For most of the last 25 years, LSU football has judged head coaches on a simple test: can you build a team that looks complete on offense, defense and special teams at the same time?
From Nick Saban to Les Miles to Ed Orgeron, the Tigers hit that standard often enough to win national titles in 2003, 2007, 2011 and 2019.
But their most recent head coach, Brian Kelly, never did.
Across four seasons in Baton Rouge, from 2022 to his firing in October 2025, Kelly’s teams swung between extremes. At his peak, he built one of the greatest offenses LSU has ever fielded.
At his worst, rosters were so lopsided that they didn’t resemble the complementary football LSU has long considered its identity.
His tenure began that way. In 2022, the imbalance showed immediately on special teams. Kelly’s LSU debut became a national talking point after the one-point loss to Florida State in New Orleans, decided almost entirely in the kicking game. LSU muffed two punts, had a field goal blocked and saw the potential game-tying extra point blocked on the final play.
That night became a shorthand for a unit that cost LSU a winnable game. Advanced special-teams metrics later placed LSU far below average in that phase in 2022, even as the Tigers recovered to win the SEC West.
By 2023, special teams stabilized, but the imbalance simply shifted. With Jayden Daniels, Malik Nabers and Brian Thomas Jr., LSU finished with the No. 1 scoring offense in the country at 43.3 points per game against FBS opponents.
The Tigers topped 40 points nine times and went over 500 yards in nine games, numbers that put them in the same statistical neighborhood as the 2019 Joe Burrow offense.
The problem was everything else. That same 2023 team finished 108th nationally in total defense, allowing more than 400 yards per game. In the SEC, LSU sat closer to the bottom than the top.
It was the opposite of the 2011 unit that made the national title game by allowing fewer than 19 points per game. LSU in 2023 could score on anyone, but could not consistently stop anyone, and the balance required for a title run never materialized.
The 2024 team landed somewhere in the middle. LSU went 9-4 and scored a respectable 30.5 points per game, a solid but unspectacular follow-up to 2023’s fireworks. The defense once again lagged behind, routinely labeled a liability in early 2025 evaluations.
Special teams continued to trend upward, with more consistent field-goal kicking and steadier return units, though punting and punt returns remained unreliable. The Tigers were no longer losing games solely in the third phase, but they weren’t winning any because of it either.
Then came 2025, when the imbalance reversed completely. With Daniels gone and Garrett Nussmeier eventually sidelined by injury, LSU’s offense collapsed by all modern program standards.
Through 11 games, LSU was averaging 22.6 points per game, ranking 117th in total points and among the 100 worst scoring offenses in the FBS. Multiple national outlets noted LSU was averaging its fewest points per game since 2009 and its fewest yards per game since 2011. Inside the SEC, the picture was worse: LSU ranked last in rushing and 14th in total offense at 355.5 yards per game.
While the offense sputtered, the 2025 defense played like one of the nation’s best. LSU ranked 16th nationally in scoring defense at 18.5 points per game, putting the Tigers in the same statistical range as Michigan and Georgia.
By early October, ESPN’s stop-rate metrics and LSU’s game notes highlighted that defensive coordinator Blake Baker’s group had allowed just 71 points across the first six games, the program’s stingiest start since 2007.
In other words, when Kelly finally fielded a championship-level defense, the offense cratered into LSU’s lowest production in more than a decade.
The Tigers entered November with an elite defense, a struggling offense and a special-teams unit that was steady but never transformative. LSU’s identity once again tilted off-axis.
Compare those four seasons to what LSU has been for most of the past two decades. The 2003 national champions paired a top-20 scoring offense with a defense that allowed just 11.0 points per game.
The 2007 and 2011 teams under Miles, and the 2019 team under Orgeron, each had at least one season in which all three phases aligned with LSU’s championship standard.
Kelly’s LSU never reached that point. In 2022, special teams cost LSU a season opener. In 2023, the offense led the nation while the defense collapsed. In 2024, both units hovered near average, with the defense lagging. In 2025, the defense finally rose to national relevance, only for the offense to sink to the bottom of the SEC.
The numbers from Kelly’s four seasons don’t settle the bar-stool debate about whether he was the worst hire LSU has made in the modern era.
That conversation includes culture, fit, staffing, decision-making and postseason reality — things that go well beyond a box score.
But inside the white lines, LSU, NCAA and national stat services point to a consistent pattern. In a program built on complementary football, Kelly and LSU never put all three phases together at once.
And in the modern, post-2000 standard LSU set for itself, that may be the most damning evidence of all.
