Lane Kiffin and Jeff Lebby roamed the sideline together for two seasons at Ole Miss.
One of the prevailing themes of the 2026 LSU season has been coaching staff familiarity. Kiffin’s return to Oxford with his offensive staff to take on Pete Golding and several of his former assistants was the opening act.
Last week, Blake Baker’s LSU defense took on Joe Sloan’s Kentucky offense. Baker was a groomsman in Sloan’s wedding.
Kiffin’s relationship with Lebby dates back a decade when the now-LSU head coach was filling out his staff at Florida Atlantic. Back in a head coaching role, Kiffin was looking for an offensive coordinator to speed the game up.
He went to the Baylor coaching tree where Art Briles had the Bears on the cutting edge of offense. Kendall Briles, Art’s son, was the pick for offensive coordinator, but Kiffin wanted to make an additional hire.
The problem was that a sexual assault scandal had engulfed Baylor. It cost Art Briles his job and made hiring coaches with ties to the program toxic, regardless of their degree of involvement.
One of the cases named Lebby as a coach who failed to take proper action. He’s also married to Briles’s daughter.
“I hired Kendall at FAU, and Lebby was at a really small school,” Kiffin said. “I can’t remember what it was, a directional school…We talked about hiring him as a position coach, but our administrators felt like, ‘Hey we’re giving you one, you can’t take more than one.’”
Lebby was calling plays at Southeastern University, an NAIA school in Lakeland, Fla. After a season there, he became the quarterbacks coach at Central Florida in 2018. He assumed offensive coordinator duties in 2019.
Kiffin got the Ole Miss job in 2020 and brought Lebby to Oxford as his offensive coordinator.
“He was awesome,” Kiffin said. “A huge part of our success there, part of building a cool place to go offensively, and I just think he’s really good.”
Ole Miss finished third nationally in total offense in 2020 and sixth in 2021.
Lebby moved on to Oklahoma as the offensive coordinator for Brent Venables in 2022. Kiffin then brought Charlie Weis Jr., his current offensive coordinator to Ole Miss. Lebby parlayed the Oklahoma gig into the head coaching job at Mississippi State. Weis has joined Kiffin at LSU.
Lebby and Kiffin squared off in consecutive Egg Bowls in 2024 and 2025 when they were the head coaches at Ole Miss and Mississippi State. Ole Miss got the better of the Bulldogs in both games, but Kiffin respects the job Lebby has done in Starkville.
“I don’t like playing against him because they go so fast,” Kiffin said. “Really unique job being able to stay in formations and get it fast and pick you apart.”
It’ll be Baker’s job to slow Lebby down. Kiffin’s offense will match wits with Mississippi State defensive coordinator Zach Arnett, who Lebby replaced as the Bulldogs’ head coach three years ago.
After Mississippi State fired Arnett, Kiffin brought him to Ole Miss, where he spent a year on Golding’s defensive staff.
Arnett came to the SEC running a 3-3-5 defense that he learned out west. Mike Leach, the head coach at Mississippi State in 2020, felt it would be a good wrinkle for the SEC to deal with.
After Leach tragically died, Arnett took over as head coach, but Mississippi State fired him with two games remaining in his first season.
“He came over and is really smart,” Kiffin said. “Kind of interesting because he’s kind of running a little bit of his old defense, but then he’s running Golding’s defense this year. So, now he’s even more multiple.”
In these incestuous SEC matchups featuring former co-workers, LSU is currently 0-2. Ole Miss edged the Tigers by eight in Oxford, and Kentucky clipped LSU in overtime on Saturday.
With LSU’s postseason hopes in the balance, it’ll be up to Kiffin and his staff to change that narrative in Saturday’s 11 a.m. kickoff in Tiger Stadium.
