State of the Program: Southern Miss Golden Eagles

Head Coach: Charles Huff is entering his first year as the head coach of the Golden Eagles but comes in with strong credentials. Huff has a Sun Belt championship along with wins over Notre Dame, Virginia Tech, and a bowl win. Huff ended up in a strange contract standoff with Marshall and ended up leaving which made Southern Miss the beneficiary of the situation. He provides instant credibility to a program that’s struggled in recent years.

Program Outlook: Southern Miss is a program with a deep history as a great College Football program. This is a program that appeared in the top 25 in 5 consecutive seasons at one point and they didn’t have a single losing season from 1994-2011, beating many of the sports biggest name programs in the process. Then 2012 happened, coming off a conference championship but a coaching change, the Golden Eagles suffered one of the most sudden collapses ever seen and outside of a few solid seasons under now Baltimore Ravens OC Todd Monken, it’s been a tough ride for the program since. Now it’s time for the program to work it’s way back.

How does the 2025 Roster look?: Southern Miss ranks 26th in the country returning 65.5% of their production per Punt and Rally’s returning production rankings. That’s not necessarily the headline with this team, Charles Huff imported a lot of players from Marshall over here. That leads off the key players with QB Braylon Braxton who really started the hot streak for Marshall last year when he took over as the starter, he’s mobile and takes great care of the ball. Braxton will be joined by a familiar face in former Marshall receiver Carl Chester and Elijah Metcalf (also from Marshall) is one of the best receivers in the Sun Belt but missed a lot of last year due to injuries. There’s another theme as OC Blake Anderson comes over after a strange exit at Utah State and brings a lot of guys over including Receiver Grant Page and RB Robert Briggs. There’s also some other interesting transfers like WR Micah Davis (Michigan) and RB Matt Jones (Ole Miss). The offensive line will be made entirely from the portal too, but should be a massive upgrade over what they had last year. The defense will be led by a Marshall heavy secondary. Corner Josh Moten is the star of the group and the safeties Ahmere Foster and Ian Foster both know what they’re doing, there appears to be no relation by the way and to add on to the confusion Ian does have a brother named “Khalil” who is an incoming freshman. Former Chattanooga safety Josh Battle will factor in as well. LB Chris Jones is a holdover that is very solid and he will be joined by Portland State transfer Michael Montgomery who is really good. Defensive tackle Broadarius Lewis and end Jameer Lewis both were solid for Southern Miss last year and return, they’ll be joined by another Marshall import in Isaiah Gibson.

Screenshot from FBSchedules.com

2025 Schedule Thoughts: Southern Miss will face a challenging and fun schedule. They have face a lot of regional foes in their non-conference with in-state games against Mississippi State and Jackson State, Mississippi State at home is a big one but they can’t afford to overlook Jackson State who might possibly be a top 15 FCS team this year. They take on their old rivals in Louisiana Tech and they face Jacksonville State in another great regional game. The Sun Belt schedule will be tough also, facing Appalachian State and Georgia Southern is never a draw anyone wants to see.

Final Thoughts: It’s an exciting year ahead in Hattiesburg, Charles Huff coming over has brought in an influx of energy and credibility that this program hasn’t had in a while. Southern Miss seems to have the pieces in place to instantly be competitive, if it all meshes well. Truthfully it’s hard to do much worse, at a minimum we’ll see this team clean up it’s act, Southern Miss was dead last in turnover margin last year at a staggering -19 surely they’ll do better.