Brian Kelly calls Week 1 loss to Florida State a ‘complete failure’ for LSU

Last year, LSU left their game against Florida State believing they were as good or better than the Seminoles, despite a loss. This time around, FSU left no doubt.

The Tigers weren’t close to the Seminoles on the football field in Sunday evening’s second half. LSU had raced out to a 17-14 halftime lead in what was a close and competitive 30 minutes of ball. That was not the case for the final half hour of game time as the ‘Noles rolled off 31 points in a row and eventually won 45-24.

After a second half like that, head LSU coach Brian Kelly was humble and blunt in his assessment of the team’s performance. “We clearly were short in a lot of areas tonight,” stated Kelly in the postgame presser, taking blame for the lack of inspiration.

“That falls on me to get our football team to be better in most of the competitive areas that you saw tonight: execution in the first half, the inability to convert in the red zone, you know, second half didn’t play with a sense of urgency. All those fall on on coaching and and getting our players to to recognize that and make those kinds of choices in practice.”

Of course, the guys on the field ultimately have to follow through on the coaching, and Kelly’s hoping they respond strong in practice.

“And our players have got to make a decision that they have to get back to the practice field and double down on their efforts and their attention to detail and their focus and the things that they need to do as well.”

While there’s plenty of blame to go around, Brian Kelly says Sunday night was on everybody.

“But this is a total failure on a coaching standpoint and a players’ standpoint that we have to obviously address and we have to own, and we’ll see.

“You’ve got to be able to make adjustments and we we failed to get that done. So again, I take full responsibility for not having our team playing the kind of football I thought they would.”

Luckily, Kelly is a season veteran as a major program head coach and has faced early-season obstacles before. No season-end goal is off the table with this loss for LSU, but how they respond to it will dictate whether those dreams are reached, says Kelly.

“I know adversity is always going to strike at some time in this game, and this is our first real piece of adversity, if you will, that we have to address. And I’m confident our guys and our coaches will rally in the manner that they need to.”

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