Brian Kelly was table-pounding level angry, his face red and twitchy, after his No. 13-ranked LSU team blew another season opener it should have won.
“I’m so angry about it that I’ve got to do something about it,” Kelly said. “I’m not doing a good enough job as a coach. I’ve got to coach them better because it’s unacceptable for us not to have found a way to win this football game. It’s ridiculous. It’s crazy.”
LSU fans should be even angrier.
This is what LSU gets for $10 million a year? Another highly anticipated season that immediately goes off the rails?
Sunday night’s 27-20 loss to No. 23 USC made it Kelly’s third consecutive season opener loss. Three big opportunities, three losses. That’s unacceptable to a fanbase accustomed to a different, more extraordinary trio — its last three head coaches have all won a national championship.
Those are the expectations Kelly signed up for when he left Notre Dame to join the LSU “family.” And those are the expectations Kelly hasn’t met and may never meet if his program can’t take that next step.
At a Nike coaching clinic after his first season in Baton Rouge, Kelly explained to a room full of high school coaches and this reporter why he left one of the premier jobs in college football, a program he took to a national championship appearance, to go to LSU.
“I had the opportunity to go to the SEC and, for me, that’s the American League East,” Kelly said. “That’s where all the big boys are, and I wanted that one last challenge in my career to go to the SEC to play what I consider the best college football in the country.”
He’s not wrong about the SEC being the home of the big boys. The SEC currently features four top 10 teams in No. 1 Georgia, No. No. 4 Texas, No. 5 Alabama and No. 6 Ole Miss, with Missouri just outside the club at No. 11 (the Associated Press Top 25 rankings for Week 2 will be released Tuesday). LSU still has to play two of those teams (Ole Miss, Alabama) plus a road game against Texas A&M and the regular-season finale against No. 16 Oklahoma. With that all yet to come, it makes dropping a winnable season opener all the more painful — even in the era of the expanded College Football Playoff. This is a vitally important third year to show the program is on the right trajectory, and Kelly himself has touted that third year as when his teams take a leap.
Year 3 is a level of accountability in every program that I’ve taken over, that is heightened,” Kelly told CBS Sports‘ Brandon Marcello at SEC Media Days. “There’s a trust factor and an accountability level within our process that pops, if you will, and that’s this year.”
Sunday night did not quite look like “the year.”
To be fair to Kelly, it hasn’t been all bad at LSU. His staff continues to recruit at a very high level and currently has the nation’s No. 1 overall recruit in the class of 2025, quarterback Bryce Underwood, committed to the Tigers. On the back of its newfound reputation as one of college football’s QBUs, LSU was able to reel Underwood in from Detroit. He’s one of three five-star commits in the class, which ranks No. 3 per 247Sports. There’s good reason to be patient.
Kelly has shown an ability to occasionally win big games, like a 2022 victory over a Bryce Young-led Alabama team that entered the season as a popular national title favorite. It’s not that LSU is far off, as shown in Sunday’s tight loss, but as college coaches have explained over the years, thisclose is often the hardest part.
Last season should have been the breakthrough, but Kelly squandered a stacked offense that featured Heisman Trophy winner Jayden Daniels and first-round receiver Malik Nabers with a horrendous defense. LSU went out and spent big to lure defensive coordinator Blake Baker away from Missouri to fix the defense, making him the nation’s highest-paid assistant coach. Of course this only came after Kelly chose not to retain Baker on his first LSU staff, a decision that has aged poorly and delayed where the Tigers should be this season. It’s challenging to keep progressing up the ladder when you are forced to make radical staff changes so early into your tenure.
The defense looked better against USC in Las Vegas, though LSU seemed to still be missing a few key pieces. LSU’s decision not to spend up to bring in portal reinforcements looks worse and worse by the day. Kelly complained about the price of defensive linemen, laughably saying that LSU is “not in the market of buying players,” which led to LSU’s swing and misses at the position.
After only one game, it’s already easy to see it was too big a need in too critical of a season to go cheap on. When it mattered most, LSU couldn’t get the defensive stop it needed.
“We put way too much pressure on our defense to be something that they’re not ready to be,” Kelly said. “They battled, but we have warts, and they’re not going away overnight.”
Kelly’s postgame outburst showed he’s feeling just as much pressure as his defense did trying to stop Miller Moss.
And if LSU can’t get back on track and make a strong push to make the new 12-team playoff, that anger emanating out of Baton Rouge today isn’t going away overnight, either.
MORE: Postgame grades as LSU’s issues exposed in loss to USC
