Jeff Lebby was always going to be granted time before pressure began to truly mount up as the HC of Mississippi State football. The situation he inherited made it impossible to not give him a fair bit of leeway early in his tenure. Everyone recognized it was going to take the Bulldogs some time to turn things around.
Simply put, he had a grace period. But now that grace period is over.
MSU's loss to Florida was the first time in Jeff Lebby's tenure in Starkville that his coaching played a significant role in the Bulldogs suffering a loss. Previously, every loss suffered could ultimately be boiled down to State being a lesser team that just wasn't ready to or, in most cases, capable of getting a win.
That wasn't the case against the Gators. Mississippi State could have easily won this game if not for self-inflicted wounds and Lebby's coaching decisions. Most notably, if Lebby simply chooses to run the football at the end of the game, they get to attempt a kick for the win. It's obviously no guarantee that kick is made, but Lebby would have least put his team in position.
Instead, he chose to keep throwing, and the Bulldogs' fate was sealed.
But the game should not have even come down to that. MSU had every opportunity to build out a sizeable lead on Florida early in the game, and had they, there's a good chance the Gators in their present state would have folded. MSU failed to do that, however, and that let Florida stay in the game and eventually build out a lead of their own.
Now to be fair to Lebby, there were plenty of plays to be made for the offense where players simply didn't execute. He can't go out there and do it for his team. All he can do is call the play.
But even if execution is ultimately what's slowing his offense, it's still his offense. Specifically, it's his hand-picked QB that he chooses to run out there, and QB play was a major reason why the Bulldog offense wasn't executing last Saturday. If execution is continually lacking, then perhaps you have to consider making a change to try and correct that.
And just in general, if a team continually has self-inflicted wounds like penalties and turnovers that prove consequential week in and week out, at what point does that begin to reflect on you as a coach? Those are things that should get cleaned up over the course of the season, but they still haunt MSU at the worst possible times.
At this point, Mississippi State football isn't just losing games because they're playing better teams. They are actively finding ways to lose games. Losing in the manner that they did to a Florida team that also actively finds way to lose games and fired its coach the very next day is the clearest possible example of this.
Florida wasn't just a team the Bulldogs could have beaten. They were a team the Bulldogs should have beaten, and failing to do so ultimately falls on Jeff Lebby. And now the concern becomes very real that his team isn't going to build off the early-season momentum they had built up and instead fizzle out into a frustrating close.
The Florida game was an all-time wasted opportunity for a program currently dealing with the nation's longest active conference losing-streak, and it's hard to have any confidence they rebound from that. And if the Bulldogs don't, there's going to be plenty of justified anger from the Maroon and White faithful about the job Lebby is doing.
None of this is to say Lebby's job would be in danger at the end of this season with a disappointing close. He's certain to see a third year given the situation he took over, the fact his team has improved from a season ago (despite present frustrations), and frankly, this is not a job market State wants to be competing in.
He'll be back in Starkville in 2026, but unless his team gets things figured out over their final five games, the list of people truly in his corner will be quite short. There's not going to be any buzz or excitement around the program, and it's hard to build out of the bottom of the SEC without that belief.
The next month-plus of football is going to tell us a lot about how Jeff Lebby's run at Mississippi State will ultimately go. He desperately needs to show that what happened in Gainesville isn't indicative of what the Bulldogs are set on being under him. And more than anything, he desperately needs a win. Because now moving forward, not winning directly falls on him.