Brian Kelly has only coached 19 games at LSU. Yes, he’s beaten Alabama and won the SEC West. But through all the positive noise, if you look closely enough, you can already see a troubling trend emerging.
Kelly is 13-6 at LSU. Five of those losses have come in the 10 games he’s played away from home. Even if you don’t want to hold a loss to Georgia, who didn’t lose to anyone a year ago, against him, he’s still 4-4 on regular-season road trips.
Yes, Kelly and the Tigers have played some tough teams away from home. Two of those games came against Florida State. In 2022, the Tigers lost to the eventual 10-win Seminoles on a missed extra point as time expired. The game wasn’t nearly as close this time around, with FSU burying them, 45-24, behind a 31-point second half.
LSU also lost to Texas A&M last season, a team with a losing record, by 15 points when they went to Kyle Field. They couldn’t stop Devon Achane, who ran for 215 yards and a pair of touchdowns. Even when the Aggies couldn’t run the ball, quarterback Connor Weigman averaged 8.6 yards per attempt, and Jimbo Fisher’s squad scored 38 points and gained 429 total yards. Keep in mind, Texas A&M didn’t score 30 points against any other SEC team in 2022, and the only other teams the Aggies generated 400 yards of offense against were Ole Miss and Florida.
This past Saturday, they lost to Ole Miss when they traveled to Mississippi. It was a legendary offensive battle, with 1,300 yards of offense between the teams and a 55-49 final score. The week before, however, the Rebels could only create 301 yards and 10 points against Alabama. Lane Kiffin’s squad only has a single top-10 win during his tenure, over Kentucky a season ago.
Even in the road games Kelly won, it’s easy to argue he underachieved. He beat Auburn (another team that ended 2022 with a losing record) by four points. He beat Arkansas, who went 3-5 in SEC play, just 13-10. He beat the Gators by 10 last season, but quarterback Jayden Daniels threw an interception when the lead was just seven points that was nullified by a roughing the passer call.
LSU’s Week 3 victory over Mississippi State was the first time a Brian Kelly-led Tigers squad won a road game by more than 10 points. It was his seventh regular-season road game, and five of the previous six opponents had been unranked.
The 2023 sample sizes are too small to really judge yet, especially with the quality of road opponents. But LSU gained 400 yards of offense in five of seven home games last season, a feat they repeated just three times away from Tiger Stadium, including once in four true road games. Their points per game dropped from 37.9 in front of their own fans to 31.1 otherwise, effectively the difference between the 12th-best offense in the country and the 44th. Even defensively, four of the five games they allowed 6.0 yards per play or more were either on the road or in a neutral site.
The Tigers travel to Missouri this week for another chance to buck the trend. Missouri is undefeated with notable wins over Kansas State and Memphis but hasn’t had a winning record since 2018. LSU is its first ranked conference opponent of the season.
If Kelly’s squad stumbles to 3-3, the whispers will turn into shouts no matter how good his 2022 season was.