Brian Kelly: LSU prepared well for A&M, but 'you've gotta finish in this league'

LSU had no answers for Texas A&M late Saturday when reserve quarterback Marcel Reed took the reins of the Aggies’ offense.

The dual-threat freshman gashed the Tigers for nearly 7 yards per carry, found the end zone on his first three possessions at the helm and led five straight scoring drives to help spark the comeback in College Station.

“We didn’t really prepare for (Reed), honestly,” senior linebacker Greg Penn III told reporters after the game with a quote that made headlines.

But LSU coach Brian Kelly clarified that comment Tuesday as he returned to the podium for his bye-week media availability, also saying that he felt that the team’s preparation was one of the bright spots of this past week but that execution in all three phases down the stretch missed its mark.

“I don’t know that Greg was referring to the fact that we weren’t prepared,” Kelly said. “You don’t run a defense expecting the No. 2 quarterback to come in. We’ve prepared for that kind of offense. Everybody runs what they ran. They ran zone-read, and they ran bash. We saw that last week (against Arkansas). We’ve seen it every week. And so, again, those are things that we just didn’t execute as well.

“And we prepared for Conner (Weigman) to play, and so a lot of the reps were focused on the offense that Conner is part of. But throughout camp, throughout spring ball, throughout the course of the season, we have a defense and a structure that stops quarterback runs, that stops read-options, because you have to. So the fact of the matter is that we just didn’t execute it as well, and that’s the fact of the matter.”

As Kelly pointed out Saturday after the 38-23 loss, the Tigers effectively ran Weigman from the contest as he completed just six of his 18 passes for 64 yards through two and a half quarters.

LSU led, 17-7, with possession six minutes into the third quarter before the wheels began coming off across the board.

The Tigers had struggled to establish their own rushing attack throughout the night, exacerbated by the exit of senior guard Garrett Dellinger with a high-ankle sprain.

“Look, he’s the starter, but one guy going down did not affect the running game to the level that it did,” Kelly said. “There are bits and pieces to it, and we did not win some individual matchups. We made some mistakes, uncharacteristically from some other guys that are on the offensive line, and quite frankly we made some choices to run into boxes that were not conducive and we should’ve been doing some other things. So it was a little bit of all those things.”

Quarterback Garrett Nussmeier threw his first of three interceptions in a five-possession span.

Reed entered the game and ignited the Aggies’ offense.

And the Tigers’ field goal unit struggled in one fashion after another on its way to two missed kicks another botched snap-hold connection that cost even the attempt.

“The battery is the snapper, the holder, the kicker,” Kelly said. “We’ve got to get them together as one. It’s not one without the other. All three of those guys have to work in unison, and they were out of sync. As well as they were working the week before, they — I don’t know what happened, but they were out of sync. We had the untimely snap. We didn’t have a great hold. But, as you know, it’s the kicker who’s gonna get the blame, because he’s the one ultimately is out there getting the credit or the blame. But it’s the battery that was highly ineffective for us against Texas A&M. And that battery, we got some work today on it.”

When asked about the positives and negatives of the game and how the Tigers have approached this week, Kelly emphasized he saw issues in execution more so than preparation.

“What we did well is the guys prepared to go into a very difficult environment and perform at a high level,” he said. “They started off in the first half, had a double digit lead and with six minutes to go in the third quarter still held a lead a had a chance to add onto that lead. Fifty-two of the first 73 plays, our guys played exceedingly well. It was the last 23 plays. So this is much more about how do you finish a game.

“Now we’ve been on the other end of two of ’em where we didn’t play well for the first 52 plays, but played great for the last 23. Now the shoe’s on the other foot where we don’t play well for the last 22, 23 plays, and our guys have to learn from that. So what we did well was we prepared well, we came out well emotionally, physically, did the right things, but we didn’t finish. And you’ve gotta finish in this league. We saw that in the South Carolina game, and we saw that in the Ole Miss game. We finished. Maybe we didn’t start as well as we wanted, but we finished. This game, we didn’t finish. So we talked about that, about finishing.”