LSU’s offense has been an elite group through five weeks, but this team has a clear limiting factor: the defense.
It’s the reason why the Tigers are 3-2 on the year and likely already eliminated from College Football Playoff contention, and naturally, many fans have questioned the performance of defensive coordinator [autotag]Matt House[/autotag].
On Monday, [autotag]Brian Kelly[/autotag] defended House, pointing to the players the Tigers lost from last year’s team and the overall inexperience on the defensive side of the ball.
“If you look at the games we won last year… clearly, defense won games for us,” Kelly said. “We had a lot of veteran players… We know where we’re at. We’re playing a combination of 15 freshmen and transfers, and they’re young and inexperienced, and they’ve got to grow, and there’s going to be some growing pains.
“I said that at the start of the season, when you take that many guys there’s a red flag, and we’re going to have to go through these growing pains, but we’re going to keep fighting, we’re going to keep teaching, we’re going to keep coaching. But the blame does not lie at the feet of one person, this is a collective situation where we’ve got to coach better and we’ve got to play better.”
Kelly said the team is looking to tweak issues moving forward by sticking within its process, but he isn’t considering any larger changes when it comes to staffing.
“We have a process so we don’t get caught in the emotions of what might happen,” Kelly said.
We will see how the Tigers respond this week because they face another tough test next weekend on the road against a Missouri team that boasts one of the SEC’s most efficient passing offenses.
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