Southern Miss football faces the familiar unknown as spring practice begins
Southern Miss entered the spring a year ago with a new head football coach and little returning production. It’s in the same situation again, though this time to an even more extreme degree.
First-year coach Blake Anderson opened spring practice Tuesday with a team that ranks 138th out of 138 FBS teams in returning production, according to ESPN.
More than 30 players from 2025’s 7-6 team hit the transfer portal following the departure of Charles Huff and another 30 graduated. What remains is one lone returning starter: offensive lineman Brock Roman.
“Typically, you go into spring and have a handful of guys that you’ve seen play and you know what they did the year before,” Anderson said after his team’s first practice. “We’re starting from scratch on 99% of this roster so we’re having to evaluate and teach at basically every position all day, every day.”
Anderson has 10 years of head coaching experience between stops at Arkansas State and Utah State and was Huff’s offensive coordinator when the team flipped the roster completely in the previous offseason.
But Anderson said he’s never had to build a team with as little game experience as this one.
That means open competition in each position group. That includes the quarterback room where four players are on equal footing.
“It’s a really wide-open competition,” Anderson said. “Any one of those dudes can be the starter when it’s all said and done.”
Returning backups Landry Lyddy and John White are competing with Illinois transfer Ethan Hampton and 6-foot-5 true freshman Hugh Price.
And they’ll be doing so surrounded by skill position groups with a combined three snaps returning from last year’s roster.
The story is much of the same on defense, where over 4,500 snaps were lost just to graduation before the transfer losses of Chris Jones, Mike Montgomery, Corey Myrick and several other key players.
“There are no returning starters on the entire defense,” Anderson said. “There’s no depth chart. We don’t have one. We’ve got competition wide open to every spot.”
Southern Miss has 14 spring practices culminating in the spring game on April 18 to sort through its new-look roster.
The Golden Eagles officially begin the Anderson era at home against Alcorn State on Sept. 5.
