Why is Brian Kelly so ‘angry’? Because LSU’s Week 1 problems are now an existential crisis

LAS VEGAS — For most coaches, Week 1 is about shaking off the rust, seeing some young guys play their first game and hopefully getting their act together to start 1-0.

For LSU’s Brian Kelly, on the other hand, Week 1 has become an annual existential crisis.

Late Sunday night at Allegiant Stadium, Kelly answered questions from the media after his third straight neutral-site season opener, this time a last-second 27-20 heartbreaking loss to No. 23 USC. It didn’t take long for him to let the crowd know how angry he was with the outcome.

In fact, his very first words were, “This is the first time since I’ve been here (at LSU) that I’ve been mad at my football team.” He went on to list two costly, unsportsmanlike penalties by his players in the final minutes of the game and the Tigers’ inability to close out the game.

A few minutes later, while answering a follow-up question, Kelly slammed his fist on the table, causing a few sleepy sportswriters to snap back to alert when his voice suddenly rose.

“We’re sitting here AGAIN, talking about the same things, about not finishing when you have an opponent in a position to put them away,” Kelly said. “What we do on the sideline is feel like the game is over. And I’m so angry about it, that I have to do something about it. I’m not doing a good enough job as a coach. I have to coach them better, because it’s unacceptable that we haven’t found a way to win this football match.

“Are ridiculous.”

I repeat: this was after the first game of the season.

Kelly’s team actually played pretty well on Sunday night. This wasn’t the disastrous 2022 Florida State game in New Orleans, Kelly’s debut at LSU, when the Tigers committed every special-teams foul imaginable and lost 24-23 on a blocked extra point. And this wasn’t the ugly 2023 rematch with FSU in Orlando, when the Noles ran away from a 45-24 rout in the second half.

This was a close game between two teams trying to find themselves after losing their respective Heisman-winning quarterbacks (USC’s Caleb Williams and LSU’s Jayden Daniels). Lincoln Riley’s Trojans showed off a much-improved defense, one that effectively shut down ball carriers and limited explosive plays. Kelly’s defense, itself a disaster for most of last season, allowed a less-than-stellar 7.5 yards per play, but was improved enough for the Tigers to hold on to a 17-13 lead late in the fourth quarter.

Then the dam broke.

After stopping a USC fourth down in LSU territory with 8:38 left, LSU safety Major Burns committed a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that sent the Tigers back to their own 21. Kelly was then seen having a lengthy chat with Burns on the sideline. LSU went three-and-out and punted back to USC. Three plays later, Trojans quarterback Miller Moss threw a beautiful 28-yard touchdown pass to Ja’Kobi Lane to put USC up 20-17 with 5:44 left.

Tigers quarterback Garrett Nussmeier, who was 29 of 38 for 304 yards, led his team from its own 20 to the USC 14, but missed a wide-open Aaron Anderson for what could have been at least a first down. The Tigers settled for a tying 31-yard field goal with 1:47 left.

You probably know how it ended.

USC appeared to be settling for a game-tying field goal until Moss found receiver Kyron Hudson for a spectacular 20-yard catch down the sideline. Coupled with a goal-oriented call by LSU’s Jardin Gilbert, it sent the Trojans to LSU’s 13-yard line with 18 seconds left.

At that moment, USC running back Woody Marks took a handoff up the middle for the winning score, and Kelly got that familiar contorted look on his face that always comes across as half-bewildered, half-resigned.

annual tweet photo.twitter.com/5qCSxnHTAA

— no context college football (@nocontextcfb) September 2, 2024

“Obviously, when we get up in a game, we don’t know how to handle ourselves,” Kelly said afterward. “You’ve got to have that killer instinct in this game. You’ve got to put teams away. We had a chance to put this team away, and we got complacent.”

Normally, at times like this, the coach reminds us that it’s going to be a long season, that they have plenty of time to work through their issues, and so on and so forth. Since I haven’t heard anything from Kelly about this, I feel compelled to remind the LSU coach personally: Hey man, it’s a long season ahead. You still have plenty of time to fix these issues. Don’t panic too much.

Unfortunately, he already has.

“To be the kind of football team I want, we’ve got to eliminate the stupid mistakes,” he said. “We’ve got to have a mindset where when we’re shortchanging an opponent, we’ve got to have that killer instinct. And we’ve got to treat each other a lot better.”

Did we mention his team has only played one game?

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Kelly made an interesting point when he complained that the Tigers were not playing complementary football. He said, “We put far too much pressure on our defense to be something they’re not ready for. They’ve fought, but we’ve got warts and they don’t just go away.”

It brought back memories of Kelly’s surprisingly candid comments after the spring transfer portal closed without LSU adding any defensive tackles as many had expected. “We’re not in the market to acquire players,” Kelly told WAFB-TV, which to some might have sounded like a premature excuse if the Tigers’ defense, which ranked 109th in the FBS last season, wasn’t clearly better.

His comments Sunday night felt like he was pleasantly surprised that the defense was able to limit Lincoln Riley’s offense, featuring Moss and the ridiculous receivers Zachariah Branch, Hudson and Lane, to “only” three touchdowns, but that still wasn’t enough.

“I thought our defense was a step up from last year,” he said. “But we’ve got to help them, too. We can’t be three-and-out and then put them back on the field.”

This moment occurred in 2024, but it could easily have been 2014, or almost any year since. Kelly has won at least 10 games in each of the past seven seasons as a head coach (five with the Irish, two with LSU), but these big-game disappointments feel less like the exception and more like the norm.

Notre Dame fans were mostly okay with it, since the Irish hadn’t been this successful in decades. LSU, on the other hand, has seen its last three coaches win national championships (and the last two have still been fired). Tigers fans, who took over Las Vegas and were disappointed again, won’t be as patient if this continues.

No amount of fist-pumping or harsh words will calm them down.

(Photo: Candice Ward/Getty Images)