GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
LSU fans and LSU media members – two groups clearly not mutually exclusive – are angry and emotional about the sliding LSU football team. This often leads to ridiculous and unintelligent statements and desires.
LSU football coach Brian Kelly is not getting fired, and it’s not because it would cost a lot – approximately $60 million – to buy him out from a $95 million contract that runs through 2031. LSU athletic director Scott Woodward, like any good liberal or conservative, is great at spending other people’s money. But Woodward hired Kelly, and even though Kelly is underachieving commensurate to his near-$10 million-a-year contract, Woodward will stick with him.
Kelly, though his team looked awful and misguided in 38-23 and 42-13 losses at Texas A&M and to Alabama over the last two games, will still likely win 10 games for a third straight time in his third season. LSU (6-3, 3-2 Southeastern Conference) has Florida (4-5, 2-4 SEC) on the road, and Vanderbilt (6-4, 3-3 SEC) and Oklahoma (5-5, 1-5 SEC) at home left with a bowl. There is even an outside chance LSU could reach the SEC Championship Game by winning a tiebreaker at 6-2 in the league.
It’s not like Kelly is as disappointing as Woodward’s football hire pre-Kelly – Jimbo Fisher at Texas A&M before the 2018 season. Just be glad that Woodward was unable to bring Fisher back to LSU when he was hiring Kelly after the 2021 season. Since Woodward hired Kelly, he is likely not angling to fire him down the road either, even though the pair have not always gotten along so smoothly. To fire Kelly, Woodward would have to admit he was wrong to hire him.
Joe Alleva began angling to fire then-coach Les Miles soon after Alleva became athletic director in 2008, never mind Miles had just won a national championship in the 2007 season. Alleva did not hire Miles. That’s how incoming ADs sometimes like to show power – fire the head football coach.
Similar power moves happen in government as well. In Louisiana, though, our governor Jeff Landry showed his power – or something else – by bringing in a Transfer Portal tiger for what was literally a circus act by circus performers (Landry and Omar the tiger). Shame on LSU’s administration for letting Landry treat it like a zoo, even though it often is one.
LSU fans sometimes resemble zoo escapees after losses like Saturday night. The LSU Nation’s worst fears were realized. After months of some media members and fans rejoicing in Alabama coach Nick Saban’s retirement after last season and new coach Kalen DeBoer’s early struggles as if LSU would now take over the league, Alabama has not descended much at all. It is already back and destroying LSU again under a new coach who looked like Saban in so many destructions of Miles, Orgeron and Kelly over the years.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Yes, Alabama has a loss to Vanderbilt (6-4, 3-3 SEC), but LSU has a loss to USC (4-5, 2-5 Big Ten).
LSU EMBARRASSES ITSELF AGAINST ALABAMA
With no LSU touchdowns in the first half Saturday, the 21-6 deficit to the Tide at the time looked hauntingly familiar to Miles’ 21-0 loss to Saban in the national championship tombstone of 01/09/12. That last drive by the Tigers at the end of the first half Saturday – when they could’ve drawn within 21-9 before getting the second half kickoff – looked like something out of Miles’ and offensive coordinator Greg Studrawa’s 2011 playbook. What was going on? And quarterback Garrett Nussmeier is starting to look more like Jordan Jefferson than Jayden Daniels.
Nussmeier continues to regress as Jefferson did. The more he plays the worse he gets. Yes, he is much better than Jefferson and many other former LSU QBs. And Nussmeier will be a great quarterback at LSU, if he stays for his senior season in 2025. But over the last two weeks, he has been Jarrett Lee. The only difference is the disastrous picks haven’t become pick sixes. Nussmeier has thrown five interceptions in his last two games, nine over his last four games. And a few potential picks were dropped. Daniels threw seven interceptions in 26 games at LSU. Nussmeier has 11 in nine this season.
There’s a reason Kelly brought up Nussmeier’s inexplicable interception to Alabama linebacker Deontae Lawson in the end zone from the 5-yard line on LSU’s first drive of the second half three times at his press conference Monday. A touchdown there, and LSU is back in the game by a 21-13 deficit.
Again, Nussmeier threw an interception right to a defender without being under much rush pressure. An interception was dropped earlier in that drive as well. He continues to throw with too much confidence, which has swiftly become recklessness. He too often tries to thread a needle among defenders or choose a deeper target when tight end Mason Taylor or someone else is right there open for a first down.
Did he think his pass would simply beam through Lawson’s body and back out? Nussmeier needs to look before he throws more, and maybe check the periphery every now and then, too. The interception was strikingly similar to two of the three at Texas A&M – under little or no pressure and apparently blind to the other jerseys. And if Lawson wasn’t there Saturday, cornerback Domani Jackson might have intercepted it. He was right at intended wide receiver CJ Daniels’ back, and Nussmeier appeared to throw behind Daniels.
LSU offensive coordinator Joe Sloan clearly deserves some blame here. Sloan is also the quarterbacks coach, and Nussmeier does not look very well coached of late. Sloan was a questionable hire after last season when elite offensive coordinator and play caller Mike Denbrock upped and returned to Notre Dame. Daniels blossomed into what he is now under Denbrock at LSU after an average career at Arizona State.
