Stephen Lew-Imagn Images
By Hunt Palmer
To fit at LSU, you have to win.
Brian Kelly won some. He didn’t win enough. Now he’s gone.
For decades, Louisianians will discuss the Kelly era as a failure. Nationally, the hire will be mocked. Those conversations will involve fake accents, “taking receipts” on the way to the national championship and the embarrassment of a finish Saturday night in Death Valley.
None of those singular moments did Kelly in, though.
The series of mistakes in his hiring damaged the program far worse than any moment on a microphone or single loss to a top three team.
Matt House’s time as the defensive coordinator was an unmitigated disaster that cost Kelly his best shot at competing for a title. That offense was plenty good enough.
Kelly let Corey Raymond walk and hired Robert Steeples from a Missouri high school. The defensive back play, a hallmark of LSU’s program for two decades, cratered.
Tommy Moffitt was fired as the strength coach. He was good enough for three national championship coaches in Baton Rouge, but he wasn’t for the first to take the job and fail to win a title since 1995. Fittingly, Moffitt was taking pictures on the Tiger Stadium turf as a 24-point winner Saturday night after taping Kelly’s face to a tackling dummy 48 hours earlier in College Station.
He hired six defensive line coaches in four years. Some of that was his fault. Some of it wasn’t. But it didn’t help.
He brought in Brian Polian to run personnel. Polian had spent one fall of his life below the Mason-Dixon line and had zero relationships with Louisiana high schools. The defenses of the next two seasons suffered because of it. Not to mention Polian’s special teams, which resembled a Three Stooges sketch in 2022.
He allowed Mike Denbrock to walk after leading the country in offense in 2023 and handed to keys to Joe Sloan. The result was a drop to 47th in scoring last season and 83rd in scoring through eight games.
The main culprit of that precipitous fall off was a ground game that stalled. Kelly’s Notre Dame program was an assembly line of NFL talent on the offensive front that routinely controlled games at the line of scrimmage. After all, he won more games than any coach in Notre Dame history, and his quarterbacks were hardly All-Americans. While LSU did churn four offensive linemen into last season’s NFL draft, the 2025 version of the line has woefully underperformed and was outclassed Saturday night by the Aggies.
Kelly’s greatest strength over the course of his time in South Bend was hiring great coordinators. Mike Elko and Clark Lea are two of the hottest names in college football right now. Denbrock has been a success at Notre Dame. Bob Diaco went on to be a head coach.
He never got both sides of the ball in order at LSU, and it ultimately cost him his job.
Rumors have swirled about Kelly’s time on the beach and golf course. I’m sure he’s made a quite a few pars and enjoyed a many a sunset balcony glass of wine while on Scott Woodward’s payroll. That’s no crime. I’ve always suggested football coaches who feel the need to be in the office by 6:00 and don’t lock the doors to head home until midnight are probably overdoing it. It’s possible he didn’t put in the same hours as other coaches, but I can’t speak to the extent of that.
What I know is that the coaching staff, personnel and schedule never lined up for Kelly to make the run he took the job to make.
The 2023 offense with the 2025 defense may have done it. Playing last year’s version of Florida State instead of Jordan Travis’s final two seasons may have helped. An earlier commitment to financially flooding the transfer portal would have made a difference.
It never lined up.
Kelly made changes. He fired the poor defensive staff that lead to the implosion. He allowed Austin Thomas to come in and overhaul the “front office.” He pledged one million of his own dollars after declaring LSU was “not going to buy players” prior to the 2024 season.
It wasn’t stubbornness. It wasn’t a Boston accent. It wasn’t an awful job.
At this school and in this sport, the standard is championships. That goes for baseball, gymnastics, women’s basketball and a few other programs. Kelly fell short.
Nationally, the era will be remembered as a failure and a poor fit. Neither would be wrong. Both would be oversimplified.
In this era of booster investment, leashes are shorter than ever. James Franklin and Kelly both went from the top five to out of a job in a month. Billy Napier got fired after a win.
The last two weeks were more than anyone in power at LSU was willing to deal with, and Saturday’s white flag from the fan base was the last straw.
Now LSU embarks on a competitive coaching search that already involves Penn State and Florida and very well could include Auburn, Florida State and even Texas if Steve Sarkisian has eyes on the NFL.
No matter who the next LSU coach is and no matter how many zeros are on his contract, he’ll be tasked with competing for playoff berths and championships.
He can hail from any corner of the United States, sea to shining sea. Southern drawl, Texas twang or midwestern accent. Offensive guru or defensive mind.
He’s just got to win. That’s the fit.
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