Brian Kelly Dissects Three Areas of Improvement for the LSU Tigers

Kelly eyes three areas to focus on in the coming weeks, Bayou Bengals looking to become complete sooner rather than later.

Sep 14, 2024; Columbia, South Carolina, USA; LSU Tigers head coach Brian Kelly reacts during the fourth quarter against the South Carolina Gamecocks at Williams-Brice Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Ken Ruinard/USA TODAY Network via Imagn Images / Ken Ruinard/USA TODAY Network via Imagn Images

Brian Kelly and the LSU Tigers continue preparation for the UCLA Bruins in a Week 4 showdown in Death Valley on Saturday.

The Bayou Bengals will host both UCLA and South Alabama prior to their highly anticipated matchup against Ole Miss in Week 6.

What does Kelly want to see from his program in the coming weeks? Complementary football, improvement in scheme and better preparation.

"You learn that this group understands that there's so much more to this game than between the lines, it's between the ears as well. When you have a resilient group like that, you wanna coach harder, you wanna do more for them and eliminate those mistakes," Kelly said.

"I think what's important is from an entire team standpoint, to win games like that you have to understand habits have a lot to do with it. Winning's a habit and losing's a habit. If you have losing habits, you can't win those games. We have the right habits, now we have to be able to clean up the things technically and they really come down to three things."

Now, Kelly has his sights set on three areas to keep tabs on in the next few weeks:

"Personnel, the coaching of the schemes themselves, are we in the right schemes for our players and then the preparation. We have to consider all three of those things moving forward and that's the work that's in front of us," Kelly said. 

The Three Areas of Focus:

No. 1: Personnel

Kelly and Co. have continued flipping rotations week in and week out. In fact, they've done it on a drive-by-drive basis. On defense, we've seen the Tigers roll out different safety looks every other drive over the last few weeks.

The coaching staff is still looking for that "perfect" rotation and it's still a mystery heading into Week 4 against UCLA.

For Kelly, personnel is an an area he's keeping tabs on over the next few weeks with the staff eyeing improvement in the secondary.

"When you have two first-year coordinators, they're learning their personnel, who they want to use, who are the best 11 in each situation and then what schemes put us in the best positions to succeed? Now we'll have to go and prepare accordingly," Kelly said. 

"I'm not saying we're making wholesale changes but they get a chance to evaluate their personnel. The big takeaway here is when you're making mistakes, are you putting your guys in the right position, do you have the guys in the right position and then are you preparing them for those scenarios? It can only be one of those three things. All of those are on the table."

No. 2: Scheme

We've seen players move all over the field throughout the first three weeks of the season.

From Harold Perkins to Major Burns, there has been movement on defense with the coaching staff still trying to perfect the scheme.

There are smaller pieces the program is looking to improve in from cleaner football to playing more disciplined, but finding the right scheme to put the players in position to be successful is key.

"Do we wanna play cleaner? Yes. We scored 36 points and didn't score inside the five twice. You score those two touchdowns which I think are an 87 or 88 percent chance of scoring touchdowns, that's 50 points. So we're not that far off. We're really close and I know what we see and I know how we feel about what we need to do. We took control of the game in the second half with all of those mistakes," Kelly said. 

No. 3: Preparation

Kelly highlighted the program's preparation as a key area of improvement heading into Week 4. It's evident getting off to a faster start is necessary and it starts with preparation during practice.

"We're gonna look at everything and still in that process of evaluating everything in terms of what we're coaching, how we're coaching it, what players need to be on the field in certain situations. All of that needs to be looked at carefully," Kelly said. 

"Given the fact that we made a lot of mistakes we still found a way to win that football game. That's incredible resolve and resilience amongst your group. To keep your young guys together, we had a lot of freshmen out there, a lot of young guys playing and they kept playing. I can build off of that."

More LSU News:

The Caden Durham Show: How the True Freshman Running Back Led LSU to Victory

The Game Plan: A Look Into How LSU Will Utilize Whit Weeks Alongside Harold Perkins

Nick Saban Calls LSU Quarterback Garrett Nussmeier a "Sleeper" Ahead of 2024 Season

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