Kelly went next man up to replace Denbrock with Sloan, who is only 37 and his only previous OC job was at Louisiana Tech for all of two seasons. If Kelly did consider other applicants, it was quick. And Sloan is having some growing pains.
“I don’t evaluate coordinators during the season,” Kelly said with aggravation to an evaluation question Monday. Well, he needs to soon.
Sloan could be the last piece of a trilogy of disaster hires by Kelly with special teams coordinator Brian Polian the first one in 2022, followed by defensive coordinator Matt House declining in his second season in 2023. Word is Sloan is untouchable because he is the chief recruiter of quarterback Bryce Underwood, the No. 1 prospect overall in the nation out of Belleville High in the Detroit area who is apparently LSU bound. Maybe, after Underwood is signed and paid, keep Sloan in some capacity and find someone with more experience as an OC.
New defensive coordinator Blake Baker is also not exactly off to a great start either at the most elementary things … see quarterback run, stop quarterback run. But he is proven and was a successful DC for four years at two major programs – two at Miami and two at Missouri. He’ll get better as the defensive talent improves. It really needs to.
So will Kelly.
By far, the most ridiculous comments over the last few panic-stricken days focused on Miles winning a national championship in his third season at LSU in 2007 and Ed Orgeron winning one in his third full season in 2019, with Kelly likely not even reaching the playoffs for the third straight season. And now it’s a 12-team playoff.
Remember, Nick Saban went 8-5 and 5-3 in the SEC in his third season at LSU in 2002 with Kelly-like blowout losses, and couldn’t win his opener either. His Tigers were ranked No. 14 entering that season after a 10-3, 5-3 SEC championship season the year before. And he lost at No. 16 Virginia Tech, 26-8. Kelly’s Tigers were ranked No. 13 entering this season after a 10-3, 6-2 season, and lost to No. 23 USC, 27-20.
Saban later fell at Auburn, 31-7, to No. 10 Alabama, 31-0, in Tiger Stadium, at Arkansas, 21-20, and by double digits again to No. 9 Texas in the Cotton Bowl, 35-20. That was underachievement commensurate to his $1.2-million-a-year contract, which amazingly at the time was one of the best in football.
Kelly is better than Saban so far after three seasons at 26-10 overall (.722 winning percentage) and 15-6 in the SEC (.714). Saban was 26-12 (.684) and 15-9 (.625).
The disastrous program Kelly inherited after the 2021 season was much more like the one Saban took over after the 1999 season than what Miles and Orgeron walked into in 2005 and 2016, respectively.
LSU was 5-5 overall and in the SEC and 6-7 and 3-5 in the SEC in the two seasons before Kelly. And in that circus-like (minus Omar), 42-20 loss to unranked Kansas State in the Texas Bowl on Jan. 4, 2022, LSU looked like a Sun Belt team. Because of a mass exodus of players via the first year of the NCAA Transfer Portal after a 6-6 regular season in ’21 and the firing of Orgeron, LSU interim coach Brad Davis had only 38 scholarship players for the bowl. LSU had to use wide receiver Jontre Kirklin at quarterback after he had not played there since high school. Orgeron was gone, but the class he had started to recruit for 2022 finished ranked No. 12. That’s what Kelly largely inherited.
That’s what Kelly walked into. Saban took over a program that had lost 10 straight SEC games in 1998 and ’99, finishing 4-7 and 2-6 and 2-8 and 0-7 under Gerry DiNardo. In the NFL Draft in 2000 before he coached his first game, Saban saw only two LSU players taken in one of the Tigers’ worst drafts ever.
In the last NFL Draft before Miles replaced Miami Dolphins-bound Saban, the Saban recruiting produced seven draft choices in 2004 and a first round pick (wide receiver Michael Clayton) for the first time since 1999. Of course, Saban did not have to deal with NIL and the portal as Kelly has had to.
Saban also left Miles the No. 1 or No. 2 recruiting classes in the nation from 2003 and 2004. More than 30 of those prospects were in major playing and/or starring roles when Miles won the 2007 national title. Miles inherited much of LSU’s 13-1 national championship team of 2003 and the 9-3 team of 2004.
Miles also left Orgeron a quality team, though slipping. When Miles nearly got fired in the 2015 season, he still signed the No. 2 class in 2016 after a No. 5 the year before with Orgeron recruiting well as an assistant coach. Miles’ last three teams before Orgeron were also a decent 10-3 and 5-3, 8-5, and 4-4 and 9-3 and 5-3.
Both Miles and Orgeron clearly had much more to work with than Saban or Kelly.
Kelly has underachieved and disappointed. But his recruiting classes have been ranked high with a No. 6 in 2023 and a No. 7 in 2024. His class of 2025 is No. 4. He needs to get better on both sides of the portal – keeping and attracting players. He also needs to recruit and hire better assistants. But remember, Saban also made a couple of off hires early in his stay at LSU at defensive coordinator with Phil Elmassian and Gary Gibbs. Happens to the best of coaches.
If he does that, Kelly will end his days at LSU before this decade is out closer to the LSU Saban than Miles or Orgeron.
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