It sure feels like the Brian Kelly era has come to an end in some way shape or form.
For the first time since 1990, three years before I was born, Vanderbilt has beaten LSU in football. Don’t let the final
score of 31-24 fool you, this wasn’t close.
Vanderbilt dragged their nuts all over LSU Saturday afternoon in Nashville. The Dores ran for 239 yards, at 5.3 yards a pop, and had the ball for 36 and a half minutes. Vandy didn’t punt until the fourth quarter, was 6-13 on third down, and 2-3 on fourth down.
The frustrating thing is LSU’s offense, to an extent, looked the part. LSU finally (hey look, progress!) scored more than 23 points against an FBS team so naturally the defense gave up a season-worst 31 points, and Diego Pavia inserted himself into the Heisman conversation (246 total yards of offense and three total touchdowns).
The worst of what we’ve seen from LSU was on full display. Garrett Nussmeier was asked to carry a broken offense but was doomed by a leaky offensive line, drops by his receivers, and a running game (excluding Harlem Berry) that was virtually nonexistent. Caden Durham finished the game with 59 yards rushing, but 51 of them came on one play. It was pretty fitting that Durham’s longest rush of the game came up two yards shy of the end zone. And that play more or less sums up the Brian Kelly era of LSU football: close, but not close enough.
LSU wasted a championship offense in 2023; they have (had?) a championship-caliber defense that can’t be met halfway by the offense. And who owns that responsibility? The head coach.
Maybe LSU cuts the check today. Maybe they wait for the end of the season. But it’s year four of the BK Era and all of the excuses are gone. This is who you are now: a program that can’t beat Vanderbilt on the road.
