Brian Kelly details his plan to bring toughness, discipline to LSU program

New LSU coach Brian Kelly outlined his plan for the Tigers this season while speaking at SEC media days, including a focus on discipline. Kelly made the leap from Notre Dame to the SEC when he accepted the head coaching job at LSU following the firing of Ed Orgeron. Part of the transition includes Kelly bringing his proven success with the Fighting Irish down south — something he believes will come down to a new emphasis on basics.

Brian Kelly on his plan with LSU

During Kelly’s media appearance, he was asked about how his philosophy of toughness and discipline at Notre Dame would travel with him to his new job. The question asked pointed out that LSU didn’t show much discipline defensively last season specifically, and how Kelly planned to address that.

“Habits. Right? It’s all about, you want championships you’ve got to win with habits,” answered Kelly. “So our standards have to be raised on a day-to-day basis. I’m much more about traits over talent. We’re going to get talented players but building the traits on a day-to-day basis, how we do things, how we think on a day-to-day basis. The attention to detail, all the little things matter. I really love the way our guys have embraced it.

“Look, it’s not going to be easy. Everybody has a process, you hear that all the time. But it’s the constant application of that process that makes the difference. So our guys have done a really good job about doing that, but it’s still going to be a challenge for us each and every week. We’ve got to rebuild the offensive line. We’ve got to be much more physical on a day-to-day basis. To win a championship in the SEC you’ve got to be able to control the line of scrimmage. We saw that Georgia could do that.”

Kelly’s comments indicate that Georgia’s dominance last season didn’t go unnoticed by other coaches around the nation, highlighting their ability to win games on both sides of the ball at the line of scrimmage.

However, Kelly wasn’t ignoring the importance of recruiting talent in addition to his coaching ability — closing with how discipline alone isn’t enough.

“Oh no, you’ve got to have [talent] too. You can’t just win them with traits.”