What He Said: Brian Kelly Discusses What's Next for LSU Football

Kelly and Co. enter an open date looking to polish all three phases of the game, prepare for Alabama next weekend.

Oct 26, 2024; College Station, Texas, USA; LSU Tigers head coach Brian Kelly speaks with the officials during the second quarter against the Texas A&M Aggies. The Aggies defeated the Tigers 38-23; at Kyle Field. Mandatory Credit: Maria Lysaker-Imagn Images. / Maria Lysaker-Imagn Images

Brian Kelly and the LSU Tigers returned to the practice fields on Tuesday afternoon with the program beginning game preparation for the Alabama Crimson Tide.

The Bayou Bengals will utilize this week's open date to begin preparing for Kalen DeBoer and Co. while also hitting the recovery tables after a brutal three-game SEC stretch.

On Tuesday, Kelly addressed the media where he discussed what went wrong in Week 9 against Texas A&M and what the program must polish off against of the home stretch this season.

LSU will take on Alabama in Week 11 followed by SEC contests against the Florida Gators, Vanderbilt Commodores and Oklahoma Sooners.

What Kelly Said: Week 10 Edition

Building Garrett Nussmeier's Confidence Back Up

“He was in the press room and he took full responsibility and accountability for what happened, which as you know, the quarterback gets too much of the credit and gets too much of the blame. But having said that, he is up for the challenge of getting better. He’s out there and we’re working with him to get him to the level that he needs to be and he’s excited about doing it.

“So I’m not really worried about a loss of confidence with him because he knows this. He knows what this looks like and he knows others that have been here that are having incredible success in the NFL right now have gone through a similar path of development and he’s going through that too.”

Lack of Preparation for Texas A&M's QB2:

“I don’t know that Greg was referring to the fact that we weren’t prepared. You don’t run a defense expecting the No. 2 quarterback to come in. We’ve prepared for that kind of offense. Everybody runs what they ran. They ran zone-read, and they ran bash. We saw that last week (against Arkansas). We’ve seen it every week. And so, again, those are things that we just didn’t execute as well.

“And we prepared for Conner (Weigman) to play, and so a lot of the reps were focused on the offense that Conner is part of. But throughout camp, throughout spring ball, throughout the course of the season, we have a defense and a structure that stops quarterback runs, that stops read-options, because you have to. So the fact of the matter is that we just didn’t execute it as well, and that’s the fact of the matter.”

OL Garrett Dellinger's Injury:

“Look, he’s the starter, but one guy going down did not affect the running game to the level that it did. There are bits and pieces to it, and we did not win some individual matchups. We made some mistakes, uncharacteristically from some other guys that are on the offensive line, and quite frankly we made some choices to run into boxes that were not conducive and we should’ve been doing some other things. So it was a little bit of all those things.”

Improving on Special Teams:

“The battery is the snapper, the holder, the kicker. We’ve got to get them together as one. It’s not one without the other. All three of those guys have to work in unison, and they were out of sync. As well as they were working the week before, they — I don’t know what happened, but they were out of sync. We had the untimely snap. We didn’t have a great hold. But, as you know, it’s the kicker who’s gonna get the blame, because he’s the one ultimately is out there getting the credit or the blame. But it’s the battery that was highly ineffective for us against Texas A&M. And that battery, we got some work today on it.”

What Went Right:

“What we did well is the guys prepared to go into a very difficult environment and perform at a high level. They started off in the first half, had a double digit lead and with six minutes to go in the third quarter still held a lead a had a chance to add onto that lead. Fifty-two of the first 73 plays, our guys played exceedingly well. It was the last 23 plays. So this is much more about how do you finish a game.

“Now we’ve been on the other end of two of ’em where we didn’t play well for the first 52 plays, but played great for the last 23. Now the shoe’s on the other foot where we don’t play well for the last 22, 23 plays, and our guys have to learn from that. So what we did well was we prepared well, we came out well emotionally, physically, did the right things, but we didn’t finish. And you’ve gotta finish in this league. We saw that in the South Carolina game, and we saw that in the Ole Miss game. We finished. Maybe we didn’t start as well as we wanted, but we finished. This game, we didn’t finish. So we talked about that, about finishing.”

More LSU News:

Instant Takeaways: No. 8 LSU Falls to No. 14 Texas A&M in College Station

LSU Dishes Out Offer to No. 1 Quarterback in America

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

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