By Charles Hanagriff
In my thirty-five years in Baton Rouge, spanning seven head football coaches at LSU, I’ve seen some bad stretches before.
Some were worse than others, and sometimes the coach didn’t get to stick around long enough to fix it, but it always comes with familiar rhetoric.
So, I’ll give you the five most common things I’ve always heard when the football season goes south and whether they apply in 2024 or not.
First, the all-time leader by a wide margin: ‘fire the coach’. This includes the second cousins to ‘fire the coach’, which are ‘fire the assistants’ and/or ‘fire the Athletic Director’.
In really bad years, I’ve also heard ‘fire the President’, ‘fire the Chancellor’ and ‘replace the Board of Supervisors’. During one particularly awful stretch, ‘recall the Governor’ made an appearance, but that’s rare. I wouldn’t bring in any more live tigers, though.
Replacing Brian Kelly isn’t happening, and it doesn’t matter what the results are in the last two games. Furthermore, Kelly would be retained even if there was not a massive buyout attached to his dismissal.
A 26-11 record, including 15-7 in the Southeastern Conference, is hardly grounds for termination. In fact, put up against the three other major hires that year among blue blood programs. Kelly’s record is superior to USC’s Lincoln Riley (24-13, 16-10), Oklahoma’s Brent Venables (21-15, 11-13) and Florida’s Billy Napier (16-19, 9-14). None of those guys are getting fired either.
There will likely be staff changes, because they happen every year, but I’d be surprised if it were either coordinator. LSU has quite a bit invested in both men to make a move after just one season.
This is a non-starter. Kelly will be the one charged with righting this ship.
Second: Recruiting isn’t good enough.
There is some truth here, because the first two years of Kelly’s tenure included too many misses. Some of those came because of inexperience on staff. The transfer portal has frankly been mostly a boom or bust proposition but something they are trying to limit.
The staff has been reconfigured, and the incoming class is very strong, but this doesn’t happen overnight. If you decide to start saving money, you don’t become an instant millionaire.
Third: there is a disconnect between the players and the coach.
Once, when I was in college, my roommate and I went to play golf at the LSU course one afternoon. One of greatest players in LSU history walked in alone, and we ended up playing half a round with him.
We didn’t know each other, although we certainly knew who he was. We started talking, and for nine holes we got an earful about how much of a (rhymes with brass pole) his coach was.
I’ll leave out the names to protect the innocent, but the player and his coach were both uber successful. Years later they would both talk in reverent tones about each other.
The point is, in the heat of the season, it’s not always going to be nice. The players are going to hate the coaches some days and vice versa. They get over it. Kelly has been at this awhile. This too shall pass.
Fourth: the strength and conditioning are awful, and the S&C coach needs to be replaced.
This one rates a whole separate category from number one, because it happens every time LSU gets beat up in the trenches or loses a game in the fourth quarter.
The S&C program is crucial to any football program. The S&C coach is also vital, but mainly because he often acts as a liaison between the players and the other coaches. The S&C spends more time with the players than anyone else on staff, especially in the offseason. A good S&C coach always has the pulse of the team, and they can head off a lot of problems before they start.
Jake Flint has been with Brian Kelly at three schools now. He is absolutely qualified to be the S&C coach. If he weren’t, Kelly would have parted ways with him long before now. LSU has a training facility that is not just adequate but at or near the best in the country. There is just no way that the tools and programs are not there to produce highly trained football players.
LSU has had 12 players drafted the last two seasons. Flint had 57 players drafted while the S&C coach at Notre Dame. Eleven of those were linemen, and nine of those overall were in the first round.
Could there be some players stronger or in better shape? Always. Is that on the coach or the facility? Almost never.
Fifth: the program is in decline, and they will be worse next year.
I don’t think the program is in decline, because I think there will probably be more raw talent on next year’s team than the current one.
But I can’t guarantee that next season will be better.
What the 2025 roster will ultimately look like is still to be determined, but the lack of development from the young offensive lineman, wide receivers and defensive backs is troubling. In all three areas there was playing time to be claimed, and very few underclassmen took advantage.
Kelly must determine why more young players didn’t improve enough to earn playing time. Whether that is on the staff or the players is his call.
That is before you get to the quarterback. I think Garrett Nussmeier, Bryce Underwood and LSU would all benefit from Nussmeier returning for another season. I realize that not everyone agrees.
Nussmeier, like fifth-year players Joe Burrow and Jayden Daniels before him, could make a big jump with another dozen or so starts. I’m not suggesting that he’ll win the Heisman Trophy, but the more he plays, the better off he will be when he does finally get to the league.
If Underwood is starting his first college game at Clemson next September, that’s a big ask. Maybe the talented freshman to be is ready, but he would be one of a precious few. I’ve seen quarterbacks win the Heisman in their second season that did not play at all in their first.
The old saying goes, if you have two quarterbacks, you really don’t have one. That’s rubbish in the case of the 2025 LSU Tigers. Their best chance for success is to have both players on campus.
The transition from 2024 to 2025 starts in about a week and a half.
