Brian Kelly provides injury updates, breaks down value of Maason Smith's looming return

One of LSU‘s best defensive players, star defensive lineman Maason Smith suffered a season-ending torn ACL in the very beginning of the season, leaving the Tigers without one of their veteran presences up front.

Smith is on track to return in 2023, and coach Brian Kelly spent some time this week explaining just how big a deal that will be for the LSU defense.

“It’ll be immense,” Kelly said. “Look, we had great edge presence last year, it was pretty obvious, with Harold (Perkins) and BJ (Ojulari). But you could fan one side and chip or move the back to the other because we didn’t have a great inside pass-rush presence.

“Now you put Maason to the inside? If you do that this year, I don’t know how many sacks he’ll have. You can’t single block him. We couldn’t.”

Smith was a monster during the 2021 season for the Tigers in an otherwise forgettable year on the gridiron.

He managed to rack up 19 tackles in nine games, while also recording 5.0 tackles for a loss and 4.0 sacks. He has the potential to make those numbers look like child’s play this fall given what LSU has coming off the edge.

“So when you start to fan to him and when I say fan, when you start to move the center to him or use a back inside, now you’re going to leave our edge players one-on-one and we’ll have a really good, balanced pass-rush,” Kelly said. “He brings that presence, which we didn’t have last year.”

Maason Smith is one of a handful of LSU defenders who are getting all the way healthy this spring, limited in action.

Brian Kelly provides some injury updates

Though Kelly didn’t get into the specifics of all the injuries, LSU is nursing some guys back to health this spring.

And while it’s unfortunate that some won’t get to participate fully in spring practice, Kelly is expecting the vast majority to be fully cleared when the team’s full offseason regimen begins in June.

“We had nine guys out today that factor into our two-deep and significant playing time,” Kelly said. “Eight of the nine will be back when we begin our summer program in the first week in June. The ninth is Armoni Goodwin, who won’t be back until camp starts.

“So they’re all in great position, they’re all doing well, they’re all moving actively. So we’re in the middle of March. These guys are on schedule to be full-go, doing everything by the time we come back in the first week in June.”