Arnett was the perfect MSU hire for DC...

[Faustdog]

He's a talented guy with a blemish on his resume. We, like the Mississippi Rebels, do best with that type.

See Jackie Wayne Sherrill and Kiff. The only reason Lane was in the Oxford is that he was untouchable to major programs.

You have to be respected as a coordinator to walk into the living rooms of these kids and go head to head with our competition. The general consensus on Arnett is that the man can coach defense. Hutz received no respect from anyone. He never had a chance, and his buddy didn't do him any favors pretending so.

Bonus with Arnett is that he genuinely seems to like it in Starkville. It takes a certain type. He is it.

It's paying off in the portal already with guys that Hutz would never have landed. And the money helps. We do have some of that.

 

[msstatelp1]

Arnett was put in a bad situation by our admin. As has been pointed out he should have been an interim head coach until an AD was hired and a search conducted.

 

[Shmuley]

Arnett is a career assistant. And a DAMN good one. And we are fortunate that he was willing to come back. And the defense will assuredly be better. Hopefully better to the point that lebby's terrible game management skills will be overcome by stellar defense that literally bails his @$$ out.

 

[Dawg Raid]

He’s a humble man, he knows when to tuck his tail and come home.

 

[MSUDOG24]

Arnett was put in a bad situation by our admin. As has been pointed out he should have been an interim head coach until an AD was hired and a search conducted.

Agree and why I don't think of it as a blemish but otherwise agree w/Faust that it's good to have him back.

 

[jethreauxdawg]

And he’s helping us land a nice Wendy’s NIL partnership

 

[Chesusdog]

 

[leeinator]

And he’s helping us land a nice Wendy’s NIL partnership

Couple more drive throughs at Wendys and he might be raising more than just NIL money.

 

[Ranchdawg]

He was at Florida State before returning to State. We have picked up 4 players from FSU in the portal.

 

[greenbean.sixpack]

He and Lenny may turn out to be good HCs many years from now. An SEC job shouldn't have been either's first job.

 

[TheBannerM]

Arnett was put in a bad situation by our admin. As has been pointed out he should have been an interim head coach until an AD was hired and a search conducted.

Never should’ve been AD-less. I don’t understand how we can hire a coach in a week but it takes months to hire an AD.

 

[anon1768925248]

He’s going to save Lebby’s job. I’m not saying we are going to the playoffs, but he’s going to field a defense good enough to beat 6-8 teams this year if we just have the same offense as last year. If he gets an edge and a DE out of the portal this will be the best defense he has fielded here ever. We are not far off on defense. I don’t like where we are on the OL or at tight end, but defensively I’m very excited.

 

[anon1768925248]

Never should’ve been AD-less. I don’t understand how we can hire a coach in a week but it takes months to hire an AD.

It was pure laziness. No reason for it. We obviously did not expect Leach to die, but you’re right. No reason to drag it out that long when you knew in October you didn’t have an AD. And I know others also take that long and that is inept as well.

 

[Chesusdog]

It was pure laziness. No reason for it. We obviously did not expect Leach to die, but you’re right. No reason to drag it out that long when you knew in October you didn’t have an AD. And I know others also take that long and that is inept as well.

It is also worth noting that John Cohen is a huge piece of ****.

 

[HumpDawgy]

THE BACONATOR RETURNS!!!!

 

[johnson86-1]

Arnett was put in a bad situation by our admin. As has been pointed out he should have been an interim head coach until an AD was hired and a search conducted.

Arnett was in a tough situation, but it was his decision to jettison the air raid with a team full of upperclassmen and hire an inexperienced coordinator opposite him.

I'm a fan of Arnett and don't think his 17up means he's a "career assistant". But he shares some of the blame for how bad it was how quickly. First time head coaches are going to struggle with some things, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that it's a good idea to have some experienced assistants. What it says that we hired two head coaches in a row that didn't recognize that, I don't know, but I'm still pissed that Selmon made such an obviously dumb mistake of not ensuring a first time head coach had a plan for assistants that included some real experience on the opposite side of the ball.

 

[Drebin]

Arnett was in a tough situation, but it was his decision to jettison the air raid with a team full of upperclassmen and hire an inexperienced coordinator opposite him.

I'm not an Arnett apologist, but this wasn't all his fault. He didn't have an AD, he was limited from a funding perspective, and there wasn't a lot of interest in the job. He did what he had to do under difficult circumstances.

