Mississippi State Doesn’t Need an Elite Defense. It Just Needs an Average One.
Mississippi State doesn’t need to become Georgia on defense.
It doesn’t need to have the best defense in the SEC. It doesn’t even need to have a great defense.
It just needs to be average.
And for the first time in a while, there’s a legitimate reason to believe that could happen.
The biggest reason? Zach Arnett is back in Starkville. The mustachioed menace has returned.
Mississippi State moved on from defensive coordinator Coleman Hutzler after the 2025 season, when the Bulldogs finished 15th in the 16-team SEC in both scoring defense and total defense, allowing 29.2 points and 405.8 yards per game.
Replacing him with Arnett is about as dramatic of a change as Mississippi State could have made.
Before becoming the Bulldogs’ head coach, Arnett spent three seasons running the defense under Mike Leach. In those three seasons, Mississippi State finished in the SEC’s top five in total defense every year, including a third-place finish in 2021.
In 2022, Arnett’s final season as defensive coordinator, the Bulldogs allowed just 350.3 yards per game, ranked fifth in the SEC in rushing defense at 143.6 yards per game, fifth in pass defense and second in the conference with 22 turnovers gained.
The improvement under Arnett wasn’t a one-year fluke, either.
His 2021 defense ranked third in the SEC in total defense, while his first Mississippi State defense in 2020 ranked fifth after the Bulldogs had finished 11th the previous season. Across his three years, Arnett’s defenses finished in the SEC’s top five in 28 different defensive efficiency and production categories.
Now he’s back—and he’s bringing Matt Brock with him.
Brock served on Mississippi State’s staff from 2020-23 and spent the last two seasons as UConn’s defensive coordinator. In 2024, his UConn defense ranked fourth nationally in third-down defense while allowing just 23.1 points and 132.3 rushing yards per game. In 2025, the Huskies produced 36 sacks, ranking eighth nationally.
That combination is important.
Mississippi State isn’t simply changing defensive coordinators. It’s bringing back a defensive identity that worked before, while pairing Arnett with a coach who just spent two seasons building an aggressive defense of his own.
And that’s before considering the offensive additions.
Philip Montgomery was brought in as associate head coach and wide receivers coach after years of experience running productive offenses, while Kevin Johns takes over the quarterback room as Kamario Taylor enters his first season as the full-time starter.
But none of that matters if the defense remains a liability.
The good news is that Mississippi State doesn’t need the defense to carry the team.
If Taylor takes the expected step forward, the offense should be capable of putting points on the board. The Bulldogs don’t need their defense to hold SEC opponents to 17 points every Saturday.
They need it to get a few more stops.
They need to stop turning third-and-long into first downs.
They need to stop giving up explosive runs.
They need to create a few more turnovers.
And they need to keep the offense from having to score 35 or 40 points every time it takes the field.
That’s what “average” could mean for Mississippi State in 2026.
Turn last year’s 5-7 team into a team that wins the games it should and steals one or two it shouldn’t.
The Bulldogs don’t need an elite defense.
They just need one that doesn’t lose the game for them.
And with Zach Arnett back calling the shots, Mississippi State has a much better chance of getting exactly that.