Brian Kelly reviews LSU loss to Alabama

LSU head coach Brian Kelly met with the media after the 42-28 loss to Alabama on Saturday to review where things went wrong for the Tigers.

On the status of LSU QB Jayden Daniels: “Yeah, he had a head injury and was not able to come back. We’ll obviously have to put him through more testing before I can accurately say whether that was concussion, non-concussion, things of that nature.”

On the biggest challenge for LSU in defending Jalen Milroe: “Well I think it’s the challenge that we knew. His ability to run. You know we talked all week about a unit pass-rush. You know, he’s elusive. I think for the most part the big runs were probably the things that hurt us the most tonight.”

On Milroe’s 3rd down runs and picking up 1st downs: “I don’t think they were draws as much as they were, yeah they were much more scrambling situations. Again, you’ve seen it on both sides of the ball. You’ve watched Jayden in terms of scrambling. You know, you’re in a very difficult situation there. If you’re dropping eight, you know you’re rushing three, there’s big holes. If you’re spying you’re short in coverage. We’re fighting our tails off to get stops out there. It’s just a difficult situation when you have a quarterback that’s gifted like that.”

On if the hit on LSU QB Jayden Daniels reviewed for targeting: “We asked them. They said that the replay booth was reviewing it for targeting. Obviously I don’t have the ability to see that. Anytime there is contact to the head or neck area you’re thinking there must be some form of targeting. They reviewed it, didn’t feel there was, so we moved on.”

If LSU’s depth issues in the secondary limit what you could call to guard Milroe: “No, again, I’ve got to watch the film to know. There was two times where we didn’t get a particular call. Where we should have been in a particular call, where we would have had an end looping right into it. There were some missed calls out there that require a discipline of the group. So, again, for me to answer right after the game and give you a specific. We knew his strengths. We had a gameplan that we felt that would address it, but we are limited in some of the things that we can do and didn’t want to get in a lot of man situations.”

On Daniels returning for a play for LSU and then exited for the rest of the night: “He was evaluated, was cleared and then came back and they looked at him again and felt like he wasn’t prepared to go back into the game and held him out of the game. Those are decisions that are made by our medical team.”

On if there too much pressure on the LSU offense given the problems defensively: “The turnover hurt. Look, we’re playing a Top 10 team on the road. You can’t play good. We played good tonight. Good’s not good enough. You have to play elite when you go on the road and play a Top 10 team. Good’s not good enough. We didn’t play at a high enough level. Look, if we don’t throw the interception, we go down and score, then they’re going ‘wow that Alabama defense gave up a lot of points.’

“Look, it was a game that we needed to play better, we needed to coach better. We knew we were going on the road and playing a top 10 team in there place and you’ve got to play better and you’ve got to coach better when you get those opportunities and we just didn’t reach that elite level tonight.”

On LSU’s tackling vs. Alabama: “I thought at halftime I put three things up on the board. I thought if our eye discipline was better. I thought if our leverage on the football was better and we tackled better, in the second half we could win the game. Obviously we were tied at the half. None of those three things showed up to be better than good. They needed to be elite and they weren’t”

On LSU’s pre-snap issues and Charles Turner: “Look we’ve got an experienced center who’s really good. They’ve got a big nose-tackle on him, it was really loud. It’s no excuse, but it goes into what I’m saying. You can’t have those mistakes and expect to go to Tuscaloosa and beat Alabama with those kinds of mistakes. We’ve got to get better at it. We’ve got to prepare better. We’ve got to coach our players better in those situations when we go on the road in these kinds of environments so when we get another chance to go on the road and play a Top 10 team we play at a higher level. We can’t just play good. Good’s going to get you beat against teams like this”

On LSU’s linebacker play: “Oh my god. You guys are killing me. I mean the specifics that you ask I respect, I really do, but it’s so hard for me. I’m trying to coach guys on the field. There were some fits there that needed to be better. Here’s what I’m going to tell you. Those guys in there played their tails off for LSU. They played hard. They played to win. But they didn’t play mistake free. There were too many missed tackles. We had too many drops. We had a turnover. And that’s just not good enough at the end of the day when you play a Top 10 team on the road.”

On Daniels’ performance for LSU: “I think he’s indicative of what I’m talking about. He was good tonight. He wasn’t great. He would like to be considered great every week. He was good. He was good. He was really good. He’s tough. The runs that he had tonight were outstanding runs that kept drives alive. I mean, if he’s not out there we’re not even in the game. He made a difference, but I’m sure there’s going to be some things that he would like to do better as well.”