Harold Perkins injury update: Brian Kelly reacts to losing LSU star for season, next steps

LSU star linebacker Harold Perkins suffered a season-ending knee injury in Saturday’s game against UCLA. The junior is one of the top linebackers in all of college football, and the Tigers will certainly miss having him on the field.

LSU head coach Brian Kelly joined The Paul Finebaum Show on Monday and shared how LSU will try to move on without Perkins.

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“Yea, very difficult. The game of football can be cruel in some instances when you lose a player of Harold’s caliber,” Brian Kelly said. “You can see his right leg on that tackle got caught in the ground and unfortunately he suffered a season-ending injury to his right knee.

“Obviously the details will follow here. Our medical team is still putting together the final details relative to what will happen next, but suffice to say so disappointed for the young man. He’s worked so hard to put himself in a position to continue to be the best at his position.”

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Harold Perkins earned first-team All-SEC honors as a freshman in 2022 after recording 72 tackles and 13 tackles for loss. He was named second-team All-SEC last season after finishing with 75 tackles and 5.5 tackles for loss.

Through 3-plus games in 2024, the New Orleans native had 17 tackles and 1.5 tackles for loss. He is one of several talented LSU players to suffer an injury this season.

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“We moved him around to accentuate the talents that he has. But now obviously we’ve got to move on and get the next man up and ready. We’ve had a couple of those,” Kelly said. “John Emery went down and Caden Durham, a true freshman, stepped up and has played well for us. Jacobian Guillory, who was our only veteran defensive lineman, went down. And we brought in another true freshman in Ahmad Breaux, and we’re going to have to do that again here.

“So unfortunately it’s the nature of the college football landscape, football in general. But we’ll move on and get ready for South Alabama.”

LSU enters Saturday’s game against South Alabama with a 3-1 record. Moving to 4-1 won’t be easy for the Tigers, though, especially without Harold Perkins. South Alabama is coming off of a 48-14 win over Appalachian State last week.

“We could obviously cry all we want about it, but the reality of it is the other 10 players are looking for what are the solutions that the coaches have for us to move on and get ready for the next opponent,” Kelly said. “We have a huge game against South Alabama. This is a good football team. So we feel terrible for Harold and him and his family and what he’s done for our program and we wrap our arms around him immediately after so he knows how much we care about him.

“But then we’ve got to move on to the next phase of this and that is getting a football team ready to play in just six days. So that’s the tough part about this, right, I mean you just keep moving. They don’t give you a chance to sit around and think about it for 48-72 hours. We’ve got a plan in place. That’s why you have to develop your roster. That’s why you have to build these guys into a position where they are ready to step in and help you win football games. “