Brian Kelly lauds LSU's talent development in his first year, says there's still a gap to Alabama, Georgia

Year 1 under Brian Kelly at LSU went about as well as anyone could’ve expected. The Tigers won the SEC West and picked up a signature win over Alabama along the way and capped the season with a resounding bowl victory.

And LSU is a trendy pick to again challenge for the division crown and, perhaps, the SEC championship and a College Football Playoff bid. But Kelly cautions that there’s still a notable gap between his program and the likes of SEC benchmarks like Alabama and Georgia.

“And I think we’re probably another year of recruiting and player development to have that consistency and depth that we need,” Kelly said to Paul Finebaum on Tuesday. “But we’re going to have a good football team. We’re going to have to play smart and all the adages that you’ve heard many coaches that’ve sat next to you talk about. We’re going to have to stay injury free. But we’ve got a quarterback that is developed and we’ve got probably the confidence now that we can go into games and believe that we can win. Those are really good things to have when you go into a conference like the SEC.”

While LSU has done a good job of developing players on the roster, Kelly and Co. know they need to start from a stronger baseline.

Kelly took the LSU job late in 2021, so he didn’t get a full swing at the 2022 recruiting class. Even still, LSU signed five Top 100 players, according to the On3 Industry Ranking, to Georgia’s 11 and Alabama’s 17. It was a similar story for the 2023 class, with LSU again inking five Top 100 recruits. Alabama signed 14 and Georgia brought in 12.

While it’s still early, the 2024 class needs to pick up some steam for Kelly and LSU to get the talent they want. There’s a long time until signing day and a verbal commitment isn’t much more than a handshake agreement, but as of the end of May 2023, LSU had a commitment from one Top 100 player in the 2024 signing class. Alabama had four and Georgia had nine.

Across the 2022 and 2023 signing classes, Alabama and Georgia signed 31 and 23 Top 100 players, respectively, while LSU brought in just 10.

Certainly there are diamonds to be found in the rough and players who are still plenty talented and sought after don’t make the Top 100, but the disparity of elite recruits committing is illustrative of the gulf that LSU is seeking to bridge.

As is the influx of transfer portal players, something Kelly noted.

“Look, any time you have to take multiple players through the transfer portal, that’s a bit of a red flag. And we probably took too many,” Kelly said.

But as Kelly alluded to, the force multiplier for the 2023 LSU football team will be the confidence gained from 2022.

Kelly recalled the lack of confidence from the group in the opener against Florida State in 2022. LSU lost that game on a blocked PAT. With a rematch against the Seminoles set to start the 2023 season for each team, Kelly knows his team will be a much more self-assured outfit at the outset.

“That was the bad news bears,” Kelly said of the 2022 opener. “But it’s not where you start, it’s where you finish. And they developed. And they knew they developed by the way they played at the end of the season. So you build off of how you finish. And now they have some confidence and the way they practiced in the spring and how they feel about themselves now is what you build off. Now we’ve got another team in Florida State that feels the same way, so it should be a great matchup.”