Brian Kelly's Reactions: LSU's gut punch in Oxford

The LSU defense allowed 706 yards of offense to Ole Miss in Oxford on Saturday night, a mark that stands as the most yards allowed by a defense in program history.

The Rebels put up 55 points in the win, which sent fans rushing the field when the clock hit zero.

What makes the pill even tougher to swallow for LSU fans: the offense was magnificent.

Jayden Daniels passed for 414 yards and four touchdowns, and he added 99 yards and a touchdown with his legs. Brian Thomas Jr. hauled in three touchdowns, and both he and Malik Nabers went over the 100-yard receiving mark. Despite all the success of the 2019 offense, Thomas and Nabers are the first LSU receivers to both go over 100 yards in back-to-back games. Even running back Logan Diggs was rolling, finishing with 101 yards and two touchdowns.

On a night when LSU put up 49 points and 637 yards on offense, the Tigers lost.

“Angry, disappointed, I could use all the adjectives,” LSU head coach Brian Kelly said in his postgame press conference.

Here’s the rundown on everything Kelly said during his time at the podium with reporters following the 55-49 loss that dropped the Tigers to 3-2 on the season and 2-1 in SEC play.

On where Kelly felt the defensive breakdowns happened…

“We were in position. We didn’t make the plays we needed to make. They were either one-on-one or in a position to make a play, and Ole Miss was better.”

On if he gave thought to going for it instead of punting on 4th-and-7 from midfield with 2:36 remaining in the game and a 49-47 lead…

“No. Too far. We felt like we had opportunities to score and we did, and we still had a chance to score at the end there. It wasn’t, in my estimation, the smart play.”

On if he felt there were play-calling issues and disfunction when it came to substitutions…

“I didn’t see any play-calling issues. We felt pretty good about the play-calling. We had a situation down by the goal line where we were trying to get goal line personnel, and they play so fast, so it’s a pretty typical situation where you are trying to substitute people on the goal line and they’re so fast. Once they see a guy come in, they are going to snap the ball.”

On whether or not he likes Whit Weeks on the field at linebacker over Omar Speights after Speights played more in the first half and Weeks more in the second half..

“There’s not much I can say that would say that we had a particular feel for one or the other. We were just trying to keep them fresh.”

On where the team goes from here…

“We need to be pissed off about what happened and have some resolve about our circumstance. That’s not a standard of play that’s acceptable. We will see how the guys … I expect them to respond the right way. They have a lot of pride. They play for LSU. They know that is not the standard. I expect them to come back Monday ready to address – and we address as coaches – things we need to do better.”

On the play of QB Jayden Daniels and the LSU offense…

“He was terrific. He threw some incredible passes. He dropped some passes in there that were just terrific. We had some great momentum, and I’d like to have had a couple plays back. We had … Look, you could put it all on the offense and say if we could run a couple drives there in the second half, we win the game. It would be easy to say that, and that our defense did what they did, because we had a couple opportunities to put the game away offensively and we didn’t. But having said that, they obviously played well, (Jayden Daniels) played well, the receivers obviously made big plays, we ran the ball effectively. I just wish we could have made a couple more plays.”

On the combination of busts and missed tackles on defense…

“One is a true freshman (Ashton Stamps). One is playing for his first time in Laterrance Welch, ever, and on the road. I could go on. We are playing with inexperienced young players. That’s who we have. There’s nobody else walking through the door. We don’t have another corner. These are the guys that have to play for us. We have to continue to develop them. They have to continue to work at getting better each and every week, and that’s where we are at. We have to keep rolling them out there, and they have to get thick-skinned and keep working on tackling and leveraging the football and keep working on getting off blocks. Say made a couple nice plays on the ball, got the ball out. But we just have to keep working on it and getting better.”

On what he wants to see from the LSU team moving forward…

“They have a lot of pride. They are not happy. They are upset. They know what happened out there. They had a chance to win the football game. They prepare, they work hard and they want to win. They felt like they let that game get away from them. Everybody has to respond to adversity, coaches and players alike. It’s life. Everyone has to deal with adversity in some manner. We have adversity in front of us, let’s see how we are going to handle it. We will put the challenge out there, and we will go to work on it on Monday.”

On whether he felt like they were trying to kill the clock too early after going up in the fourth quarter…

“We weren’t pulling off the gas pedal at all. It was just the flow of the game, really. We threw for a gazillion yards and made a lot of good plays … it was the circumstances of the game. They made a couple of plays and we didn’t. It was that close of a game. It’s a six-point game and we got our hands on the ball in the end zone at the end. It was that kind of game. I could easily be sitting here talking about what they could have or should have done. It was just that type of game.”

On what he will reflect on after reviewing the film from the LSU loss…

“I think that in the big picture, when we look at this game, there’s going to be a couple series where we felt like offensively we didn’t capitalize. Then defensively, there’s going to be a host of things. There’s a dozen things I noted at halftime.”

On if he felt the defense played better coming out of halftime adjustments…

“Yeah, we kept them to three in the third quarter. There was some resiliency to the group. We have a long way to go. We are not cancelling the season. We are going to be there and work our tails off to get better. It was gut-wrenching and a difficult loss. Our guys felt it, too. We are going back to work and work our tails off to get better. And we will work to get the offense even better. Hopefully that will be good enough to go up to Colombia and back on the road in an SEC matchup against a really good football team and get a win. We are trying to get through week to week now and day to day. That’s going to be our focus.”