 

[GloryDawg]

Arnett was in a tough situation, but it was his decision to jettison the air raid with a team full of upperclassmen and hire an inexperienced coordinator opposite him.

I'm a fan of Arnett and don't think his 17up means he's a "career assistant". But he shares some of the blame for how bad it was how quickly. First time head coaches are going to struggle with some things, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that it's a good idea to have some experienced assistants. What it says that we hired two head coaches in a row that didn't recognize that, I don't know, but I'm still pissed that Selmon made such an obviously dumb mistake of not ensuring a first time head coach had a plan for assistants that included some real experience on the opposite side of the ball.

He was set up for a good season. I can understand putting your own stamp on a program, but he should have promoted JR. and said we are gradually changing from the air raid starting next season.

 

[ckDOG]

He and Lenny may turn out to be good HCs many years from now. An SEC job shouldn't have been either's first job.

Yep. Poor leadership taking both of those gambles by hiring them for those roles. I don't blame them for taking the jobs obviously but they never should have been considered to fill the role by competent leadership in the first place.

 

[Drebin]

He was set up for a good season. I can understand putting your own stamp on a program, but he should have promoted JR. and said we are gradually changing from the air raid starting next season.

Abandoning Leach's version of the Air Raid was the right decision. Attempting to run it with anyone else would have been a disaster.

The problem wasn't the decision. The problem was the execution of it.

 

[johnson86-1]

I'm not an Arnett apologist, but this wasn't all his fault. He didn't have an AD, he was limited from a funding perspective, and there wasn't a lot of interest in the job. He did what he had to do under difficult circumstances.

Not his fault for not having great assistants, but that defense doesn't fly for the same reason Lebby doesn't get a pass for Hutzler. We hired an analyst a year later that was more qualified on paper than Hutzler was. I haven't bothered to look at what retreads were available to Arnett at that time, but there are too many firings each year to not have had some options on the opposite side of the ball.

 

[johnson86-1]

Abandoning Leach's version of the Air Raid was the right decision. Attempting to run it with anyone else would have been a disaster.

The problem wasn't the decision. The problem was the execution of it.

If the decision was being made to go away from the Air Raid completely, Arnett probably shouldn't have been in contention for the job. There certainly wasn't a reason to hire him without a full search process. The options should have been Arnett if he could get an air raid concept OC and generally keep staff continuity, or just bite the bullet and do a full search.

Regardless, we shouldn't have moved away from air raid concepts. We had a team in decent shape and no coach gets a few years to go through the pain of completely switching systems when you're not already in the dumps. It was going to be a roll of the dice regardless, but moving away from an air raid concept offense practically guaranteed we were going to suck while we retooled. Nobody was such a sure thing to justify that gamble, but certainly it wasn't justified to hire a relatively inexperienced coordinator (who again, I think is a good coach and has the ability to be a good head coach, just not then).

 

[Drebin]

If the decision was being made to go away from the Air Raid completely, Arnett probably shouldn't have been in contention for the job. There certainly wasn't a reason to hire him without a full search process. The options should have been Arnett if he could get an air raid concept OC and generally keep staff continuity, or just bite the bullet and do a full search.

Regardless, we shouldn't have moved away from air raid concepts. We had a team in decent shape and no coach gets a few years to go through the pain of completely switching systems when you're not already in the dumps. It was going to be a roll of the dice regardless, but moving away from an air raid concept offense practically guaranteed we were going to suck while we retooled. Nobody was such a sure thing to justify that gamble, but certainly it wasn't justified to hire a relatively inexperienced coordinator (who again, I think is a good coach and has the ability to be a good head coach, just not then).

The air raid was trash when Leach was here. It was going to be worse with someone else trying to run it.

The lunacy of the air raider bros in this fan base astounds me.

Moving away from that offense was a million percent the right thing to do.

 

[horshack.sixpack]

Arnett was put in a bad situation by our admin. As has been pointed out he should have been an interim head coach until an AD was hired and a search conducted.

I've thought the same. If anything, it could be argued that we owed him a career reset. I hope he thrives.

 

[horshack.sixpack]

Arnett is a career assistant. And a DAMN good one. And we are fortunate that he was willing to come back. And the defense will assuredly be better. Hopefully better to the point that lebby's terrible game management skills will be overcome by stellar defense that literally bails his @$$ out.

And he is incredibly young, so he may very well turn into a great HC one day, or he may just choose to make a great living as a DC doing something he loves.

