Brunch with Brian: Ole Miss

Kelly recaps LSU’s win over Florida, previews Ole Miss

Brian Kelly made history this past Saturday becoming the first LSU head coach to ever beat Auburn and Florida on the road in the same season. The head coach of the 5-2 Tigers met with the media to recap the win over Florida and look ahead to this Saturday’s contest against Ole Miss.

“So proud of our football team and the way they managed themselves and handled themselves in that situation. And then offensively we executed very well. Defensively we came up with some stops when we needed them. Clearly on the offensive side of the ball we’ve got to eliminate some mistakes up front. We’ve got to be cleaner.”

And before you ask, yes Kelly knows the special teams were awful once again.

“Special teams, I think we are all seeing the same thing. First play of the game we let the ball outside the defense. We have to contain it on a kickoff, and then we muff a punt. Those guys know they have to obviously be accountable, and we’ve got put them in a position to succeed. We’ll keep coaching it, and we know we have to get better there.”

Okay good, admitting you have a problem is the first step on the road to recovery. Or something like that.

Anyway, we know the special teams isn’t good. But what was a delightful surprise was the offense having maybe its best game of the season. Here’s what Kelly had to say about them.

“I think it’s got to be part of what we continue to grow towards,” Kelly said .You know, there will be times where guys just got to step up and make plays. We had been kind of grinding it out; we were trying to fight for every blade of grass, and sometimes you just got to make some plays.”

“So just staying at it and being consistent with coaching it, and then telling our guys that, look, sooner or later we got to step up and make these plays,” Kelly went on to say. “They did it on Saturday. Now we got to be consistent. Can’t do it one week and turn it off the next week and expect to win.”

The most newsy thing Kelly provided were updates on the status of sophomores Jack Bech and Armoni Goodwin. Bech left Saturday’s game in what wound up being a back injury. Kelly said that it’s an L5 injury and described it as “cranky.” Bech is day-to-day.

Goodwin, on the other hand, could return to the field Saturday after a hamstring injury has kept him sidelined the past few weeks. Kelly said that team doctors have cleared Goodwin and he’ll practice Tuesday.

“We’ll see what kind of volume we can get out of him, and hopefully it goes well during the week,” Kelly said.

As for this week’s opponent, the Ole Miss Rebels, here’s what Kelly had to say about Lane Kiffin.

“He’s a creative coach, offensively, and they always have been cutting edge in terms of what they do. Yeah, and he’s a guy that gets his team playing hard. I mean, they play hard. Offensively, there is always an answer to what you do in-game as well.”

“But I think more importantly, they scout you out. I mean, you better know your own self-scouting and where your tendencies are, because he’s going to really dial in on if there is anything that you do — if you do anything defensively, he is going to analyze that and have an answer for it.”

Kelly also had this to say about Rebel quarterback Jaxson Dart.

“I mean, he’s a beautiful thrower of the football; I mean, he has all those traits.”

“But he is also athletic enough and can run that they’ve put him in a system where he becomes a dual threat. We played (Hendon) Hooker. We played (Anthony) Richardson. We’re going to play (KJ) Jefferson. These are big bodied, thick, physical quarterbacks, right, that are not — look, they’re all really good quarterbacks that can throw, but they don’t throw like this kid. This kid has the ability to drop back 50 times if they wanted to and throw the football.”