After nearly nine months of waiting, the Lane Kiffin experience was on full display on Saturday night. It was a show. It was a spectacle. It was everything LSU fans could’ve ever wanted in the first game of their new head coach’s tenure. Here are two truths and a lie about Saturday night’s mauling of Clemson in Tiger Stadium.
Truth No. 1 – The off-field drama was worth it, at least Saturday night
Ole Miss fans warned everyone who Lane Kiffin “really was” all offseason. The “I told you so’s” that rained down from Oxford, Mississippi over the last two weeks were as abundant as they were hollow. LSU knew what they were getting with Kiffin. The vetting process for hiring a coach like that isn’t easy, and there’s no doubt there’s a lot of excess baggage that comes along with hiring someone like Kiffin. But, is it worth it? Is the juice worth the squeeze? Those are the types of questions that were attached to the hiring.
It was. Especially on Saturday night against Clemson.
Kiffin isn’t for everyone. He’s very comfortable being the villain, and has shown time and time again over the last two weeks that he is also comfortable leaning into it as well. Who cares? If you don’t like it, don’t watch because what happened on Saturday night inside the walls of Tiger Stadium was exactly what LSU fans, players, and the administration have been desperately craving since 2019.
When Death Valley is Death Valley there is no better venue in the world. Saturday was an absolute cauldron of excitement and celebration and worth every penny, and headache, that came with signing Lane Kiffin.
Truth No. 2 – The biggest portal win was keeping Blake Baker out of it
All offseason the talk about this team on the field seemed to be about the offense. Kiffin, Charlie Weis Jr, Sam Leavitt, Trey’Dez Green, and all the other portal pieces they brought in to help score points were the main talking points about LSU. That’s understandable when you hire someone like Kiffin, and it’s especially understandable when you consider how frustratingly bad the offense was a season ago under Brian Kelly and Joe Sloan.
Kiffin and his staff brought in over 40 players from the transfer portal. They had over 60 new faces in the locker room before the season started. But, the most important pieces of this team may be the retention pieces and specifically retaining Blake Baker as the defensive coordinator.
Baker nearly became the head coach at Tulane. Instead, he came back to Baton Rouge for another season and was handed the keys to a Ferrari of a defense that was flying around at 100 miles per hour on Saturday night. The Tigers were suffocating, fast, and physical. They absolutely dominated Clemson from start to finish and even held them to 12 carries for minus-4 yards rushing at halftime. The offense will get a lot of the accolades and attention this season, but the scary part for everyone outside of Baton Rouge is what could happen if the defense is the strength of this year’s team. If LSU only needs to score 24 points every week because the defense isn’t allowing more than 20, then this may very well be a national championship caliber team.
The Lie – Clemson is even remotely close to still being Clemson
What a fall from grace. I was in Levi’s Stadium in January of 2019 when Clemson dismantled Alabama 44-16 in the national championship. The Tigers took Alabama to the woodshed in front of a shocked crowd. Saturday night’s game felt a lot like that but somehow even more one-sided.
Clemson looked helpless all night. The offensive line couldn’t block, the defensive line couldn’t get off blocks, and the years of refusing to change have clearly finally caught up with Dabo Swinney.
It’s hard to win without a generational quarterback rotating in every three years like Clemson had in the 2010s. It’s really hard to win when you try and retread a worn out tire like Chad Morris as your offensive coordinator. Years of brash resistance and ivory tower arrogance from Dabo Swinney culminated with a beatdown of epic proportions on national television.
It was reminiscent of Bobby Bowden’s end at Florida State. The ages may be different, but the demise looks eerily similar. The collapse of one of the greatest college football dynasties of the 21st century happened in real time on Saturday.
And, it happened while the coach on the other sidelines was shooting jumpers on an eight foot goal up 40 points.
