Everything Brian Kelly said after LSU beat South Carolina

LSU head coach Brian Kelly met with the media on Saturday after his team’s dramatic win on the road at South Carolina. Here’s everything he had to say about his team.

Opening statement: “Yeah, great college football game. (I’m) so proud of the grit and the perseverance of a football team down 17-nothing on the road in the SEC against a veteran football team, especially on the defensive side of the ball. The guys work so hard. They’re not gonna give up – that’s in their DNA. They’re not going to let the rope slip – they’re just going to keep playing now.

“It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s early in the season. We’ve played two really good opponents – Power Four opponents – in USC and UCLA, and we’ve had the lead in the fourth quarter twice. One we let slip away, and this one, we finished off.

“Football teams take on, you know, identities and personalities. This group’s gonna battle. It may not be the cleanest. We’ll continue to coach them because they want to do so well for LSU. They want to do it the right way, and they’re gonna work at it.

“And (I’m) just really proud of, of the way they blocked out the noise because I don’t think anybody picked us to win this game. Everybody had South Carolina winning this game. So, they blocked out that noise this week and just focused on getting themselves ready, to compete on the road against an SEC opponent.

“We had a freshman come in today in Cayden Durham and produce some really important yards for us. Look, it’s the SEC. You got to make people miss. You got to break through tackles – that’s the nature of it. And he did a great job today. Obviously, (Garrett Nussmeier) continues to do great things at the quarterback position. But, again, down 17-nothing, I think tells the story about the grit and the perseverance of this team.”

On LSU players’ demeanor after falling behind early

“I mean, there was no panic on the sideline. We needed to, obviously, get a score and come up with a stop and clean up some things. The group is a positive group. There’s no finger pointing. They know what they needed to do to get back in the game. We needed to get a score, and we knew we were getting the ball in the third quarter. So, it was a matter of getting a couple of stops, and we did. I just never felt like the guys were in a panic mode and didn’t feel like they could come back.”

On the growth Kelly has seen in LSU’s defense since season opener: “Well, we had some complementary football. I thought some of the the big takeaways were the defensive stops that we had that when we turned the ball over. Generally, you would see that turn into a touchdown. We kept in the field goals. So, we showed that resolve defensively. Then, we started to play some complementary football where we get a stop on defense and then we score on offense, and we hadn’t done that the first couple of weeks. So, there’s improvement there.

“But the great thing about it is there’s great fight. They fight like LSU Tigers, and that’s what we want for our fans. That’s what they want for all their family. That’s what they want for their teammates, and they showed that today – if they continue to do that, which I know they will because they’re going to continue to prepare the right way. We just need to execute better. And if we do that, it’s gonna be a really good team.”

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On what went into Josh Williams fourth-quarter touchdown: “I can tell you what the play calls were that we struggled with. We got into the ‘full house tea,’ and we have some new players in there – Gabe Reliford and Kaleb (Jackson). And we want that to be our kind of blue-zone short yardage, and we just didn’t execute. We were a little late on some of our blocks. We got some penetration. (Nussmeier) got knocked off on that fourth down. If we’re just a little bit more aggressive with our blocks, he’s got Josh in the corner of the end zone. So, it’s timing. It’s just being a little bit better at those plays, and we would have been really good in that blue zone.

“The play call there was we had two shots from the two. We were going to take one shot with the spread out, roll out pass. And, then, we’re going to run it twice. That was the first of a two-place sequence that we were going to run the football. So, if we got it to probably fourth-and-one or less, it was probably going to be (a) quarterback sneak or something like that. But we were going to run it twice.”

On Nussmeier’s mental toughness: “He’s part of (staying level-headed and sustaining long drives). I mean, he’s a great leader. He communicates that to the group. He stays positive. You know, he throws a pick in the red zone, and he comes back the next series – and you would never know that he made a mistake. He can forget those plays and move on to the next. And that’s what you have to be to be a quarterback in the SEC. Elite quarterbacks have to do that. He just has that ability to go back and forget that plan and move on to the next. And, again, I think that that’s what makes him special.”

On how LSU’s running backs have stepped up after John Emery Jr.’s season-ending injury: “Well, it sets a standard of what we’re looking for, right? I mean, I think all those backs needed to see what we’re asking them to do. Caden broke three or four tackles. That’s the nature of the SEC.You’re gonna have that extra guy coming down – that’s why you’re on scholarship, okay? Quite frankly, you got to make some of these guys miss and you got to run through some tackles. We can’t block them all the time, and he just did a really good job of showing himself today and setting a standard of what we need at that running back position problem.”

On Aaron Anderson’s clutch conversions: “Yeah, (he) came up big when we needed him.”

On LSU’s linebacker room’s overall performance: “Well, I mean – if they’re not on the field, we don’t win the game. Those are our best guys, right? But, look – we want to fit plays better. When there’s long runs, there’s things that we need to clean up, right? But they’re great players. They did a lot of good things today. I told our staff, like, ‘I love the work ethic. I love the way they come to work and prepare. We just got to get cleaner. We got to clean up some things.”

On whether LSU’s “boom or bust” style of defense is sustainable: “We want to be better defensively. A lot of this – all of this that you saw today, on both sides of the ball – all of it is correctable. All that can be coached, and all that can be executed. So, if we couldn’t coach it right, and it couldn’t be executed, then we got to take it out. Like, if it’s a scheme, we can’t call that anymore. If it’s a play that we can’t run, then we got to take it out. Everything that we did today, we have to do better coaching it, and we have to do a better job executing it. And we’re capable of doing it. We have to be better, and we will be sure.”

On LSU’s mistakes on special teams: “We had a bad snap – that’s clear. He has been so good for the last three years. That’s the first bad snap he’s had in three years. It was untimely because it could have affected the game, but he has been so good. That was unfortunate.

“The blocked punt – I’m going to have to take that up with our SEC office. We believe it was an illegal block. And we voiced our concern with it. We will address it with the SEC officiating crew and (SEC Coordinator of Officials) John McDaid. We believe we have an argument there, and we’ll bring it up to them.” in the back.

On Bradyn Swinson’s performance: “You know, I don’t wanna take your question away from you, but Swinson was not the only one. There were a number of guys that played at that level. Sai’vion (Jones) played really well. Paris Shand played both inside and outside. So, it’s a good question, but I don’t want to just point him out. He had a good game, but those four ends played really well. Swinson was the dropper. So, you got a chance to see him in space, and he did some really good things for us. But all those ends played really well today.”

On how LaNorris Sellers’ injury affected South Carolina’s offense: “You know, (Robby) Ashford looked pretty good in there, too. Obviously, he had the long touchdown run. It’s hard to say, one way or the other. I think what happened is, clearly, we got to the third-down situations that we wanted to. We wanted to get them in third down, either Sellers or Ashford. And when we got them at the third down, we were the victors. That’s really the end of the game – we were able to get third down situations and make them predictable. It’s kind of what I thought we needed to do. They were able to stay on schedule earlier with Sellers in the game, but when Ashford came in, we were able to get him off schedule. And that was really the difference.”