LSU goes into its bye week in control of its own destiny regarding the race for the SEC title, sporting a 6-2 record, 4-1 conference record and a tie for the No. 1 spot in the Western Division of the SEC. Brian Kelly only briefly touched on the Tigers’ next game against Alabama, with the main focus being what they are hoping to accomplish during their “week off.” 

Here are some takeaways from his presser on Tuesday. 

Multiple common points of contention within college football were brought up at the presser, with targeting and rushing the field each being relevant topics based on Saturday’s game. 

Late in the second quarter, Jayden Daniels ran for eight yards before taking a hit from a University of Mississippi defender, which ended up drawing a flag for targeting. Upon further review, the call was overturned, negating a first down for the Tigers. 

The call itself was controversial, with both fanbases arguing for or against the overturn. However, Kelly was more focused on the negation of penalty yardage, believing that in situations like those, there should still be a 15-yard penalty.  

“It’s better to administer what would seem to be a late hit or roughing [the passer penalty] and then let them slow it down and get it frame-by-frame to determine whether there’s targeting,” Kelly said. “If you call targeting in that situation and it isn’t targeting, then you lose the opportunity to have an unnecessary roughness call.” 

Kelly also touched on fans rushing the field on Saturday. He was surprised by it, stating that he didn’t even know what was going on initially.  

“I was doing an interview and the state police grabbed me and said ‘we’ve got to go’ and I was like ‘I didn’t think the interview was that bad’,” Kelly said on his initial reaction. 

While he didn’t believe the game against Ole Miss warranted that reaction, he didn’t necessarily mind fans’ enthusiasm. He even said he wanted more of it before clarifying that he was talking about winning. 

Bye Week Focuses 

Kelly opened the presser up by discussing why he likes bye weeks, stating that it’s the perfect time to correct mistakes and work on the fundamentals before getting back into competitive play. He then laid out the schedule for the week, which features three days “off” for the weekend.  

“They’ll get three days off, and when I say off, it’s really active recovery,” Kelly said. “It’s a mental and physical reset, but we do have them doing things because you can’t take three days off.” 

That’s vital for a team that’s been in the revolving door of working all week and competing on Saturdays. 

Coaches will get to spend the weekend with their families as well, but that will come after working the recruiting trail for most of the week. The primary focus for the next few days in that regard is current commits and 2024 prospects. 

“What we’re trying to accomplish essentially is to get with our committed players as much as we can and then our top ‘24,” Kelly said.  

One problem remaining 

Through the first few games, the biggest concerns regarding LSU football were the slow starts, special teams and inconsistency in the passing game. The latter two have seen recent improvements but slow starts remain a point of improvement.  

The Tigers have faced six Power 5 opponents and have fallen behind by multiple scores early in five of those games. The most recent occurrence of this was on Saturday, when they went down 17-3 at the start of the second quarter against Ole Miss.  

Against FBS opponents, LSU ranks No. 70 in first half points per game and No. 110 in first quarter points per game, according to teamrankings.com. Sure, it does rank No. 21 in second half points and No. 14 in fourth quarter points per game, but if a start is slow enough or you get matched up with an elite offense, that won’t save you, which was evident by what happened against Tennessee. 

Kelly believes the coaching staff has finally figured out what the problem is. It’s not a physical problem, it’s mental.  

“We felt like physically we were ready to go,” Kelly said. “We just have to get our guys locked in mentally early on. It just seems like they play better as they get into the game, but we have to get over that in some fashion.” 

A bad start against Alabama a week and a half from now will put them in a rough position to win the game to say the least, so it’s a good thing they have this much time to prepare.