Jeff Lebby lands in Starkville after back-to-back Dallas-area trips for a 2027 quarterback

Jeff Lebby flew from Starkville to the Dallas-Fort Worth area on June 2, returning the same day, and repeated the round trip on June 5 — the second flight, a 2-minute hop from KSTF to KGTR, appears to be a local repositioning after returning from the Metroplex. The inbound leg from the Dallas region (KDAL area) on June 5 touched down at Golden Triangle Regional, the airport closest to Mississippi State’s campus.

The destination puts Jeff Lebby squarely in one of his deepest recruiting pipelines. Dallas-Fort Worth is home to several high school programs — like Southlake Carroll and Highland Park — that run versions of the Air Raid and spread concepts Lebby has coached at Oklahoma, Ole Miss and Baylor. The early June contact period allows coaches to evaluate prospects in person. Mississippi State holds a verbal commitment from three-star quarterback Kaidon Lopez in the 2026 class, per 247Sports, but the 2027 cycle is wide open, and Lebby has offered multiple Dallas-area quarterbacks including Tyler White and a handful of underclassmen at nearby schools.

The Bulldog Club’s Learjet logged round trips to Oklahoma City and Nashville in late May as well — normal summer travel for a first-year head coach trying to rebuild a roster that went 2–10 in 2024. Mississippi State’s 2026 class currently ranks near the middle of the SEC, and Lebby’s strategy continues to lean on the Texas connections he built as a Baylor assistant and Oklahoma offensive coordinator.