florida as the games that could prove critical in maximizing the season.
On the low end, Crawford sees the potential for a repeat of 2024. His worst case scenario is another 2-10 finish, going winless in the SEC once again. That would be a disastrous year two for Jeff Lebby's program, but as Crawford puts it, last season "was ugly and that might not change in 2025."
This outlook doesn't come as a surprise at all considering the Bulldogs were far and away the SEC's worst team last season, they still have major question marks across the roster, and they play a brutal schedule. Another putrid season is easy to envision, and even an improved team may struggle to find wins.
Still, seeing a losing season painted as the best case scenario for a program not long removed from annual bowl games and regular 8-plus win campaigns is, frankly, depressing.
Mississippi State's best case scenario would be a major improvement
For as hard as it is to get excited about a team where the best case scenario is a losing season, a 5-7 record in 2025 would still be a massive step forward for Jeff Lebby's Bulldogs.
Finding five wins would mean Mississippi State handled business against the the G5 and FCS opponents on the schedule (not a high bar to clear, but we saw what happened against Toledo...) and managed to pull a pair of upsets against quality opponents. Winning the games they're supposed to and showing they can take down multiple power conference teams? That would be a substantial move in the right direction for a program that didn't come close to doing either in 2024.
Obviously missing the postseason again would not be ideal, but as Lebby tries to build the Bulldogs out of their current mess, there's got be some basic competency shown by the program to suggest they're no longer in the basement. And considering the difficulty of the schedule, even at five wins we'd probably be talking about MSU as a legitimately solid team.
Again, viewing Mississippi State football through a lens were a 5-7 season would be as good as they can do isn't going to get anyone fired up to watch the Bulldogs. But we do need to recognize how significant a step forward that would be should that be the result.