Brian Kelly should have left well enough alone.
His No. 8 LSU football team had just marched in Fayetteville and given Arkansas by far its worst loss of the season, a 34-10 drubbing that drowned out any fledgling idea for a major bowl game that Razorback fans might have had in the aftermath of a big upset against Tennessee two weeks before.
The win, LSU’s sixth of the year, also guaranteed a cool $500,000 bonus for their carpetbaggin’ leader. That’s “by far the largest bonus payment available to a public-school coach for becoming eligible for a bowl game that does not involve a contract extension,” according to USA Today.
It was so easy for Brian Kelly to stroll into his press conference appearance and simply keep it to what he did for the first 17 minutes: praise his run defense for gunking up Arkansas’ running attack, his defenders for hard hitting that caused the Razorbacks to cough up the ball multiple times and execution along the offensive line that gave quarterback Grant Nussmeier enough time to kill Arkansas’ secondary by the short-yardage equivalent of a million tiny cuts.
The turnovers, which began with junior Rashad Dubinion coughing the ball up after a 13-yard run at the end of the first quarter, were especially damaging. “Arkansas was a little careless tonight. It’s real disappointing to see Dubinion come in as a guy who’s a veteran and doesn’t protect the football,” Razorback reporter Trey Biddy said in his “Walk and Talk” analysis afterward.
“You cannot do that in this conference. You cannot carry the ball like that in this conference and expect not to have the ball knocked out. Everybody’s going for the ball. Everybody’s trying to put their helmet on the ball, trying to swipe at the ball. The difference in these games is turnovers. So often it is turnovers big moments. That’s what decides SEC games.”
Brian Kelly could have dished out his praise and simply left the room. Nobody would have thought twice that he didn’t throw out any boilerplate “That’s a good team over there” since, frankly, Arkansas didn’t play well enough to deserve even that cliched nicety.
This wasn’t anything like two weeks ago, when Josh Heupel was barely able to squeeze out even a single positive word about the Arkansas football team despite his Vols just losing to them.
Nope, LSU was different. In front of the fourth-largest crowd in UA history, the Hogs suffered a full-on beat-down.
Brian Kelly’s Low Road
But instead of just walking away with his extra half a million dollars and a smug smile, Brian Kelly just had to say something else. He had to act like somehow the Razorbacks had offended his team by scheduling LSU for Homecoming.
Kelly delivered his jab by first talking about LSU’s next game against Texas A&M in a matchup of the only two teams left who are undefeated in SEC play. “Now we’ve got to go do it again against a really good Texas A&M team at their place. I know this was homecoming; I’m sure they’ll schedule homecoming next week there against us too,” he said.
“It just seems like we get everybody’s homecoming, so maybe next year they’ll think about maybe not making us homecoming anymore.”
C’mon, Brian.
Arkansas vs LSU Homecoming Not a Big Deal
Yes, years ago, scheduling a really good program for Homecoming might have been seen as an insult. But nowadays, what matters most is how schools’ schedules line up with the major broadcasters’ TV schedules to maximize revenue. Schools schedule their homecomings now to fit around all of that, which means the quality of opponent is an afterthought.
Brian Kelly, of all people, should know this. Maximizing revenue from TV rights has allowed SEC schools to pay accomplished head coaches like him ungodly amounts of cash for delivering consistent wins. Without such prioritizing, LSU would not have been able to hire Kelly away from Notre Dame in 2021 with a 10-year, $95 million contract.
Kelly’s a great football coach, especially when it comes to in-game adjustments as opposed to breaking down practice film when entering a new season. He proved it once again with the lopsided result of Arkansas vs LSU on Saturday night.
But he’s also arrogant and misinformed. He’s apparently ignorant that Texas A&M doesn’t even do a special “Homecoming” game despite playing against them for the last two seasons.
His teams are talented enough that he could easily take the high road in these press conferences and choose not to invent weird vendettas. Perhaps, by the end of beating Arkansas so thoroughly, he got so bored he needed to figure out way to manufacture drama for a game whose outcome was in doubt for far less time than many expected it to be.
Sam Pittman’s Opening Statement Post LSU
“Well, I want to give credit to LSU. Very physical football team. Didn’t have any turnovers, (Garrett) Nussmeier was really good. Their offensive line was, as well. Defensively, we couldn’t run the football on them, couldn’t get off on third down.
There were a lot of things that we’ve got to get better at. We’ve got to coach them better, as well, but I thought this was a really good LSU team coming in here. I think they are now, too. Fifty offensive snaps and three turnovers, we have to do better there. We have to get off the field on third down.”
On the turnovers…
“Yeah, it hurt, big-time. Because I think R-Dub (Dubinion) got 12 yards on that particular run as a first-down play. I think we had the ball four times in the first half. Really moved it pretty well, then something would go wrong, then of course the interception was a one-play — we got the ball (down) 16-10, everything was coming in what we thought, what we told the kids at half ‘We get the ball, we’ll get it to a one-score game, whether it’s a field goal or a touchdown.
We’ll get the ball back and we’ll take the lead and put the pressure back on them.’ It kind of was working out that way, but we missed an outside rusher that we should’ve blocked, then threw the ball, got tipped up and they made the 2-point conversion on top of that. We got down 14 and just seemed like we couldn’t bounce back from that.”
Yet More Brian Kelly Digging on Arkansas
At least two times since LSU’s defeat of Arkansas, Brian Kelly has decided that it’s best to take passive-aggressive shots at other programs without the benefit of actual facts backing them up. The first instance is the one you just read about above.
The second came courtesy of Kelly’s press conference on Monday, when he managed to subtly insult both of the South Carolina and Arkansas football programs.
More here:
Arkansas vs LSU Coverage: It Just Doesn’t Stop
The score wasn’t the only thing working against the Razorbacks through the entirety of Saturday night. The Hogs had the ball only four times in the first half as LSU built a two-score lead while controlling the clock. With LSU dominating the time of possession (38:51-21:09), Arkansas was pressured to pass it much more than planned.
“When the time of possession is so (lopsided), I think you may go, ‘Hey, this is what I know we can go attack and let’s try to see if we get a little bit bigger play out of it,’” Sam Pittman said afterward. “And I felt like that’s what we were trying to do a little bit more than normal. You can see that we’re having a hard time getting off the field, so you might think a little bit more of trying to quick-strike and get more explosive plays.”
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