Brian Kelly breaks down roster management in first offseason

LSU head coach Brian Kelly had his work cut out for him when he got to Baton Rouge last December, as it was now his job to take a roster that finished at the bottom of the SEC and get them back to the championship form they achieved just three years prior. At SEC media day, Kelly discussed the challenges and what factors went into building the team’s current roster.

“You need to attack every situation a little bit differently, every job that I’ve had has had different, unique situations,” Kelly said. “This one was unique, it was one that we needed to address immediately with experienced players and so we were intentional about the transfer portal and that we didn’t want to bring in guys that would create more issues. We wanted guys that first of all had a love for LSU, and so we attracted a lot of guys that were originally from the state of Louisiana and had a passion for wanting to play at LSU.”

Out of LSU’s eight offseason additions from the transfer portal, four of them are Louisiana natives (Jarrick Bernard-Converse, Greg Brooks Jr., Kyren Lacy, and Joe Foucha). Kelly also added that when recruiting from the portal, he targeted SEC talent and players who had traits that could have an immediate impact on this season.

If winning the transfer portal was the top priority, winning the high school recruiting was second as Kelly also talked about his strategy regarding recruiting the class the current class of high school seniors.

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“Second, do a great job recruiting freshman in a very very short period of time with an eye towards specific needs by position, and don’t create any more opened, wasted opportunities at position groups,” Kelly said. “Guys that are going to be at the program for four years, we had too much attrition and a lot of that was based upon poor academics, so we wanted strong students, that was first and foremost.”

Finally, Kelly said that they’ve been developing the current talent on their roster, and that’s what they’ve been doing since he arrived on campus. Kelly has definitely been busy this offseason managing his roster, and as we get closer and closer to kickoff it’ll be interesting to see how this Tiger’s roster on paper will look in action.