Brian Kelly explains frustration at his kicker during Nicholls game

LSU Tigers head coach Brian Kelly was caught by cameras on Saturday night expressing frustration to his kicker, Damian Ramos, and grabbing his jersey after a player on Nicholls was able to get a finger on the ball and redirect it wide right.

Since that moment, Kelly explained why he was so frustrated with his kicker in that moment against Nicholls.

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“I wasn’t upset about missing the field goal,” Brian Kelly said. “I was upset about the process. I had just explained what the process was and the referee went over and explained it to Damian and confused him. Essentially said, ‘Listen to the head coach.’ I’ve been doing this a long time.”

Damian Ramos is now a redshirt junior. He first came to LSU in 2021 and by 2022 he was the team’s full-time kicker. He’d be named to the SEC All-Freshman team in 2022 and, for his career, he has made 75 percent of his field goals and 98.6 percent of his extra points. That includes making all eight extra point attempts and two out of three field goals to this point in 2024.

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Kelly explained that his issue was the operation time taking too long. It was likely because of how long it took that the kick ended up getting blocked.

“He got confused about the process,” Kelly said. “So, we had a 1.46 operation time. You’re operation time needs to be about 1.1. He thought something different would happen after the explanation. I had taken the time to explain it to him. He didn’t listen to me. I like our guys to listen to me. Is that okay? Especially in those situations.”

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That missed field goal ended up being the only opportunity that Damian Ramos would have to kick a field goal in the game. So, there wasn’t an opportunity to clean up that process in live action. Still, Brian Kelly is confident that it won’t be an issue in the future.

“He’ll listen to me in the future,” Kelly concluded.

In the end, the missed kick didn’t hurt LSU at all. The Tigers won the game 44-21. Now, Brian Kelly and LSU will turn their attention to a road trip to Columbia to play the South Carolina Gamecocks.