What He Said: Brian Kelly after LSU's loss to Florida State

For the second time in the Brian Kelly era, LSU dropped the program’s season opener against Florida State.

On Sunday evening in Orlando, the Seminoles used a 31-0 run in the second half to erase a halftime deficit and beat No. 5 LSU 45-24.

Kelly met with the media following the win, and the full transcript can be read below.

LSU Head Coach Brian Kelly’s opening statement

Congratulations to Florida State. Tonight they were the better football team. We certainly are not the football team that I thought we were, and we’ve got to do a much better job obviously in developing our football team.

We clearly were short in a lot of areas tonight, and that falls on me to get our football team to be better in most of the competitive areas that you saw tonight. Execution in the first half, the inability to convert in the red zone. You know, second half, didn’t play with a sense of urgency. You know, all those fall on coaching and getting our players to recognize that and make those kind of choices in practice.

And then defensively, obviously our inability to slow down the running game in the second half. You know, the counter play was problematic for us. We knew they were going to run it. They added a 2-back counter play, and we just couldn’t fix the play and that’s unacceptable from a coaching standpoint. You’ve got to be able to make those adjustments and we failed to get that done. So again, I take full responsibility for not having our team playing the kind of football that I thought they would, and our players have got to make a decision that, you know, they have to get back to the practice field and double down on their efforts and their attention to detail and their focus and the things that they need to do as well.

But this is a total failure from a coaching standpoint and a player standpoint that we have to obviously address and we have to own. And we’ll see — I know adversity is always going to strike at some time in this game and this is our first real piece of adversity, if you will, that we have to address. I’m confident our guys and our coaches will rally in the manner that they need to.

Q. The second half, do you think it was physicality or are you surprised they kind of pushed you around, a 31-0 run the second half?

COACH BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, I’m quite aware of the score and I didn’t like the way we came out. I sensed it. I felt it. I’ve got to take accountability and responsibility for the way that we came out in the second half. It’s disappointing. But the buck stops with me, and I’ve got to get our football team to understand and recognize that you’ve got to play this game for four quarters with a mentality. And we just did not, for some reason. We thought we were somebody else. We thought we were the two-time national champion Georgia Bulldogs or something. I don’t know what we thought, but we were mistaken.

Q. The defensive matchup your DBs had to face all night, clearly they are gifted receivers, but anything you saw that they could have done during this game?

COACH BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously Coleman is a tough matchup. Wilson is a tough matchup. You know, I thought we competed there. You know, no, I don’t know that there was much more else that they could have done.

Q. The fourth down calls, can you take us through maybe the reasoning for those decisions there and what you would have liked to have seen done differently on those plays?

COACH BRIAN KELLY: Well, I think they were pretty easy calls, fourth and goal from the one. That was a pretty easy one. We’re trying to run the ball with an option for Jayden to pull it. We’ll just have to go back and look at the film and see what the looks are for him and do a better job of addressing that in practice and giving him those kinds of pressure looks that force you to make those quick decisions. But, no, those are pretty standard fourth down calls and decisions. I think both of those were read option kind of
decisions that Jayden was confronted with.

Q. What does this loss mean for the rest of the season for you guys, especially as you get into conference play?

COACH BRIAN KELLY: It means everything as to what our mindset is. Like, how do we handle this? Is this who we want to be, or do we look at this and say this isn’t the kind of football team we want to be. When you have those kinds of losses, they are disappointing, and in some instances, they are devastating
losses, but it’s how you respond to them. And they have a chance to respond to this very disappointing performance in the second half. So the choices they will have to make will be ones that start tomorrow. How they handle themselves 24/7 is really what I’ll be interested in seeing.

Q. Just curious on Logan Diggs wasn’t out there tonight, maybe what happened with him. And then also the running game as a whole, how do you guys think you can get that going after kind of the really tough, I guess, tough night for your backs overall?

COACH BRIAN KELLY: Well, I mean, everybody is searching for balance in the running game. So we didn’t have the kind of balance that we needed. Logan Diggs was a coach’s decision. I don’t know quite whether he’s a hundred percent and able to practice at the level that we need him to quite yet. Yeah, I mean, look, everybody is looking for that balance in the running game. You saw what we tried to do. We tried to run the football in those very important downs, and we weren’t as effective. And we are going to go back and we are going to work on it, and we are going to continue to be diligent in those areas because we’ve got to be better at it. So we’ve got a minimum of 11 more games, and I’m going to tell you now that we are going to be better and we are going to commit ourselves to that.

Q. I was sort of curious with Perkins’ performance tonight, what do you think was missing from him
putting a real impact on the game?

COACH BRIAN KELLY: What was missing? Well, I mean, you know, he’s playing a position for the first time. So there’s a learning curve there. He’s learning. He’s learning how to play linebacker for the first time. You know, we put him in a position last year where he was see ball, get ball. Now he’s in a position where, you know, he’s got to get over the top. He’s got a back coming out of the backfield. He’s got to be disciplined and can’t lose his eyes on the quarterback mesh. Fourth down, there’s a lot going on
there, and he’s trying to sort it out. You’re catching a young player early on in his career, and he’s going through some growing pains.

Q. With Keon transitioning to Florida State and that transition, maybe some limited film on him in that regard, what made him so difficult to defend tonight?

COACH BRIAN KELLY: There wasn’t any limited film on him. We knew who he was, and we knew he was a very difficult matchup for us. Excellent ball skills. A matchup problem for us and he presented that kind of problem tonight.