2026 Mississippi State Football Coaching Turnover Tracker 2.0

Let's try this again... This time - don't ****ing argue or wishcast what you want, just rumors you're greenlit to share.

Name	Role	Confirmed/Rumored - Status	Confirmed/Rumored - Replacement
Jeff Lebby	Head Coach	Confirmed - Safe	N/A
Anthony Tucker	AHC / PGC	Rumored - Safe
Coleman Hutzler	DC/LB	Confirmed - OUT	Confirmed - Zach Arnett
Matt Barnes	Co-DC/S	Confirmed - OUT	Confirmed Kevie Thompson - S / Assistant DBs
Corey Bell	CB	Rumored - OUT or demotion
Chad Bumphis	WR	Confirmed - OUT
Ron Cooper	TE / RGC	Rumored - Safe
Vincent Dancy	Edge	Confirmed - OUT	Rumored - Matt Brock - LBs
Matt Holocek	QB	Rumored - OUT only for OC hire / maybe re-assigned to off field
Phil Loadholt	OL	Confirmed - Safe	N/A
Cliff Odom	STC	Confirmed - OUT
David Turner	DL	Confirmed - OUT (retirement)	Rumored - Pernell McPhee

DC Hot Board will be posted once we confirm Hutzler firing - LOTS of names being thrown around. Some of them sounds like flushing out rats so I'm not sharing until we get confirmation Hutzler is gone.

Creating a table for us to track this. Please post if you're positive about retention / replacement.
I also give mods permission to edit this post if I get lackadaisical.

Let me know if I should add anything else to be tracked.

Posting what things I've heard and am greenlit to share, waiting for others to double confirm these things before adding to tracker.

Lebby is safe.
Tucker is safe.
Cooper is safe.
Bumphis is safer than safe.
Holocek could get replaced by Briles otherwise expect no offensive staffing changes except....

Hearing serious discussions about Loadholt. This is where the point of contention lies the most. Loadholt not getting a fair shake and it being a jimmies and joes problem. Remains to be seen how that shakes out. Likely staying is my inference - no word either way yet.

Hutzler will be gone. Barnes will be gone. Dancy will be gone. - these three are contingent on us lining up a perceived better DC hire. Speculation that we won't as in 25% we might not.

Odom is gone. Turner is gone. Bell is gone. These are gone regardless of Hutzler.

I wouldn’t hate Hutzler getting f a 3rd year, but I really think he has to fall on the sword for Lebby

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Brobi-wan

I wouldn’t hate Hutzler getting f a 3rd year, but I really think he has to fall on the sword for Lebby

---

Can't keep him. Right or wrong. And I think getting rid of him is right. We were only slightly improved from last year. No reason why we shouldn't be a top 50 defense and that's not really a lofty goal for us.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tater

Posting what things I've heard and am greenlit to share, waiting for others to double confirm these things before adding to tracker.

Lebby is safe.
Tucker is safe.
Cooper is safe.
Bumphis is safer than safe.
Holocek could get replaced by Briles otherwise expect no offensive staffing changes except....

Hearing serious discussions about Loadholt. This is where the point of contention lies the most. Loadholt not getting a fair shake and it being a jimmies and joes problem. Remains to be seen how that shakes out. Likely staying is my inference - no word either way yet.

Hutzler will be gone. Barnes will be gone. Dancy will be gone. - these three are contingent on us lining up a perceived better DC hire. Speculation that we won't as in 25% we might not.

Odom is gone. Turner is gone. Bell is gone. These are gone regardless of Hutzler.

---

As far as the offense goes we have 5 spots there and last year we had 6 spots for defense. I could see us using a defensive spot for an offensive coach and go with 6 coaches on offense and 5 on defense especially if we can find a ST coach that can coach a position on defense.

From the other thread:

I don?t have the sources some of you do, but I do have a guy that who told me that we were getting BOC before it ever happened. So there?s that. The same guy tells me that we have an offer in the table to Will Muschamp to be DC and are waiting on his response.

Now, my thoughts are that he?s not interested in returning to a full time coaching job yet, but that?s out there in the ether.

No. That wasn?t Bo Bounds that I got that from. It was from one of my physician colleagues who has some booster patients. FWIW.

This isn?t a rumor. It?s just something I want to point out.

Jeff Lebby was recruited to Oklahoma as a player and hired as a coach at Oklahoma by Bob Stoops. So, he has a strong connection with the Stoops family.

Now, I doubt Mark wants to go back to being a DC just yet. He will probably take a year off and collect his buyout without any offsets.

Could Brad white be a guy though?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KB21

From the other thread:

I don?t have the sources some of you do, but I do have a guy that who told me that we were getting BOC before it ever happened. So there?s that. The same guy tells me that we have an offer in the table to Will Muschamp to be DC and are waiting on his response.

Now, my thoughts are that he?s not interested in returning to a full time coaching job yet, but that?s out there in the ether.

