Report: Brian Kelly targeting Kentucky defensive coordinator at LSU

According to Football Scoop, LSU Tigers head coach Brian Kelly is targeting Kentucky defensive coordinator Brad White for the same position. This comes after Kelly tried to bring Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman with him. Now, he will be trying to poach from within the conference.

White has spent the last four seasons in Lexington, with the last three being as the defensive coordinator. He has turned Kentucky into a solid defensive unit within the SEC, helping the program reach 10 wins for the first time since 1977.

Before working with the Wildcats, White made stops at the Air Force, Wake Forest, and Murray State as a positional coach on the defensive side of the ball. He spent six seasons in the NFL as well with the Indianapolis Colts, reaching as high as the outside linebackers coach.

With Kelly now targeting White as his defensive coordinator, his staff is nearly complete. With national signing day just two days away, recruits will want to know who they will be playing for. The LSU head coach will need to move quickly.

Joel Klatt breaks down LSU hiring Brian Kelly

Fox Sports’ Joel Klatt broke down LSU’s recent hiring of Brian Kelly as head coach on his Breaking The Huddle program, analyzing the big change. Klatt commended LSU on reaching out for a big-name coach to take over the program but expressed his concerns for an early mistake by the newest Tigers coach after arriving in Louisiana.

“LSU went out and got Brian Kelly,” began Klatt as he explained the positives for LSU. “And Brian Kelly is one of the best coaches in our sport. If you remember — when Clay Helton was fired at USC earlier this season — I said at that moment USC should swing big. It’s the same philosophy for LSU. These are pre-eminent programs, these are great programs historically. And they should have swung big. And there was no name that should have been off the list.

“I thought that swinging big was going to pay dividends and both of those programs did. LSU went out and they got Brian Kelly. This guy has just won more games in the history of one of the most storied programs. Any coach in their history — he’s the winningest coach in Notre Dame history. He had just won double digit games for four straight years at Notre Dame — that had never been done in their school’s history. So he was doing things there that were really unprecedented. Now he’s gonna have a chance, I think even more so, to compete for a national title.”