I’m really confused as to why Brian Kelly didn’t work out at LSU

I think the leadership skills required to lead a program have changed in the NIL era.

Kelly was a good leader in the past, but I don’t think he is now. And that includes everything… culture within the program, his relations with the media and fan base, roster management, etc.

I’m not being a jerk, but it’s pretty simple. He’s not as good at coach as he was touted to be and coaching in the SEC is not the same as independent Notre Dame.

And the fire isn’t there. He wants to CEO the position.

He had a great run of hiring stud DC’s. A couple of guys named Clark Lea and Mike Elko.

Completely agree. The last three LSU coaches won national titles, and two of those were buffoons, so surely a proven winner at every previous stop can make a serious run for it too?

But no, it’s the all-in year 4 and it’s over before November. And if you had told me that he would cycle through bad assistant hires, and consistently field teams that are obviously incompetent in 2-3 phases of the game, I would not have believed it.

If you had told me that the one bright spot was a superstar QB that eventually won the Heisman, I also would not have believed that.

I don’t think many people on here fully grasped how much of a talent and general program advantage Kelly had at Notre dame over 8 of the 12 teams in their schedule every year.

Navy/army/byu/stanford/Boston college/Pittsburgh/purdue/wake forest almost every year. USC and Michigan were having some of their worst stretches during his ND tenure.


True ND didn’t have a ton of talent relative to LSU/Bama/Ohio state, but they had way more talent than most teams they played. The result of that is Kelly spent 15 years coaching at a place where he didn’t really focus on X and O’s, offensive and defensive schemes, figuring out the small margins where he could have an advantage. All he had to do was generally keep the program chugging along and he’d win 9 games.

Now in the SEC, and this is more true than ever in the NIL era, our talent advantage in conference games is marginal at best, if it is there at all. And Kelly has no idea how to prepare a team to win games without a clear talent advantage.

Whoever we replace him absolutely has to be someone with clear schematic competency and involvement on one side of the ball, and really should be someone who has shown they can win at a place with similar or less resources than their opponents

Well, he beat Bama and was closer the first two years because he was smart and went out and got a true dual threat QB. The last two years he relied on Nuss and Sloan who simply aren't good enough. Sloan was a lazy hire. Nuss had some good moments, but you can't just sit back there like he does in today's game and expect to win anything of significance.

That and BK's decision-making with hires and just game management stuff has gotten worse since earlier in his career. He's just not up to the standard to win SEC championships, etc.

He's also been known for having solid offensive lines and putting offensive linemen in the NFL draft (as we saw last year), along with tight ends. However, we're now in year 4 and the offensive line is, by far, the worst unit on the team. That's another thing that if you had told me when we hired him that in year 4, the OLine would be the worst unit, I would not have believed you.

Yeah.

Being honest, I wasn’t sure about him when he was hired but after year 1, taking a team that only had 39 scholarships players when took over to the SECCG, I really thought we were about to own the SEC.

But god damn it’s been a disaster ever since. Jayden Daniels has been the only thing worth watching.