Defense Shines In State's First Scrimmage
August 10, 2025 | Football
STARKVILLE – The calling card for Mississippi State for many years has been an aggressive and attacking defense capable of creating negative plays and turnovers.
The Bulldogs certainly checked those boxes during their first scrimmage of the fall inside Davis Wade Stadium on Sunday afternoon. The defense finished the day with its fair share of sacks, tackles for loss and turnovers – including a 40-yard scoop-and-score fumble recovery by cornerback Kelley Jones.
"What I loved is that defensively we found a way to create turnovers and some negative plays," said head coach Jeff Lebby. "To me, that was a great thing to see from the defensive side of the ball. They got their hands on the ball and made plays. They created some huge momentum plays in the scrimmage and that was good to see."
One of the biggest keys to success for the defense started up front. The defensive line was able to bottle up the running game inside and also generated pressure which allowed playmakers in the linebacking corps and secondary to showcase their skills as well.
Nine practices in, Lebby likes where his defensive line is in terms of depth and believes the Bulldogs will be in a much better position to rotate guys in at those positions than they were a year ago.
"There's been a good core group of guys on the D-line that have done a really good job," Lebby said. "I'm going to wait to name names until we get through next week's scrimmage and get two weeks into this thing, but I think the best part about what's going on our defensive line right now is we're going to have the ability to go play 10 or 11 guys and play winning football with 10 or 11 guys. That's huge for us and we need them to keep coming with competition so that we have the ability to roll guys, play fresh and play hard."
Turnovers haven't been much an issue for MSU early on in camp and Lebby's hope is that Sunday was a learning opportunity for his offense to protect the ball better moving forward heading into their second scrimmage next weekend.
"Installs have been heavy," Lebby said. "We've put a lot on them. We want to create some stress for them to see how they're going to respond. As you can imagine, there's been some good and there's been some not so good. There's a ton to clean up and a ton of work to do but right now our guys are dialed in to getting better."
Lebby reported that his team exited its first scrimmage healthy and attributes that to a heightened awareness by his players utilizing all of the resources available to them to keep them physically ready to go at peak performance day-in and day-out.
"I think our guys have taken to the culture of recovery and finding time to make sure that they're doing everything they possibly can to make sure they're ready for the next day's practice," Lebby said. "The growth in that has been fun to see and been really good."
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