BATON ROUGE — Brian Kelly barely flinched at any of the verbal abuse that awaited him, staring blankly ahead as if in a daze as he briskly made his way down the LSU tunnel to a chorus of “Fire Kelly” chants and more than a few additional choice words hurled his way.
The 64-year-old, Saturday was his birthday actually, has been in college football since 1983 and been a head coach since ’91. He understands the postgame environment after a loss better than most, and he willingly signs up to do it each season for reasons that are much more ingrained than just his multimillion-dollar salary.
That was why he knew he had to leave Tiger Stadium before the handful of remaining fans from the 101,924 originally on hand Saturday night truly got angry. How could they not after witnessing a 49–25 destruction of his Tigers by Texas A&M, which had not won in the previously impregnable venue since 1994.
The beeline to the safety of the locker room was made so hastily, so purposefully and without second thought, that Kelly even failed to remember he had to sing the alma mater with just two dozen of his remaining players barely mouthing the words—prompting an all-out sprint from the coach just to make it back on the field in time.
You can forgive him for that momentarily lapse, because few would mind if he was forced to skip it going forward. Kelly is out of answers and, after Saturday’s loss dropped the Tigers to 5–3 on a season that began with national title talk, perhaps on the verge of being out of time, too.
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“Nobody’s more disappointed than our players in the locker room. They’re searching for answers. I’ve got to be able to provide them,” Kelly said. “The football buck stops with me and I have to take a good, hard look at what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, both from a personnel standpoint and from a coaching standpoint.”
Kelly should also take a good, hard look at calling his agent, Trace Armstrong, to discuss the job opening at Penn State, much closer to his Northeastern roots. He should wonder about all the talk about resources being pumped into the vacant seat at Virginia Tech. He should inquire as to if the grass is really greener nowadays at UCLA or if the coaching carousel can spin up any number of additional exit routes from Baton Rouge, be it Florida State or the NFL.
It’s time for Kelly, the squarest of pegs who willingly jumped at the opportunity to fit inside the round hole of one of the SEC’s greatest jobs, to admit this hasn’t worked out. That much was clear as Texas A&M looked like a much faster, more physical and far more complete team in just two years under opposite number Mike Elko—the second consecutive former Kelly assistant to hand him a loss in as many weeks.
“I think you have to look at everything we do offensively. Everything that is being done defensively. Special teams was atrocious. All those things follow me,” said Kelly, sounding exactly like he did after last year’s loss to Alabama in a similar spot. “When it comes to the football, that’s what I have to fix and we have to do that immediately.”
He may not have the time. His fan base is already lost and not only ready to turn on the handsomely paid head coach, but is ready to bring out any additional knives to get the job done.
Few environments in college football compare favorably to a night game at Tiger Stadium. Fueled by an overzealous consumption of calories, beer and bourbon over the course of a full day, LSU’s supporters transform the appropriately named Death Valley into one of the toughest places to play in the country. A cacophony of reverberating sound and thumping anger often forces opponents to beat themselves long before the Tigers are able to break off long plays that doom them for real.
This is part of the allure of being the Tigers head coach, to have a worthy stage to showcase all of the region’s incredible talent that opponents typically fear to even go on. This is what Kelly signed up for, and has tried to embrace, believing it could be a difference-maker in his lengthy quest to win a national title.
He has generally thrived in such a spot too, with a 20–1 mark coming into Saturday in home games after the sun sets across his four seasons.
It seemed like that impressive record was going to add another victory around halftime, with LSU building a four-point lead at the break to keep much of the crowd still mingling around despite spending much of the day soaked by a large storm system. They believed, yelling with all their might to help force a pair of Aggies turnovers that gave the purple and gold life in the second quarter following a slow start. The Tigers were not only still in contention for the College Football Playoff bid they had invested in this season—both literally and emotionally—but the fans could clearly see a turning point coming.
Turn it did, right up to the point where it smacked LSU square in the face. Across just 16 minutes of action the Aggies scored four touchdowns to turn a tight affair into a runaway. The previously agitating crowd fled for the exits about the time that Aggies receiver KC Concepcion weaved his way for a 79-yard punt return with 8:47 left in the third quarter and those that remained did so only so they could move closer to field level to curse their head coach who had moved past yelling at his assistants to the point of simple acceptance.
This LSU team that Kelly has built is swagger-less and lacking the kind of juice that made even subpar past editions dangerous. They are not quite lifeless and still have plenty of talent—one general manager was among the two dozen NFL scouts in attendance—but they simply haven’t clicked in the way they should.
Against A&M, LSU’s offense failed to record a third-down conversion until the third quarter and allowed 426 yards on defense to their old SEC West rivals. Quarterback Marcel Reed looked like Lamar Jackson 2.0 outside of two ill-advised interceptions, throwing for 202 yards (two touchdowns) and rushing for a game-high 108 (with two more scores).
“We’ve talked consistently since I’ve been here about we want to be a program that does the things it needs to do to go out and accomplish things,” remarked Elko of his undefeated team that is all but booked in the playoff spot LSU eyed just a few weeks ago. “We have bigger aspirations as to where we can go.”
Texas A&M is certainly a program pointed in the right direction. Saturday night was a reminder that LSU is not.
After four years and every available resource, that falls on just one person right now.
“That’s out of my hands,” Kelly said of his job status. “This is my responsibility and we’ve got to get it turned around. That’s not my decision in terms of whether I’m here or not.”
If Kelly is wise he should be the one trying to control the narrative over where he’s coaching next year and not his bosses. Even many of the fans that fled amid the latest dispiriting loss by the Tigers can realize that the head coach is out of answers and the only thing that’s left to do is to ensure he’s out of a job.
