Culture will determine LSU's chances at College Football Playoff

Things are coalescing in Baton Rouge for LSU to be a dangerous football team in 2023. Brian Kelly is entering Year 2 as head coach and has a year of tone-setting out of the way, plus the Tigers return quarterback Jayden Daniels.

A year removed from taking a surprise SEC West title in Kelly’s first year in the SEC, the Tigers could be poised to contend for the SEC again and make the College Football Playoff. On3’s J.D. PicKell thinks that’s a reasonable goal to set for LSU, but the Tigers will only go so far as their culture and consistency can take them.

“Heck, LSU could go undefeated, get to that title game, and then drop a game, and still find themselves in the College Football Playoff. We’ve seen it happen before. So for LSU, the reason why I’m curious about if the culture matures: I don’t really have a ton of questions about the roster. Like there are some things that you want to see emerge, especially in the secondary. You want to make sure that those guys that transferred in are able to DYJ — stands for ‘do your job.’ But, I’m not concerned about the roster quite as much as I’m concerned about which kind of version of LSU I’m going to get week-in and week-out,” PicKell said.

The cause for this concern is the up-and-down play of the 2022 LSU squad. The same team that beat Alabama on a bold two-point conversion call in overtime got humbled by a sub-.500 Texas A&M team in a two-touchdown loss to end the regular season.

PicKell has little doubt that LSU’s roster is good enough to go play-for-play, man-for-man with most teams in the country. But he needs to see that the best version of LSU is showing up to play each week.

If that happens, competing for a national championship isn’t a far-fetched possibility for the 2023 LSU team.

“So, for LSU, if they’re able to just decide ‘You know what, we’re going to be the same team week-in and week-out.’ Brian Kelly’s process, his way of doing things, his approach, that seeps in one million percent into LSU is going to be, they’re going to have a chance now,” PicKell said. “They’re going to have a very real chance to get to where they want to go. Get to where they’ve been familiar with going, historically, with LSU competing for national championships.”

PicKell highlighted an added wrinkle to LSU’s quest to reach it’s potential, though.

More of a side quest, really.

“A side quest if you will: Jayden Daniels gotta unhitch the wagon,” PicKell said. “Did a better job of it last year. But they’re telling Jayden Daniels in-house, in Baton Rouge, ‘If you throw a pick, we never like that, but we’d much rather you take a shot on that 50-50 ball and let our guy go eat than you just tuck it and run and maybe get three yards. Like, you’ve gotta jump in to swim here, Jayden. So we’ve gotta go deep now and then.’ I think he’s going to do that. I saw more of that from him in the spring game, which I was encouraged by.”