Brian Kelly on talking candidly, new quarterbacks and coordinators, and that USC opener (2024)

DESTIN, Fla. —Brian Kelly knows he got a lot of mileage this offseason out of his comment that LSU wasn’t into buying players.

And, like his commute from his home in Baton Rouge to the LSU football complex every day, he knows some of it was pretty rough road.

“I know what I get into when I open my mouth,” Kelly said Tuesday during a Sirius XM interview session with former Tigers fullback Jacob Hester, Peter Burns and Chris Doering at the Southeastern Conference spring meeting. “Transparency sometimes is not the best way to do it.”

Kelly talked earlier this month about not wanting to upset the chemistry of his locker room by backing up an armored truck to one-year transfers with NIL deals that far outstrip those of his current players. His references then were to a pair of defensive tackle transfers— Simeon Barrow from Michigan State and Damonic Williams from TCU— whom LSU wanted quite badly but lost out on quite publicly to Miami and Oklahoma, respectively.

Three weeks later, though, Kelly still hasn’t softened his position.

“This is a slippery slope,” he said. “Maybe in retrospect I shouldn’t talk about it in terms of those kinds of one-on-ones. But that’s who I am.

“My whole career has been built on developing your son. I don’t know what your worth is. But I know when you come in and all you care about is money, that’s not what we’re doing this for. We’re in it for developing you holistically. And we do have NIL as well. But if you’re coming here and all you care about is money … we’re not going to buy players.”

As for other players whom LSU is recruiting for this 2024-25 class and beyond, Kelly believes a favorable percentage of them who heard his entire statement took his comments in the manner they were intended.

“I think we hit many of the recruits in the right way because they heard the whole piece,” he said. “Those who didn’t took what they wanted to hear.”

LSU did eventually pick up one more defensive tackle transfer in Jay’viar Suggs from Grand Valley State— where Kelly had his first head coaching job in the early 1990s— to go with an earlier defensive tackle transfer in Gio Paez from Wisconsin. After that, Kelly shut down the portal at that position.

The Tigers just picked up a punter transfer in Blake Ochsendorf from Louisiana Tech and has room for one more under the 85-man scholarship limit. But for the most part, Kelly has transitioned from acquiring talent to building with the players and coaches he has to work with now.

Coaches such as new defensive coordinator Blake Baker from Missouri, the leader of an entirely new defensive staff after the former staff under Matt House was swept out after one of the worst defensive seasons in LSU history.

“I enjoy being around him,” Kelly said of Baker. “He's got a great, great energy. I think we all know that we had three defensive tackles that got drafted. We didn’t play like a defense with lots of NFL talent on hand," Kelly said. “It's not just about talent. It's about how you get your players to play. I think Blake's ability to communicate, his ability to get players to do things that they normally wouldn't do on their own is really going to play a big part in this.”

Kelly said he sat in on most of Baker’s meetings during spring practice.

“I wanted to kind of get that sense and feel,” Kelly said. “He’s going to get that group to play hard and play the right way each and every down. In the short time that I've been with him I can already feel that.”

Offensively, LSU is merely trying to make the transition from Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Jayden Daniels to Garrett Nussmeier, who started and led the Tigers to a ReliaQuest Bowl victory over Wisconsin. Nussmeier has emerged on the short list of contenders for this year’s Heisman as well.

“What I'm most excited about with this transition is that you're going to go from a Heisman Trophy winner to maybe one of the best leaders that I've had here at LSU,” Kelly said. “He does all the little things the right way, and not because he wants to be patted on the back as a great leader, but because he just naturally does them the right way. It’s really going to be exciting to see this team move towards Garrett Nussmeier as its starting quarterback.”

He’ll get the start when the Tigers open in Las Vegas on Sept. 1 against USC.

“Lincoln Riley (the USC coach) and I both have the same agent,” Kelly said, referring to Trace Armstrong. “He certainly doesn’t want us to play this game.”

But it will be played and it is huge for both programs. On that point, Kelly was perhaps transparent to a fault.

“Both (teams) are going through a reboot on defense,” he said. “Look, I haven’t won an opener since I’ve been here. It’s an important game for us, and I know they want to get off to a good start as well.”