Brian Kelly’s first two years at LSU have been largely successful.
After leaving Notre Dame, where he’s the winningest coach in program history, he has turned in a 20-7 record in two years in Baton Rouge, featuring back-to-back 10-win seasons as his program produced a Heisman-winner in 2023.
In spite of that, there have been some questions surrounding Kelly and the direction of the program. Like his three predecessors, Kelly is expected to win a national title, and the Tigers seem like they still have a way to go in that regard.
Still, ESPN analyst Greg McElroy doesn’t understand the negativity, and he defended Kelly on his “Always College Football” podcast.
“I think Brian Kelly is a really good coach,” McElroy said, per On3. “He won a lot of games at Notre Dame when people said it couldn’t be done anymore. He revitalized that program. It became a steady player in the College Football Playoff conversation. Now he takes over at LSU, has won 10 games in consecutive years, has had a Heisman Trophy winner. I don’t really know what there is to be negative about with Brian Kelly. Like, he won 10 games, he has been to the SEC Championship already.
“Yes, he will have to replace Jayden Daniels. Yes, I think, personally, (Garrett) Nussmeier is going to be very well-equipped to take over at that position. They have great weapons on the perimeter. Now it’s about figuring things out on the defensive side. If I look back at his teams at Notre Dame, how often was defense a huge liability? It wasn’t. It wasn’t at all. I think he went out and hired a really good defensive coordinator in Blake Baker. As far as the playing field is concerned, I don’t think LSU is in a bad spot whatsoever. They’re going to continue to win. Winning 10 games a year in the SEC is pretty dang hard to do.”
A lot of the concerns have to do with NIL and LSU’s apparent inability to land its top targets in the transfer portal. McElroy addressed these concerns as well.
“I’m assuming that this is a question that kind of revolves around the comments that went viral from Brian Kelly. The problem is, if you actually listened to what he said, the comments had no reason to go viral,” McElroy said. “It’s just people are looking for low-hanging fruit and bottom-feeder topics as it relates to NIL and paying players.
“As it relates to the paying players conversation, which is where I think a lot of the negativity around Brian Kelly this offseason has surrounded him? I listened to his comments and I don’t get the sense that he is not supportive of NIL. I see the headlines, I see the stories, I see what people are saying – ‘Oh, he’s going to get sued’, ‘Oh, he’s going to do this’, ‘LSU is not in NIL’. Yeah, they are. There are plenty of guys at LSU under Brian Kelly’s leadership that have done really well when it comes to NIL. What he said is he’s not going to be in the business of buying players. I think what that means, the way I interpret it is he is not going to be real excited about bringing in a player that’s number one priority is maximizing his NIL value.”
Kelly still has some questions to answer, and 2024 could tell us a lot about the program’s trajectory. Still, it’s clear McElroy thinks that concerns about Kelly are at this point overblown.
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