No. That wasn?t Bo Bounds that I got that from. It was from one of my physician colleagues who has some booster patients. FWIW.

---

I really hope muschamp isn't the guy. I know this isn't always the correct path, but I much prefer to get guys on their way up, not down.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KB21

This isn?t a rumor. It?s just something I want to point out.

Jeff Lebby was recruited to Oklahoma as a player and hired as a coach at Oklahoma by Bob Stoops. So, he has a strong connection with the Stoops family.

Now, I doubt Mark wants to go back to being a DC just yet. He will probably take a year off and collect his buyout without any offsets.

Could Brad white be a guy though?

---

I would prefer white

Brad white.
Ron Roberts.
I think those two are realistic. Rather have them than muschamp anyway.

Roberts is Pete Goldings mentor so I wouldn't get too heated on him yet.........

Brad White would be very solid.

Ron Roberts name is being floated around

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tater

Posting what things I've heard and am greenlit to share, waiting for others to double confirm these things before adding to tracker.

Lebby is safe.
Tucker is safe.
Cooper is safe.
Bumphis is safer than safe.
Holocek could get replaced by Briles otherwise expect no offensive staffing changes except....

Hearing serious discussions about Loadholt. This is where the point of contention lies the most. Loadholt not getting a fair shake and it being a jimmies and joes problem. Remains to be seen how that shakes out. Likely staying is my inference - no word either way yet.

Hutzler will be gone. Barnes will be gone. Dancy will be gone. - these three are contingent on us lining up a perceived better DC hire. Speculation that we won't as in 25% we might not.

Odom is gone. Turner is gone. Bell is gone. These are gone regardless of Hutzler.

---

Ok Tater, you're decently connected as well so maybe you've heard it in your circles. But where the hell was the Bumphis job being in jeopardy coming from? I haven't heard that from anyone I spoke to. I saw either On3 or GP saying that he was going to be let go. WR has been the least of our issues. And although Lebby did recruit Thompson and Evans, Chad got Craver and Coleman. I also think our WRs play pretty well. Their routes are pretty crisp and they know how to get separation.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KB21

This isn?t a rumor. It?s just something I want to point out.

Jeff Lebby was recruited to Oklahoma as a player and hired as a coach at Oklahoma by Bob Stoops. So, he has a strong connection with the Stoops family.

Now, I doubt Mark wants to go back to being a DC just yet. He will probably take a year off and collect his buyout without any offsets.

Could Brad white be a guy though?

---

Brad is an option I'm sure. I don't think anything has really even begun on that front though. The UK stuff really didn't start heating up til late Saturday and into yesterday.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by StarkVegasSteve

Ok Tater, you're decently connected as well so maybe you've heard it in your circles. But where the hell was the Bumphis job being in jeopardy coming from? I haven't heard that from anyone I spoke to. I saw either On3 or GP saying that he was going to be let go. WR has been the least of our issues. And although Lebby did recruit Thompson and Evans, Chad got Craver and Coleman. I also think our WRs play pretty well. Their routes are pretty crisp and they know how to get separation.

---

I haven't heard anything about Bumphi beyond he's the safest on staff. So that's weird.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tater

I haven't heard anything about Bumphi beyond he's the safest on staff. So that's weird.

---

Then you and I have heard the same. I've cobbled together that Brian Hadad apparently said something on a podcast that one of the potential staff changes would surprise a lot of people and I guess everyone ran with it that he meant Bumphis.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Todd4State

Can't keep him. Right or wrong. And I think getting rid of him is right. We were only slightly improved from last year. No reason why we shouldn't be a top 50 defense and that's not really a lofty goal for us.

---

The biggest issue is the lack of growth with added talent. I love Kelly, but his growth in run defense was not there or really anywhere. We ranked 103rd in the nation in total D and our run D was 117th. This is why we are not an 8 plus win team this season. Based on that, how can you keep him?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by StarkVegasSteve

Ok Tater, you're decently connected as well so maybe you've heard it in your circles. But where the hell was the Bumphis job being in jeopardy coming from? I haven't heard that from anyone I spoke to. I saw either On3 or GP saying that he was going to be let go. WR has been the least of our issues. And although Lebby did recruit Thompson and Evans, Chad got Craver and Coleman. I also think our WRs play pretty well. Their routes are pretty crisp and they know how to get separation.

---

Yeah, that would be a mistake in my opinion

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BlackSailsDawg

The biggest issue is the lack of growth with added talent. I love Kelly, but his growth in run defense was not there or really anywhere. We ranked 103rd in the nation in total D and our run D was 117th. This is why we are not an 8 plus win team this season. Based on that, how can you keep him?

---

There are better ways of evaluating improvement than relying on volume stats. My preference is EPA/play. The defense did improve from 97th in EPA/play in 2024 to around 51 in 2025. It was the difference in allowing 0.046 EPA/play in 2025 to allowing -0.021 EPA/ play in 2025.