GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
Well, that will quiet things down.
Much-criticized LSU football coach Brian Kelly and his team put up a workmanlike, 24-17 victory over Vanderbilt on Saturday night at Tiger Stadium that basically told the loudest and angriest of the LSU Nation to shut the hell up.
The victory ended a three-game losing streak and came after two major recruiting losses over the last week in the process for the Tigers (7-4, 4-3 Southeastern Conference).
“I’m really pleased and happy for our players and all of our coaches,” Kelly said. “Obviously they had to listen to the noise that’s out there about LSU football and the indictments that are made, unfortunately, so early in this program’s development.”
Kelly is in just his third year as LSU’s coach and is coming off back-to-back 10-win seasons and is within range of a nine-win campaign this year, but there will be no College Football Playoffs for the third straight year.
LSU DIDN’T LISTEN TO THE NOISE
“But the players didn’t listen to it (the noise),” Kelly said. “The coaches didn’t listen to it. I’m proud of them the way that they prepared this football team, and we played a really good Vanderbilt team.”
The Commodores (6-5, 3-4 SEC) led 7-0 early, but never truly threatened after LSU took a 14-7 lead into halftime. The Tigers close the regular season against Oklahoma (6-5, 2-5 SEC) on Saturday (6 p.m., ESPN).
In addition to the three straight losses, LSU lost a commitment from No. 1-ranked quarterback Bryce Underwood of Belleville High near Detroit to Michigan on Thursday night after he had been committed to LSU since Jan. 6, 2024. And shortly after the Tigers fell at Florida last Saturday, No. 7 interior offensive lineman Devin Harper of Calvary Baptist in Shreveport flipped his commitment from LSU to Ole Miss.
“The recruiting part doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot when you’re talking about your football team in the present,” Kelly said. “I mean everybody else certainly felt differently about that recruiting piece (Underwood). But that didn’t really affect our players, nor the coaches. Yeah, you’re disappointed, because you’ve put many, many years into recruiting. But it really didn’t affect the core of what we wanted to accomplish.”
Kelly’s supposed slipping status as LSU’s coach has been discussed in social media ad nauseam – a little more with each of the three straight losses.
“Yeah, the noise was there,” he said. “But you’re going to get noise at LSU when you lose three games in a row. But it wasn’t because of our guys not being committed, and they showed that commitment this week.”
Kelly repeated again that LSU was in position to win in three of its four losses this season – against USC, Texas A&M and Florida.
“This week in particular, I knew that this football team was going to be ready,” he said. “And they’ve been ready. We didn’t close out three games. We had three games in the third and fourth quarter that we had a chance to close out, and the narrative would have been much different around here. Everybody would’ve slept better. I would’ve slept better. And you guys wouldn’t have anything to talk about.”
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