Brian Kelly not blaming Garrett Nussmeier for LSU's struggles in Texas A&M loss

The LSU Tigers offense struggled to find consistency in its loss to the Texas A&M Aggies. Despite that, head coach Brian Kelly doesn’t want the blame to fall on quarterback Garrett Nussmeier.

Following the game, Kelly was asked about run lanes. He admitted it was a point of frustration for him and explained how the Tigers’ issues there became issues for the entire offense. That included putting too much on Nussmeier’s shoulders.

“Yeah, it was disappointing,” Brian Kelly said. “I’m disappointed. I know Brad Davis is disappointed, I know Joe Sloan is disappointed, and I know Frank Wilson is disappointed. That’s not what we expected. We spend a lot of time on our run game. We feel like we should be better there. We thought we made the progress necessary against a good front in Arkansas and then we just did not see that come to fruition tonight.”

LSU finished the game with just 24 rushing yards on the game. For the season, LSU is averaging 115.25 yards rushing per game this season, which is 111th in the country in rushing offense. UCLA, incidentally, has the worst rushing offense in the country and is averaging 64.57 yards per game.

That lack of ability to run the ball, according to Kelly, put too much pressure on Nussmeier to consistently make big plays.

“It’s hard for me to sit here right now and give you an in-detail evaluation of what happened, but we did not get the kind of production that would keep Garrett Nussmeier from having to stand on his freaking head at the quarterback position and making plays,” Kelly said. “He feels like he has to. In a large degree, I get it. He’s going to be the guy we all blame. I just don’t think we give him enough balance within the offense and it makes him vulnerable because he has to do so much.”

Garrett Nussmeier finished the loss to Texas A&M completing 25 of 50 passes for 405 yards and two touchdowns to three interceptions. With that, he’s up to nine interceptions in eight games this season.

For LSU as a whole, Brian Kelly knows that this loss to Texas A&M has cost the Tigers their margin for error this season if they want to make it to the College Football Playoff.

“I mean, we’ve lost our margin, right?” Kelly said. “We have no margin for error. We have to go back and look at some of the things I just talked about, right? We have to build balance within the offense. We have to be able to handle the running quarterback. The silliness of the field-goal stuff, that has got to end. That is just ridiculous. We’ll clean that up in short order. But those two things in particular.”

LSU will have a bye week to try and clean up some issues before hosting Alabama in Death Valley for the Tigers’ next game.