Brian Kelly: Hopefully Tiger Stadium becomes too much for Alabama to handle

Alabama is one of the more penalized teams in college football, not a place you want to be when walking into Tiger Stadium. LSU‘s home crowd is renowned for being one of the best in the sport and the dial is turned up when the Crimson Tide are in town. Brian Kelly is hoping a Saturday night in Death Valley winds up playing a role, while his own team remains as mistake-free as possible.

“Hopefully, our crowd is loud and will cause a lot of presnap penalties,” Kelly said. “That’s one thing we can hope for. Maybe we’ll turn the lights off on them a couple of times. We’re going to try everything. Other than that, it’s about maintaining our composure. For us, we can’t be that team that gets flagged.”

Alabama is currently tied for 128th (out of 134) in penalties per game, sitting at 8.6. Ole Miss is the only team in the SEC worse. Conference road games have been a disaster for the Crimson Tide, having six for 57 yards against Vanderbilt and 15 for 115 yards vs. Tennessee in a rivalry game. Both of those games resulted in losses.

Kelly would likely tell you he is not too happy with his own team’s numbers, though. LSU is outside the top 100 with an average of 7.1 penalties per game.

But playing at home is when your penalties should be down and the opponent struggles. Getting back to the crowd at hand, Kelly wants the environment to become almost overwhelming for Alabama.

“Look, there’s always going to be a penalty because there’s extra effort and I get that,” Kelly said. “But we can’t have the presnap penalties, the ones that are out of emotions. We’ll continue to continue to play hard and hopefully, Tiger Stadium becomes a little too much for the Crimson Tide to handle.”

Kalen DeBoer is experiencing plenty of these SEC venues for the first time, getting a good look at Neyland Stadium already. While Nick Saban did have a good overall record at Tiger Stadium, his last game there was an overtime loss. And everyone remembers the quality crowd during the game and then on the field in celebration.