Notebook: Brian Kelly Talks Newcomers Developing, Team Growth

Kelly impressed with his newcomers, team response so far this season.

LSU head coach Brian Kelly addressed the media Monday morning as the Tigers prepare for game week against Ole Miss.

Kelly detailed the improvement of his newcomers, advancements from a season ago to now and more.

The Takeaways From What Kelly Said:

Self-inflicted wounds… “They flooded a zone into the short field, and that’s a pass coverage situation where we have to recognize that and pick that up, but we weren’t in great coverage for that. That’s something we’ve got to get taken care of.”

Brian Thomas Evolution… “Nabers is getting a lot of attention. They're playing man coverage, that safety is definitely tilted towards Nabers. In some instances he's getting bracket coverage, which means they’re playing as zone to one side with them and then man on the other side, and so you've got to be able to find other matchups. It's almost a sense where they're trying to take [Nabers] out of the game. So you got to find the other one on one matchups and [Thomas] gets some one on one matchups that are favorable and Jayden is seeing that.”

Defensive Personnel... "I think there's some other tweaks that we can do defensively to see that we get guys in the right position and let them influence the game accordingly. So if there's not another guy that you know, let's take a red shirt off a particular player or another guy that's going to get into rotation, you might see some players play a little bit more."

“We have to do ordinary things extraordinarily well. And I know that it's an overused cliche that we hear so many times. But we are having a tendency of trying to chase too many plays on defense and what I mean by that is we're trying to make plays that are really not our place to make, and we just need to do our job. And I think once we settle down and just do the ordinary things extraordinarily well this can be a really good defense because it's shown itself to have the resiliency and toughness and the players necessary to do that.”

Ability to Respond… “We weren't down against Mississippi State at any time, we weren't down at any time against Grambling and we really didn't have the right mindset going into the Florida State game. So this was our first chance really to identify who we were when we got down late and we immediately responded. We came out in the second half and played the kind of football expected, never flinching knowing that we were going to take some more shots. When we gave up a play, we forgot about it. We got to the next play. and so that answered. It starts to form an identity as to who you are. I think that we're seeing some resiliency from last year to this year.”

Da’Shawn Womack Growth… “He's young and he's learning. It's a process. I know everybody wants to make a superstar of all these guys for the first time. He's going to be a really good player.”

Unlocking Mason Taylor… “I thought he was outstanding. He was playing at probably 60-70 and he gave us everything. He was gritty, he was tough. I don't think there's any key to unlocking them other than just getting them healthy. When he's healthy, he's a very important part of what we do and he's going to contribute heavily to what we do once we get him at full strength.”

Andre’ Sam Flashing… “He's made progress. I'll give you an example. The interception he made, he would not have made that interception earlier in the year, especially against Florida State. He wasn't playing deep enough. He was getting great depth on the post. He's done a really good job. He's got to continue to make those open field tackles. That'll be an area that we'll concentrate with him on. But he's so comfortable and plays with great energy, great enthusiasm, I love to coach him every day and he just wants to get better. That's the guy you want to coach.

Jayden Daniels Growth… “He knew that he had to find the right rhythm because he had been down that road before and he couldn't get himself back into that rhythm. I think just the experience itself that he needed is the difference and reminding him of it. His drop was a little bit slow and then he rushed his delivery. We got back into a great rhythm. And it was pretty clear about the second quarter he was back to that, that kind of consistency. So it speaks to his experience, his knowledge of what he needs to do to be the elite quarterback that he is, and he made the self corrections based upon the experience that he's had before.”

Greg Brooks Update… “Greg is is making progress and all I can tell you is this is such a long and lengthy process. As of Saturday, which was the last report, I'm going to be there today. We've tried to so many people want to get there and I'm sure somebody here too, but he needs rest. He needs to recover. And when you have a lot of people going there and it just takes a lot of his energy away from him. So he started to make the kind of recovery that that his doctors want and you know, we're just, you know, obviously every single day we're getting to the point where he's making that that recovery necessary for him to be up and around. so we're making progress