Brian Kelly compares LSU’s offensive line to 2017 Notre Dame
LSU’s offensive line comes off of a season as a Joe Moore Award Finalist and is now heralded as one of the top units in the country entering 2024. With four returning starters, it’s a unit set to dominate yet again and lead the Tigers’ new-look offense into this new season.
Will Campbell, Garrett Dellinger, Miles Frazier, and Emery Jones enter their third year starting together and have taken on leadership roles on the offense. It’s an elite unit with high-level playmakers and leaders and head coach Brian Kelly is excited to show what they can accomplish. He also thinks back to where this group started and how far they’ve come.
“When we decided to start the two freshmen, we knew we had them for three years,” Brian Kelly said. “Then, with their progression, you knew you had two book ends and then we had to figure out what kind of continuity we were going to get at the guard and center position. Once that decision was made, it was made with a sense of ‘let’s try to keep the band together here for a few years’ and really look at three years of top notch offensive line play with the culmination being this year. We still have to go out and execute, but this is going to be an outstanding offensive line.”
LSU’s offense will be built around the offensive line, even with the talent at the skill positions and it’s reminiscent of another elite offensive line unit Kelly has coached in his career. When asked if this LSU offensive line reminded him of any that he’s had before, he quickly brought up the 2017 Notre Dame offensive line. It was a unit that won the Joe Moore Award as the best offensive line in the country.
“We had a group at Notre Dame with Mike McGlinchy and Quinten Nelson who were first rounders, that group was very similar where they controlled the line of scrimmage and owned it in short yardage. You were able to convert and hold onto the football when you needed it and you saw a lot of running the football today. When it’s tough times, we’re going to be able to rely on that offensive line to convert for us. I’d say the 2017 offensive line I had at Notre Dame had a lot of similarities.”
McGlinchy and Nelson were both All-Americans and picked in the top 10 of the 2018 NFL Draft, but no one else from that award winning offensive line unit was drafted
LSU enters the 2024 season with Will Campbell as a projected top 10 pick, Emery Jones as a projected first rounder, but also with Garrett Dellinger and Miles Frazier more than talented enough to get drafted in 2025. The talent is obvious and now the pressure is on to lead this offense coming off of having a historically great offense in 2023.
What can we learn from the 2017 Notre Dame offense?
Will campbell LSU
Kelly had the Joe Moore Award winners in 2017, but did not have another player drafted in the first 120 picks of the 2018 NFL Draft and only two more drafted total. Even the following year, the talent pool at Notre Dame was not extensive with just four picks in the first five rounds.
The 2017 team went 9-3 with two ranked wins over USC and NC State and three ranked losses to Georgia, then Miami and Stanford on the road, before beating LSU in the Citrus Bowl, ending the year 11th in the AP Poll.
How much can we learn from an offense that had Brandon Wimbush as its quarterback comparing it to one with Garrett Nussmeier? Maybe not much in the pass game, but the control of the line of scrimmage was substantial, as Kelly mentioned.
That Notre Dame offensive line ranked 5th in run blocking grade and 13th in pass blocking grade on Pro Football Focus. The most impactful part of the Irish offense was handing it off to Josh Adams who accentuated this offensive line’s strengths, averaging 6.9 yards per carry. In fact, all five running backs averaged over five yards per carry and notre Dame rushed for 35 touchdowns and ended the year 7th in rushing yards per game with the second highest yards per rush.
For LSU fans what does this mean?
Best case scenario, this offense is Notre Dame’s rushing success paired with Garrett Nussmeier, Kyren Lacy, CJ Daniels, and others to create a well-balanced machine that’s going to be another top five offense. The pass protection is better than the run blocking from what I can tell in fall camp, but that doesn’t mean the Tigers won’t be able to move people and fight for extra yards.
Comparing the 2024 LSU offensive line to the 2017 Notre Dame offensive line is high praise from Kelly, but it shows how much he believes in them entering the year. Even with all the changing parts around them, there’s a sense of security because those five guys up front have done it before and are ready to win games in a way LSU fans haven’t seen before.
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