With a successful track record to fall back on, a confident Brian Kelly was bullish this would be LSU’s big year.
Year 3 was an undefeated regular season and Big East title at Cincinnati. He took an undefeated Fighting Irish team to the national championship game in his third season at Notre Dame.
He expected the same this year in Baton Rouge.
“I can tell you in Year 3, I’ve had really good success with getting our football team to be the most accountable, trusting team that I’ve had here at LSU,” Kelly told CBS Sports this offseason. “That’s usually been pretty good at my other stops.”
Instead, Kelly is caught on camera screaming at players, the fanbase is revolting (just check out the message boards), and Florida is trolling him on social media. It’s been a disastrous four-loss season. LSU still has two regular-season games left (Vanderbilt, Oklahoma) and yet is already out of the College Football Playoff race in a year where four or five SEC teams could make the field. That’s utterly unacceptable at LSU, given the resources invested in the program, including a $10 million annual salary for the head coach.
There were always questions about how Kelly would fit in at LSU. Scott Woodward, the school’s athletic director, was intent on money-whipping a big name into saying yes after Ed Orgeron’s tenure crashed and burned. Woodward repeatedly went hard after Jimbo Fisher, the same man he gave one of the worst contracts in college sports history while serving as Texas A&M’s AD. When he couldn’t convince Fisher to leave College Station, he eventually wooed Kelly away from South Bend with a massive 10-year, $95 million contract. That decision feels increasingly onerous for a skidding LSU program that would have to pay Kelly more than $60 million to move on from him after this season.
(Oh, by the way, Marcus Freeman, Kelly’s Notre Dame replacement, has a better record (28-8) than Kelly (26-11) these last three years and has the Fighting Irish on the verge of making the playoff.)
The initial fit concerns were heightened earlier this season when multiple sources pointed to Kelly’s style not playing as well in Baton Rouge as it did in South Bend, leading to what some describe as a disconnect. Kelly steadied the ship after almost losing to South Carolina with an overtime win over Ole Miss, boosting hope. Still, the bottom fell out with three straight losses. When you are winning big, players will tolerate and even buy into the hard-charging antics Kelly prefers. But when the losses pile up, the concern with that approach is players start tuning out the message and begin making business decisions about their post-LSU futures.
Kelly’s sideline interactions, his reputation for rubbing people the wrong way, and his postgame comments all speak to a program that isn’t going in the right direction.
“Do you want to fight or not? Do you want to fight and take responsibility as coaches and players that we’re not playing well? We’re struggling right now,” Kelly said. “It’s life. It’s a myriad of things, but it’s a reflection of what life’s about. There’s a rough spot here that we have to fight through. We got to do it together.”
A 27-14 loss to Florida is the obvious nadir of a blown season, though being completely unprepared for the possibility of Texas A&M backup quarterback Marcel Reed playing might be the most embarrassing outcome from a coaching standpoint. It didn’t look much better coming off a bye in a blowout loss where Alabama’s Jalen Milroe ran wild, either.
However, if there’s a lesson to take from the Florida loss, it is how much hope can come from having the right quarterback. Even a banged-up DJ Lagway showed Saturday why Florida is giving Billy Napier another year in Gainesville. The No. 1 QB recruit in the class of 2024, the freshman Lagway is the future of Florida football, and if his staying within the program is tied to Napier, it was worth it to bring the head coach back for another season to see what’s possible.
That huge $60 million buyout is Kelly’s firewall, but class of 2025’s No. 1 recruit Bryce Underwood is the reason to still hope he can follow in his predecessors’ footsteps and win a national championship at LSU. It’s far too simplistic to say it will only be Underwood who will deliver that — we’ll get to LSU’s other needs in a second — and it really isn’t Garrett Nussmeier’s fault the Tigers already have four losses. But Underwood, the five-star quarterback with a jaw-dropping highlight reel, is a program-changer.
“You may think I’m blowing smoke,” Donovan Dooley, Underwood’s throwing coach, recently told CBS Sports. “Bryce is pretty much incomparable. Bryce is Randall Cunningham mixed with Pat Mahomes mixed with Lamar Jackson.”
Hyperbole aside, Underwood has prompted a bidding war between home state Michigan and LSU that has become the most exciting recruiting story headed into the early signing period starting Dec. 4. The biggest money offers had shifted to proven transfer portal quarterbacks in the last two years — it is a safer bet, after all, when you’re investing millions — but Underwood has bucked that trend, landing reported offers in the eight-figure range. He’s that good.
For as demoralizing as the Florida loss was, losing Underwood would be far worse. He is the crown jewel of a recruiting class currently ranked No. 6 in the 247Sports Composite Team Recruiting Rankings. LSU needs to keep this class together — elite wideout Derek Meadows is reportedly wavering as well, with Notre Dame of all teams making a big push — plus unleash an aggressive portal approach to keep up with the Joneses in an SEC that looks more competitive by the day. Against Florida, LSU’s offensive line looked like a mess giving up seven sacks, it still doesn’t have enough impact defensive linemen up front and it is painfully obvious at this point that this coaching staff isn’t capable of overcoming talent deficiencies.
If LSU wants to avoid more wasted seasons like this one under Kelly, it needs better players across the board. If Underwood lives anywhere close to the hype, he could be a Pied Piper of sorts, leading other top recruits to Baton Rouge. Without Underwood, it’s harder to believe Kelly will ever meet the title-or-bust expectations he inherited when he replaced Ed Orgeron.
The only thing that matters now is acquiring as many talented players as possible over the next month. Kelly can’t think he’s above paying market rate for top pass-rushers again. LSU needs an infusion of players who can play right away and failure to do so could ultimately make-or-break his time in Baton Rouge.
LSU feels good about getting Underwood to sign next month, according to 247Sports, and if that holds to form, it’ll be Kelly’s biggest win of the season. Kelly saw firsthand how powerful a cologne a promising young quarterback can be in overpowering a program’s stink.
The reasons Kelly won’t be the champion coach LSU fans were promised continue to stack up. He badly needs to give a fanbase that is turning on him a reason to believe, a reason to keep investing their money in NIL and their time on Saturdays supporting the Bayou Bengals.
How Kelly handles these next few weeks will go a long way in determining how much buy-in he’ll have for what is shaping up to be a critical 2025 season.