Watch: Brian Kelly Says He Had A Tough Time Watching LSU-Clemson, Recaps The Win

Former LSU head coach Brian Kelly admitted it wasn't easy watching the Tigers' dominant 51-10 win over Clemson on Saturday.

Kelly, who was fired by LSU last season and is now working in broadcasting, discussed the Tigers' performance Thursday on SiriusXM's The Early Read with Danny Kanell and Roy Philpott.

“I’ll be honest, I had a hard time watching it,” Kelly said. “I don’t think it was just LSU, it was the first weekend truly of college football and it was hard, you know? You’ve been doing it for 35 years and not to be part of that process… my wife, she wanted to kill me. She was like ‘what’s wrong with you?’ and what was wrong was that I wasn’t on the sideline. I had to deal with it and get through it. There’s no mistaking, LSU looked great.”

LSU piled up 644 yards of offense and 38 first downs while holding Clemson to just 145 total yards in Lane Kiffin's debut.

Kelly also praised LSU's running game and defense, saying the Tigers looked like a team capable of competing for a national championship.

“I think what I walk away from in watching the game is some of the things that I struggled with in the last year — we did not run the ball efficiently,” Kelly said. “I thought they [LSU] ran the ball extremely well. And I know Blake — I hired Blake Baker, the defensive coordinator. I thought their defense looked every bit like a national championship defense with the pieces that he has.

“So, I guess we all know this, right? We’ve been around it. If you have a great defense and you can run the football, everybody’s working on the other pieces, right?”

“Nobody’s a complete football team. And I think those are the two things that I take away. I love what the defense looks like, and the running game being really effective is really going to bode well for this football team to be in it when we get down to the last few teams.”

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