A Tribute To Joe Lee Dunn
October 27, 2021 | Football, Joel Coleman
Senior writer Joel Coleman remembers one of MSU’s all-time great coaches.
STARKVILLE – It was fourth down. The game was on the line. Time would soon run out and the final buzzer was about to sound.
OK, OK. It wasn't a buzzer coming. It was a school bell. This was a touch football game during recess at Ackerman Elementary around late 1996. Nonetheless, everything was at stake with this one play. My team was on defense with a one-score lead and we chose to be aggressive to clinch the win.
"Let's blitz like Joe Lee," my buddy said, an obvious nod to the aggressive scheme of Joe Lee Dunn, then in his first year as Mississippi State's defensive coordinator.
"We've got to count to five Mississippi," I responded. "We can't blitz."
"It's the last play before we have to go in," my pal answered. "What are they gonna be able to do about it?"
There was no five Mississippi count. We blitzed. We got home. We won. It didn't get put in the record books for him, but Joe Lee Dunn's go-get-em style was victorious that afternoon, about 25 miles to the west of Starkville on a playground in Choctaw County.
Dunn, who served as the leader of State's defense from 1996 through 2002, died on Tuesday at the age of 75. The legendary Bulldog assistant, whose coaching career spanned more than four decades, will forever be remembered as an innovator and one of the most important figures in Mississippi State football history.
Where do you even start when trying to put into words what Dunn's defenses meant in the annals of MSU?
"He was certainly a great football coach and friend," said the man Dunn worked under at MSU, legendary former MSU head coach Jackie Sherrill. "The players certainly respected and enjoyed playing for him. What really impressed me always was that Joe Lee could tell you what the blocking schemes were of the teams he played five years ago. He was always thinking ahead. He never really had to have a game plan because everything he did was always just already in his head, but he always called the right blitz at the right time knowing what the blocking schemes were of the opponents."
Dunn's results speak for themselves. He came to Starkville prior to the 1996 season and inherited a defense that had just finished the year before ranked 12th in the Southeastern Conference. By 1999, the Bulldog defense was first in not only their league, but the entire country.
There was Dunn's first MSU defense, the 1996 group that set the school's single-season sack record with 39. It's a total that still stands tied for first all-time.
There was the 1998 unit that shut out five different opponents and featured the SEC's regular-season sack leader (All-SEC defensive end Edward Smith, 12). Dunn's brilliance was central to MSU's run to the SEC Western Division Championship that season.
Then of course came 1999. That's when Dunn was tabbed as a finalist for the Broyles Award, given yearly to the nation's top assistant coach. Those '99 Bulldogs allowed opponents a mere 222.5 yards per game. It was nearly 15 yards per game better than any other team.
Dunn gave his opponents headaches, Saturday after Saturday.
"It's an absolute nightmare preparing for Joe Lee, because you never know what he's going to do," former Kentucky head coach Hal Mumme was quoted as saying in a 1999 article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Before State topped Clemson in the Peach Bowl later in '99, then-Tigers offensive coordinator Rich Rodriguez said of preparing for Dunn and MSU, according to the Commercial Appeal: "They'll blitz the cornerbacks, they'll blitz the safeties, they'll blitz the trainer and the student manager. One time, Joe Lee came off the sideline and blitzed himself."
There's no question Dunn was incredible at pulling all the right strings on the football field. What many didn't get to see though, was that Dunn was also a man who understood football wasn't the top priority for him.
"He would always come in [to work] at 4:00 or 4:30 in the morning, but he was going to leave right after practice to go home and have dinner with his family," Sherrill remembers.
Like a linebacker rushing the quarterback, Dunn's mission was to get home to his wife and children at the very first opportunity each day. In a business where it seems like the only thing that matters is the scoreboard, the scoreboard wasn't nearly as important as those that lived under Dunn's roof and his life demonstrated such.
He was a man of football for sure, but he was a man of his family first. What he wasn't, was a man of socks.
"I always kidded him because even when it was minus-30 degrees he still wouldn't wear socks," Sherrill said. Â
Dunn was certainly unlike any other coach I, and many of you, ever had the chance to root for. His coaching style seemed completely fearless on the football field. Just as aggressively as he taught his defenders to be, he himself aggressively sought to be a good husband and father.
About 25 years later, the more I learn of him, I'm an even bigger Joe Lee Dunn fan today than I was the day we tried to imitate one of his many blitzes on the playground. Dunn was different. He was special. He was one of a kind.
Dunn certainly leaves behind a legacy that'll live forever at Mississippi State and around the college football world. And if anyone even dares to try to fill his shoes, well to start, they best not put on any socks.