As LSU football stumbles in SEC and Brian Kelly stalls, let’s reconsider his Notre Dame era

Texas A&M made LSU look bad, Missouri made Alabama look good, and Travis Hunter gave Heisman Trophy voters something to muse with a fantastic showing on offense and defense in an important Colorado defeat of Cincinnati.

LSU became the lone team in the top 15 to lose in what turned out to be one of the season’s most undramatic Saturdays. Ohio State and Texas nearly heightened the tension but escaped with wait-to-exhale victories against Nebraska and Vanderbilt.

The College Football Playoff bubble remains overcrowded, but Missouri and Illinois exited contention.

Here’s what lingers on my mind after Week 9 as the schedule turns to November:

Will Brian Kelly ever win the elusive national championship at LSU?

Not this season.

LSU’s 38-23 loss to Texas A&M didn’t knock the Tigers out of playoff contention, but it pushed them to the brink of elimination, and it further revealed that LSU plays too one-dimensional to be taken seriously as a national title contender in Kelly’s third season.

When did Kelly become a coach who needed his quarterback to “stand on his freaking head,” as he put it after this loss, to have a chance at success?

Kelly’s Notre Dame teams tended to play a little defense, and they usually established a ground game, too. LSU features none of that.

When Kelly left Notre Dame, the prevailing narrative became that he’d taken the Irish as far as they could reasonably expect to go, and that LSU would afford him a better platform to win the national championship that had eluded him.

LSU coach Brian Kelly speaks with officials during a game against Texas A&M at Kyle Field on Oct. 26, 2024.

How’s that mission progressing? Well, Kelly’s third LSU team ranks no better than his first.

Maybe, Notre Dame didn’t limit Kelly’s ceiling after all.

Texas A&M’s Mike Elko coached circles around Kelly in the…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/lsu-football-stumbles-sec-brian-170039469.html

Author : USA TODAY Sports

Publish date : 2024-10-28 17:00:39

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