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Why this is the most ‘no excuses’ season of Brian Kelly’s entire career
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When Brian Kelly’s fist smashed the podium after yet another Sunday night loss to open the season, it spoke volumes about his frustration at the start of Year 3. Kelly’s fist-pound came in between saying the word “again,” which felt fitting.
Just in case you haven’t watched the clip a thousand times, here’s a reminder of Kelly’s undeniable angst from that Sunday night loss to USC.
That’s not the look of a man who approached 2024 like he had an excuse in his back pocket. After all, it’s LSU. As in, the program that up until Ohio State did so in 2024, was the lone team to have each of its 3 previous head coaches win a national title.
At the same time, there were some built-in reasons why LSU wasn’t set up to be SEC/College Football Playoff National Championship-worthy in 2024. Most programs don’t win a title after replacing a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback who threw passes to a pair of 1st-round receivers. The offseason overhaul of LSU’s woeful defense was promising, but you could still default to that transition being a reason the Tigers wouldn’t rewrite the record books in 2024. The season-ending Harold Perkins Jr. injury only added to that.
But whether Kelly’s fist-pounding showed it or not, there was a standard excuse that was built into his start at LSU that even includes 2023 when the Tigers were No. 5 in the preseason AP Top 25 with eventual-Heisman winner Jayden Daniels running the show.
“Don’t forget that he inherited a team with 39 scholarship players in the bowl game.”
Yeah. That’s over now.
In Year 4, Kelly is entering the most “no excuses” season of his career — not just his LSU tenure. That’s right. We’re including Notre Dame. You know, the program that has the built-in excuse of “our academic standards prevent us from recruiting 5-star talent.”
This isn’t the place where we reference Kelly’s 1-7 record vs. AP top-5 teams at Notre Dame (he’s 0-1 vs. AP top-5 teams at LSU). It’s worth remembering, though, that as a result of those struggles in top-5 matchups, the Irish weren’t given a single preseason top-8 ranking during his 12 years in South Bend.
LSU’s 2025 outlook is different. Why? Well, you can kiss that “39 scholarships” thing goodbye. You can also point to the fact that this defense isn’t in transition. This defense returns a $2.5 million defensive coordinator in Blake Baker along with the likes of Perkins and tackling machine Whit Weeks.
But let’s be honest. This is about LSU’s offense. Running it back with Garrett Nussmeier will shape expectations as much as anything in Baton Rouge. Nussmeier had a good, not great Year 1 as LSU’s starter. If not for his tough 3-game stretch, perhaps Nussmeier would have been off to the NFL. Instead, he’s back as a top-5 quarterback and Heisman hopeful in the sport.
Nobody will claim that Nussmeier is a better-returning quarterback than Daniels was in 2023 because we have the benefit of knowing how that year played out. We also have the benefit of knowing how flawed that defense was, though there were concerns about it entering the season.
What are the obvious concerns heading into 2025? Offensive tackle? Not to diminish the impact of Will Campbell and Emery Jones Jr., but if that’s the biggest question mark on a Kelly-coached squad, that’s not the worst problem to have. His history developing at the position speaks for itself. That doesn’t guarantee it’ll be a strength. It just means that there are worse weaknesses to have, especially when you have a 5th-year player who’s entering Year 2 as LSU’s QB1.
Nussmeier should be able to elevate his promising surroundings. That, by the way, included LSU’s most active portal haul at the pass-catcher spots during the Kelly era. Adding proven pass-catchers like Nic Anderson (Oklahoma) and Barion Brown (Kentucky) should bode well for a room that’ll be led by top returning receiver Aaron Anderson. It was Anderson who blossomed into the go-to receiver for Nussmeier, which was on full display in an 8-catch, 100-yard performance (on 12 targets) in the bowl game. Tre Harris was the only SEC receiver who had more YAC (yards after catch) than Anderson’s 458. His emergence out of the slot will nicely complement the other Anderson in LSU’s receiving room, Nic Anderson, who was the only Power Conference player to average 20 yards/catch with double-digit touchdown grabs in 2023. (Anderson injured his thigh and played in just 1 game in 2024.)
That’s a key element to this. Nearly a year removed from Kelly getting heat for saying that LSU wasn’t going to “go out and buy players,” in the transfer portal, LSU currently has the highest-ranked portal class in the 2025 cycle. Whether LSU holds that title through the spring or not, that’s the ultimate sign of a “no excuses” team.
It’s fair to ask — what’s holding Kelly back from winning an SEC title in 2025? We’re a year removed from watching the SEC fail to have a single 0/1-loss team entering the postseason. The Tigers won’t face the 3 SEC teams that reached the Playoff and they’ll face a Nick Saban-less Alabama team that could start with its worst preseason ranking since Year 2 of the Saban era. There’s no immovable force standing in LSU or Kelly’s way. At least not yet.
And to be fair, LSU doesn’t deserve to be viewed as an immovable force. The Tigers lost 4 games and Kelly’s streak of 10-win seasons ended at 7. Shoot, LSU didn’t even finished ranked in the AP Top 25. An immovable force would have better than 20-to-1 odds (via DraftKings) to win the national title.
But a pivotal year awaits. To be clear, “pivotal” doesn’t mean that a Playoff-less season will result in Kelly receiving a $51.7 million buyout to go away. Pivotal means that if Kelly can’t put it together with all the factors working in his favor for 2025, it’ll be natural to wonder if it’ll ever happen for him. Being the most successful coach without a ring is a dubious honor, but it’s one that’ll be staring Kelly in the face if this squad doesn’t even flirt with a ring.
Kelly has his ducks in a row. Now is as good a time as ever to turn fist-pounding into fist-pumping.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