 

[Perd Hapley]

It was pure laziness. No reason for it. We obviously did not expect Leach to die, but you’re right. No reason to drag it out that long when you knew in October you didn’t have an AD. And I know others also take that long and that is inept as well.

I personally think too much is made of “being AD-less” at the time that Arnett was hired. Contrary to popular belief and the commonly accepted messageboard folklore, hiring / firing coaches is not the primary function of an AD, nor is it something that they ever have full autonomy over, anyway. I mean, say we hired Selmon the day after Cohen left. Would he have been any more qualified than Cohen himself, or Keenum in assembling a search committee for a new coach and discussing the options with big donors? Would he have been any more capable of vetting out things like “will you keep the base offense in place or start from scratch”? My answer to all the above is “not really”. It was and is his first AD gig, and he would have been on the job around 6 weeks at the time of Leach’s passing.

Without an AD in place, Keenum and the powers that be could have easily assembled a committee, or hired a firm. They could have had a legitimate hire made in a week, even if it was an FCS or G6 head coach, or long time coordinator that was under the radar. But instead, they ALL made the very short sighted decision to hand Arnett the reigns because they freaked out about folks leaving in the portal. They couldn’t accept that 2023 was going to be a total rebuild year in any scenario without Leach running things, and tried to band-aid a bullet hole. Shortsighted panic move.

 

[johnson86-1]

The air raid was trash when Leach was here. It was going to be worse with someone else trying to run it.

The lunacy of the air raider bros in this fan base astounds me.

Moving away from that offense was a million percent the right thing to do.

Plenty of OCs run air raid concepts. A tiny percentage of fans wanted to try to run Leach's air raid, but we didn't have to start from scratch with a QB that potentially doesn't have the ability to be a P4 QB in any other system.

 

[greenbean.sixpack]

The air raid was trash when Leach was here. It was going to be worse with someone else trying to run it.

The lunacy of the air raider bros in this fan base astounds me.

Moving away from that offense was a million percent the right thing to do.

Yeah, winning 9 games sucked and having a team set up to do it again was terrible.

Just when i think our fans can’t get dumber, we have a fan who proves me wrong.

 

[DoggieDaddy13]

He's a talented guy with a blemish on his resume. We, like the Mississippi Rebels, do best with that type.

I wouldn't say he had a JWS or Kiffin type blemish on his record. He just sucked as a HC because he had no idea how to be effective on such short notice.

JWS and Kiffin were good coaches who got into some/a whole lot of trouble.

 

[Faustdog]

I wouldn't say he had a JWS or Kiffin type blemish on his record. He just sucked as a HC because he had no idea how to be effective on such short notice.

JWS and Kiffin were good coaches who got into some/a whole lot of trouble.

I was really talking about getting fired before he ever coached a game at UNLV.

 

[anon1768925248]

I personally think too much is made of “being AD-less” at the time that Arnett was hired. Contrary to popular belief and the commonly accepted messageboard folklore, hiring / firing coaches is not the primary function of an AD, nor is it something that they ever have full autonomy over, anyway. I mean, say we hired Selmon the day after Cohen left. Would he have been any more qualified than Cohen himself, or Keenum in assembling a search committee for a new coach and discussing the options with big donors? Would he have been any more capable of vetting out things like “will you keep the base offense in place or start from scratch”? My answer to all the above is “not really”. It was and is his first AD gig, and he would have been on the job around 6 weeks at the time of Leach’s passing.

Without an AD in place, Keenum and the powers that be could have easily assembled a committee, or hired a firm. They could have had a legitimate hire made in a week, even if it was an FCS or G6 head coach, or long time coordinator that was under the radar. But instead, they ALL made the very short sighted decision to hand Arnett the reigns because they freaked out about folks leaving in the portal. They couldn’t accept that 2023 was going to be a total rebuild year in any scenario without Leach running things, and tried to band-aid a bullet hole. Shortsighted panic move.

Yes, I think Selmon is infinitely more qualified to make sports hiring decisions than Botox boy. Your last paragraph is why you needed a real AD instead of a complete nerd running the search. All of that happened because that goof ball was running the entire thing and not someone who has a clue.

 

[Perd Hapley]

Yeah, winning 9 games sucked and having a team set up to do it again was terrible.

Just when i think our fans can’t get dumber, we have a fan who proves me wrong.

Although I agree that the Air Raid catches way too much criticism from many, we were not set up to win 9 again….even if Leach didn’t pass away.

2023 was an odd-number year where we always struggled before the schedule reformat. Bama and LSU at home - both unwinnable. Loaded Ole Miss team at home. All traditional swing games except UK were on the road (Ark, Auburn, A&M, South Carolina).

