Three takeaways from Mississippi State's second preseason scrimmage

But there were a few things we can learn.

Defensive line rotation revealed?

The great defenses don’t just have four linemen that stay in for the whole game. There’s usually some kind of rotation so players can stay fresher later in the game. That’s what Mississippi State will do this season.

“At that position, you got to play multiple guys,” Lebby said Sunday. “And I think that's probably what I'm most excited about, feeling as if we've got a chance to have maybe nine, ten guys go play winning football.”

There are a lot of new additions to the group, which makes it hard to get an idea of who will be apart of the rotation.

On Sunday, Lebby may have given us the closest we’ll get to that answer before next week. When asked about the defensive line, Lebby mentioned the following players:

Will Whitson, Jaray Bledsoe, Jamil Burroughs, Deonte Anderson, Trevion Williams, Kalvin Dinkins, Kendrick Bingley-Jones and Malik Sylla.

This is only an educated guess, but since Lebby mentioned those players, it’s not hard to deduce that those eight players will be in the defensive line rotation.

New Bulldog highlighted by Lebby

Lebby isn’t giving much away this preseason, which does provide him with a competitive advantage because opponents know about as much as us.

So, when he mentions a single player in an answer to a question that wasn’t asking for a specific player to be named, you have to take notice. First, here’s the question then Lebby’s answer.

“There's been a lot of talk about the depth that you've added on the defensive line, but you added a lot of experience in terms of snaps on the back end as well with the safeties. Are you seeing kind of complimentary skill sets there as you're evaluating who's going to play what role?”

“A guy like (Jahron Manning) who's come in and played a bunch of ball, he's been very productive,” Lebby said. “He's going to have a great year for us and I'm excited about who he is and where he's at right now as he's fitting into it.”

This may end up being wrong, but I’m going to go ahead and pencil in Manning’s name as a starter.

Turnovers not a problem in second scrimmage

One of the main storylines from the Bulldogs’ first scrimmage was the offense not “taking care of the ball.”

That doesn’t appear to be an issue this week, based on what Lebby said after Sunday’s scrimmage.

“Blake was solid, took care of the football and that was good to see,” Lebby said. “From a decision-making standpoint he was in a really good spot. And then the other two guys, Luke and Kamario, both had solid days. It's all about the ball, man—taking care of the rock—and those guys did that today. We had one fumble on an exchange that was an issue. Outside of that, we were much cleaner, which we needed to be.”

It's good to see a fixable problem such as turnovers be (mostly) fixed in a short amount of time.