Starting 1-0 is a big deal for LSU, more so than most teams
By Les East
Published:
LSU is 1-0 for the first time in 6 years. However, its 1-0 is more impressive than nearly every other 1-0 in the country.
The 17-10 victory at preseason No. 4 Clemson vaulted the Tigers from No. 9 to No. 3 in the AP Poll.
Head coach Brian Kelly is looking forward to a whole bunch of other 1-0s.
“This is our mantra for the year,” Kelly said, adding that the victory at Clemson is no bigger or smaller than any of the other 11 potential 1-0s.
“I feel great about what we accomplished,” Kelly said of the opener. “We want to go 1-0 (each week), and we have to replicate all the things that we did to get to 1-0. That goal for us will be the same each and every week.”
The Tigers’ next opportunity to go 1-0 – in the home opener against Louisiana Tech on Saturday night – figures to be one of the least suspenseful.
Certainly Kelly isn’t the first coach to invoke the weekly 1-0 approach to try and get their team to focus exclusively on each week’s task.
But the approach is especially understandable for the 2025 LSU team – and especially understandable for Week 2.
The 2024 Tigers did go 1-0 in Week 2, but they didn’t demonstrate the single-minded focus that Kelly would have preferred. LSU faced an outmanned but emotionally charged in-state opponent (as Louisiana Tech will be Saturday) in Nicholls and was less than impressive in its 44-21 victory.
That game came a week after a marquee opener against USC, which the Tigers lost, and Kelly acknowledged that his team didn’t have the proper focus for the home opener.
“There’s a standard of playing football here at LSU, and that’s the standard that we’re going to have to play when we go on that field,” Kelly said. “Every Saturday there’s a standard, and our guys know what the standard is. We’re going to be demanding.
“Our expectations are that if we want to go 1-0, we have to do the same things each and every week, and we’re not moving off of that.”
Against Clemson, the Tigers played outstanding defense against the run and pass, had adequate balance on offense and played with poise throughout. They shouldn’t have much trouble replicating that at home against the Bulldogs, even though Tech had a well-rounded performance in a 24-0 victory against Southeastern Louisiana in its opener.
It’s one thing to talk publicly about going 1-0 when you’re about to face a 5-touchdown underdog in your home opener. But Kelly wasn’t shy about speaking publicly in the same way last week when his team was a 4½-point underdog.
“I knew the team that we had, a mature enough team that we could put that on them regardless of what the outcome would be,” Kelly said. “We knew 1-0 was going to be where we wanted to be. It’s just been a mindset that we’ve kept, and so the 1-0 wasn’t targeted, rubbing it in Clemson’s nose. We just want to focus one week at a time, avoid the noise, stay locked in, and do the things that we’ve been doing. Then we can get to 1-0 each week.”
Kelly plans to repeat the mantra throughout the season, and next week LSU opens SEC play when Florida comes to Baton Rouge.
He’ll no doubt point out to his team that last year’s team started 3-0 in conference play before losing 3 games in a row, then finishing with 3 straight wins. So consistency wasn’t there.
The week after the game against Florida comes a similar situation to the one arriving Saturday as another outmanned in-state opponent – Southeastern Louisiana, the team that Louisiana Tech just shut out – comes to Tiger Stadium.
Then comes a visit to No. 20 Ole Miss, and the rest of the conference schedule includes home games against South Carolina, Texas A&M and Arkansas and road games against Vanderbilt, Alabama and Oklahoma, along with a final non-conference home game against Western Kentucky.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
It’s 1-0 each step the rest of the way.
Les East is a New Orleans-based football writer who covers LSU for SaturdayDownSouth.com. Follow him on Twitter @Les_East.