We also had what turned out to be a very tough non-conference opponent (that we somehow beat).

Absolute best-case scenario with Leach coaching that team was probably 7-5 or so.

 

[Slow Natives]

The air raid was trash when Leach was here. It was going to be worse with someone else trying to run it.

The lunacy of the air raider bros in this fan base astounds me.

Moving away from that offense was a million percent the right thing to do.

I loved Leach. I hated the Air Raid. I thought it put a stain on what was the identity of MSU football... A run first, grind it out the old fashion way, in the trenches type of program. Sure we had a decent WR from to time and a great QB in Dak but we had a history of good to great RBs and stout defenses. Win or lose, that's what I loved. Just a personal opinion.

 

[Howiefeltersnstch]

THE BACONATOR RETURNS!!!!

BacArnetter

 

[Drebin]

Yeah, winning 9 games sucked and having a team set up to do it again was terrible.

Just when i think our fans can’t get dumber, we have a fan who proves me wrong.

There's reality, and there's whatever the hell this is.

We've been in the wilderness since 2021. You sunshiners love to say "it's because our coach died" but it's also thanks to the shitshow that our recruiting and talent evals were under that staff. "Having a team set up to do it again" is completely divorced from the reality on the ground.

 

[Perd Hapley]

Yes, I think Selmon is infinitely more qualified to make sports hiring decisions than Botox boy. Your last paragraph is why you needed a real AD instead of a complete nerd running the search. All of that happened because that goof ball was running the entire thing and not someone who has a clue.

You don’t need a “real AD” to hire a search firm and vet available candidates. They’re the ones doing all the digging. Boosters / donors / Keenum work together to decide who the hire is, Keenum rubber stamps it. That simple. Would it be the most badass search ever? No. Would there be hiccups and a few folks turned off by the many moving parts? Sure. But at the end of the day, you still have $4.5 million per year to offer. Somebody good is gonna want the shot.

Instead, there was panic and hysteria, and we hit the easy button as fast as we could. There was no search. All because everyone thought that the 2023 season was ever something that was somehow worth saving at all costs.

 

[anon1768925248]

You don’t need a “real AD” to hire a search firm and vet available candidates. They’re the ones doing all the digging. Boosters / donors / Keenum work together to decide who the hire is, Keenum rubber stamps it. That simple. Would it be the most badass search ever? No. Would there be hiccups and a few folks turned off by the many moving parts? Sure. But at the end of the day, you still have $4.5 million per year to offer. Somebody good is gonna want the shot.

Instead, there was panic and hysteria, and we hit the easy button as fast as we could. There was no search. All because everyone thought that the 2023 season was ever something that was somehow worth saving at all costs.

Yes, and Keenum was not smart enough to do that either, which is the entire point.

 

[greenbean.sixpack]

Although I agree that the Air Raid catches way too much criticism from many, we were not set up to win 9 again….even if Leach didn’t pass away.

2023 was an odd-number year where we always struggled before the schedule reformat. Bama and LSU at home - both unwinnable. Loaded Ole Miss team at home. All traditional swing games except UK were on the road (Ark, Auburn, A&M, South Carolina).

We also had what turned out to be a very tough non-conference opponent (that we somehow beat).

Absolute best-case scenario with Leach coaching that team was probably 7-5 or so.

We’ll never know, but i’d liked our chances with a great coach returned a lot to talent that fit his system. Even 7-5 would have been a big upgrade from 4-6 in 2023 and Leach 100% would have more than two games in 2024.

 

[Perd Hapley]

Yes, and Keenum was not smart enough to do that either, which is the entire point.

It wasn’t just Keenum, which is my entire point. It was everyone involved. And I can’t stand Keenum, so if anyone was going to throw just him under the bus, I’d normally be the one driving it.

I guarantee you we had search firms beating down the door to get in with MSU the day that Leach passed. Any of the associate AD’s could have worked with them and MK to get the ball rolling. Boosters and donors have contacts all over the place, too. Plenty of high rollers were all resigned to just hiring Arnett and saying a Hail Mary that it would work.

 

[TheDawg-Pound]

I feel that if you're going to hire a coordinator they need to have years of experience/ connections, not a young up and common l coming guy. If you want to go with a young up and coming guy, that person needs HC experience. Easier said than found but if we don't have the money to pull top coordinators the we either need a guy with connections to pull them (or go the um route and hire people with blemishes).