Zach Arnett Q&A Part 2: MSU's DC discusses his linebackers, Mike Leach and more
On Tuesday, Mississippi State defensive coordinator/linebackers coach Zach Arnett chatted with Cowbell Corner. CLICK HERE FOR PART 1 of his exclusive Q&A in which he discusses his scheme and more. What follows is Part 2 in the two-part series. The interview transcript has been slightly edited in spots for clarity:
Cowbell Corner: You’re obviously a linebackers coach too, and you may not have even gotten to spend a ton of time around him, but how valuable is it to have a veteran guy like Erroll Thompson in this transition?
Arnett: Of the top of my head, I don’t know how many career games he has played in, but the amount of production and the number of games he has played in and that amount of experience, it doesn’t matter if it’s a new system or not, anyone that has played that much football is valuable. I was really hoping it was going to be Erroll and Willie Gay, but I can’t fault Willie for the decision he made. My goodness. You want to talk another guy whose athleticism jumps off the film when you watch some of those games. But Erroll has done a fantastic job. Obviously got to know him before we all got shut down. Then since then, during the shutdown, there have been a whole lot of Zoom meetings. So you talk to guys and get to know them as best you can through virtual instruction. I can see why he’s had such a good career up to this point. He’s a mature guy. He works hard. He’s obviously physically talented. So you put all those different intangibles together and it usually makes for a pretty good player.
Cowbell Corner: The linebacker position is one that has lost a couple of key guys. Like you mentioned, there’s Willie Gay, but also Leo Lewis is gone. So there’ll be some guys that haven’t played at this level as much manning those spots. Does that make transitioning to your defense easier, to have a bunch of guys with less experience that maybe aren’t set in their ways? Is it easier for them to adjust perhaps?
Arnett: Hopefully it will be a benefit. It just is what it is. I mean that happens. Every team in the country every year or two graduates guys or guys leave for the NFL or there’s a million different reasons you have turnover. You never really know what you have until your guys get out and start playing. That doesn’t mean they’re not going to be good football players. You just haven’t seen it yet because you had the Willie Gays of the world running around making a whole bunch of plays. I sure hope we have another Willie Gay in the room right now, we just don’t know it yet.
Cowbell Corner: So did you know Coach Leach at all before he reached out to you to come to Mississippi State?
Arnett: Yes, I’d spoken to him prior when he was at Washington State.
Cowbell Corner: In the short time that you’ve now gotten to know him better and work for him, what has been your impression of him?
Arnett: For a younger coach, anytime you have the chance to be around someone who has had the success and longevity in this profession that he has….I think I read somewhere that he’s eighth or ninth on the career wins list of active coaches. When you’re a young coach and you get to be around someone that is that successful and developed programs and won as many games as he has, you should just shut up and listen because there are a lot of things to learn. For me, that’s been the biggest benefit working for a guy like that. Obviously, he knows how to develop a team and develop an entire program and the things that are important that lead to success on the field and success off field. Those are the things he preaches. You see the results he has had in his career and it makes it really easy for an assistant to follow him because the proof is in the pudding.
Cowbell Corner: Any good Coach Leach stories yet?
Arnett: Probably not me as much. He’s with those offensive assistants a lot. Obviously those guys all came from Washington State and they spend a lot of time reviewing stuff and making tweaks. Defensively, we’re all kind of working together for the first time – the whole group of us. So we’ve been in a lot of meetings, getting used to each other and getting down to the nuts and bolts. He hasn’t been around us as much. You know though if you’ve talked to him that there’s not a subject that you can talk about that he doesn’t know something about. I mean that as a compliment. He’s an incredibly intelligent man with a knowledge base that is as wide and as broad as anyone I’ve met.
Cowbell Corner: You talked about how all the offensive coaches have worked together before and much of the current staff came together from Washington State. Have you all been able to come together as a coaching staff and build cohesiveness pretty quickly?
Arnett: Oh yeah. I really think that credit goes to the head coach. In the first meeting he says, ‘These are the expectations and this is what is expected of you as an assistant coach.’ He makes it really clear and makes it easy to understand what the standards and expectations are for us as assistants. Obviously, we all have the same goal. We all just right now want to line up and play. We all just want to get as good of a football team as we can and develop these young men and go out there and give us the best chance to win on Saturday. So it’s easy for guys in our profession. Even though you’re working with new guys, you develop relationships pretty fast because you’re all like-minded guys. We all went into this profession for the same reasons. So we’re all pretty similar.
