Last week, Mississippi State football closed out their 2024 spring practices with the Maroon and White Spring Game. It was the first chance for Bulldog fans to watch a new-look MSU team and, specifically, watch Jeff Lebby's revered offensive attack.
Lebby has been responsible for some of college football's most dangerous offenses over the past six years. He came up under Art Briles at Baylor, whose "super spread" brand of offense lit up Big 12 defenses for several years until his unsanctimonious exit from the sport.
Lebby has since implemented that scheme, with several evolutions and modifications along the way, successfully at NAIA Southeastern, UCF, Ole Miss, and Oklahoma. He's had a top-6 scoring offense three of the last six years, and his teams have been top-6 in total offense five of the last six years.
His scheme, a version of what in recent years has become dubbed the "Veer and Shoot", lends itself to generating "instant offense", as it stresses defenses to the extreme. The use of hyper-fast tempo, maximized spacing, and the blend of a downhill run game with seemingly relentless deep shots in the pass game creates an attack that is nearly unstoppable for many college defenses. It's somewhat of a cheat code.
That's music to the ears of the countless Mississippi State fans desperate to see an exciting brand of offense take the field at Davis Wade Stadium, especially after the disaster that was the 2023 season. In the spring game, they finally got to watch the offense they've been begging for. Utilizing just a simplified, base-level install of his offense, Jeff Lebby gave Bulldog fans plenty of reason to be excited for the fall.
Lebby's offensive mentality is to "score from far", and he showcased that philosophy in the scrimmage with an incredibly explosive passing attack. Let's take a look at some of the explosive concepts we saw in the spring game as well as the simple but effective ways Jeff Lebby will toy with defenses.