Mike Leach enters his second season as head coach at Mississippi State.
Mississippi State finished 4-7 (3-7 SEC) in Leach’s first season in 2020. His first season was one in which the coronavirus pandemic caused Leach not to have spring practices, making it difficult to install the Air Raid offense.
Leach now has a season under his belt at Mississippi State along with 43 lettermen and 16 starters (nine offense, seven defense) returning in 2021.
The Bulldogs are No. 8 in ESPN’s 2021 preseason college football FPI rankings.
Leach joined the show “Tennessee Two-A-Days” and discussed spring practices.
“We critically needed spring last year and didn’t get it,” Leach said.
Mississippi State concluded spring practices with its annual Maroon and White Game on April 17.
“The spring was very good for us,” Leach said. “We’re improving, I think at a good rate.”
Leach’s time at Mississippi State is his second stint coaching in the Southeastern Conference. He served as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Kentucky from 1997-98.
Leach was then hired as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Oklahoma in 1999.
After being hired with the Sooners, Leach set out to find a quarterback who could come in and run his Air Raid offense.
He narrowed it down to a pair of JUCO signal-callers in Josh Heupel from Snow College and Sean Stein of Long Beach City College.
Leach settled on Heupel who would throw for 3,460 yards and 30 touchdowns in 1999. Leach left Oklahoma following the 1999 season to become Texas Tech’s head coach. Heupel would guide Oklahoma to the BCS national championship in 2000.
Leach discussed why he settled on Heupel to be his quarterback and run the Air Raid offense at Oklahoma.
“Josh had thrown a lot of balls,” Leach said. “Josh was really accurate. Really accurate and really smart. Really knows football, a coaches kid. I liked all of those things and we had to do it as fast as we could. Josh came and spent a couple of days with me and we didn’t have furniture yet because we were just moving into the Switzer Center there, they just built it. We sat on the floor watching film after film, that was when it was VHS still, and talked offense.
“I thought Josh always had a great command of the field, a great knowledge of the game. The other thing was he was really accurate. He did not have a strong arm, but he was real accurate.”
Heupel has since launched his head coaching career at UCF (2018-20) and being hired at Tennessee on Jan. 27.
Leach mentioned he had no question that Heupel would become a coach.
“No question in my mind,” Leach said of Heupel. “I absolutely knew he was going to be a coach.”
The entire show with Leach can be listened to here or below. Leach’s book “Swing Your Sword” can be purchased here.
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