Brian Kelly shares why he never made the leap to NFL coaching

Brian Kelly has dealt with a myriad of NFL interest throughout his coaching career, but has never made the leap to the next level.

Instead, Kelly has been satisfied by his college coaching career, opting to stay at Notre Dame and later take his talents to LSU beginning in 2022. Joining Barstool Sports’ Bussin with the Boys, Kelly explained his thought process for never making the jump, and his reasoning makes a ton of sense.

“I think it was the decentralization of the pro game,” started Kelly. “I’ve been used to my whole life, like the old kind of Bill Parcell’s quote, ‘Shop for the groceries and cook the meal,’ you don’t do that in the NFL. Especially the time that I would’ve been going. I would’ve been not handling the roster. I would not have been the GM, I would’ve been simply the football coach.

“I’ve been used to handling the scholarships, and making finals decisions on who’s getting the final say, relative to anything that’s happened in the program, and when you go to the NFL, you lose a lot of that control. Not that I’m a control-freak, as much as I just felt like I had all those things at Notre Dame, and I was going to give all that up, and I just wasn’t ready to do that.”

That’s the reason why a lot of college coaches either fail in the NFL, or never make the jump at all. It’s certainly a different animal giving up all the control being a college coach affords you, but that’s the name of the game.

But is the NFL still in Kelly’s future? According to the LSU leader, the ship has sailed.

“No, I’m all in,” answered Kelly. “This is it. I love what I do, because I re-found, if that’s a word, the relationships with the players, and I enjoy that too much.

“I’m not being a play-caller anymore, I’m not in meetings, I don’t have to sit in those long meetings, so I can be downstairs. I can be in the training room, and I can eat with the guys. Just allows you that opportunity to be with the players more.”

As you can see, Brian Kelly is in the college game, and staying at LSU for the long run. The NFL isn’t on his mind, as he’s solely focused on bringing the Tigers a national title over his time with the program.