by Kyle Golik
In the industry of writing sports content, we get it right and we get it wrong.
I wrote back in June about five coaches who could win their first national championship, and my top coach was Brian Kelly.
Back then, I wrote: Kelly made Notre Dame relevant once again. But he realized those difference makers that make you flirt with national championship aspirations and actually become a national champion were two different things. And he wasn’t going to be able to get that done in South Bend. That is why he went to LSU. To be a national champion.
After Sunday night’s disaster in Orlando, I am wondering if Kelly has the goods to deliver a championship or if he is just a championship flirter. While we have to agree this isn’t the final project during his time in Baton Rouge, there are heightened championship aspirations coming off of a surprise SEC Championship Game berth.
Quarterback Jayden Daniels was healthy, they had a great offensive line unit returning, and Harold Perkins is arguably the best defensive player in the country. Florida State was a giant litmus test to see if Kelly could meet these expectations. Notre Dame fans watched Sunday night’s game and felt they were watching a rerun.
LSU held a slight halftime lead, mostly due to FSU’s self-inflicted wounds. Once the Seminoles corrected itself, it scored 31 unanswered points. The 75-yard Brian Thomas Jr. touchdown from Daniels with 1:15 left in the fourth quarter was a garbage score.
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Kelly said following the Florida State massacre of LSU, “We certainly are not the football team that I thought we were, and we’ve got to do a much better job obviously in developing our football team. We clearly were short in a lot of areas tonight, and that falls on me to get our football team to be better in most of the competitive areas that you saw tonight.”
One of the areas Kelly failed most at with Notre Dame was defeating Top 10 opponents, going 4-13 during his time in South Bend against such teams.
The narrative, or so I felt, began to change last season when LSU was able to split four games against Top 10 team, including a huge upset of Alabama.
In 2023, LSU still has a gauntlet in front of them. They have a full slate of SEC West games that, should the Tigers win out, will bolster their resume to that of a CFP-worthy team.
Kelly was asked a follow-up question as to what the rest of 2023 means for LSU. He answered,
“It means everything as to what our mindset is. Like, how do we handle this? Is this who we want to be, or do we look at this and say this isn’t the kind of football team we want to be. When you have these kinds of losses, they are disappointing, and in some instances, they are devastating losses, but it’s how you respond to them. And they have a chance to respond to this very disappointing performance in the second half. So the choices they will have to make will be ones that start tomorrow. How they handle themselves 24/7 is really what I’ll be interested in seeing.”
—Brian Kelly
What I will be interested in seeing is what defensive adjustments LSU makes down the stretch. Florida State had enormous success on third down, converting on 8 of 13 opportunities.
This has to be emphasized, or else they won’t have success against Alabama, Ole Miss, or even Texas A&M, who managed to beat LSU last year.
LSU saw the best offense it will see all season long against the Seminoles. Those 483 total yards they gained against the Tigers will remain bulletin board material for the rest of the way.
Offensively, outside of Jayden Daniels’ successes and failures, the rest of the unit was pretty forgettable. The running game outside of Daniels carried the ball 12 times for 48 yards, and outside of Thomas’s 75-yard touchdown, the passing game wasn’t any good or noteworthy. The Seminoles do have one of the better secondaries in the country, and it seemed Daniels was getting flushed out all night as LSU receivers rarely got the separation needed.
LSU still has an opportunity to make a College Football Playoff, but as the old proverb goes, “ A tiger always shows its stripes.” Its literal translation is a person cannot change their essential nature or character, and what history has shown us is that Kelly cannot and will not win the big one for LSU.
