David Pollack: Brian Kelly’s LSU tenure will be remembered for ‘weirdness’

LSU formally decided to part ways with fourth-year head coach Brian Kelly on Sunday after the Tigers were eliminated from College Football Playoff contention following Saturday’s disappointing 49-25 home loss to No. 3 Texas A&M. It was LSU’s third defeat in its last four SEC games, all coming against Top 25-ranked teams, ahead of next week’s always-contentious rivalry game vs. No. 4 Alabama.

Former ESPN analyst David Pollack performed a post-mortem autopsy on Kelly’s “weird” four-year tenure in Baton Rouge, during which he went 34-14 overall and 19-10 in SEC play. That included a 5-3 start this season in which LSU climbed as high as No. 4 before falling out of the AP Top 25 following back-to-back SEC losses to Vanderbilt and Texas A&M the past two weeks.

“This is not a good job, this is a great job. But you have to be great. You can’t just be an average coach, you can’t be somewhat good. If you don’t win championships, your tenure will be a failure,” Pollack said on Monday’s episode of his See Ball Get Ball podcast. “… And as far as what he’s going to be known for (at LSU), when you look at Brian Kelly, is weirdness. It was a weird fit. Listen, if you win, the fit works. If you win, it doesn’t matter. Les Miles won and he was chewing (on) grass and it was OK. That was fine. But you have to win consistently. You have to win at a big-time level. Brian Kelly and the coordinators, I think, was something that really went wrong.”

Pollack then cited the coordinator turnover LSU experienced under Kelly, including former offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock leaving to return to Notre Dame after just two seasons in Baton Rouge. Kelly actually replaced both coordinators during that 2024 offseason, promoting QB coach Joe Sloan to OC and hiring away Missouri defensive coordinator Blake Baker for the same role at LSU. Sloan, whose Tigers rushing offense ranked dead-last in the SEC, was also fired Monday.

“Brian Kelly’s secret sauce over the years was having great coordinators, a la the team that just beat him senseless (Texas A&M and) Mike Elko, a former DC (under Kelly at Notre Dame). And how about the guy the week before, Clark Lea, the Vanderbilt head coach, another former Brian Kelly assistant? So he’s always been really, really good at it,” Pollack continued. “How about Tommy Moffitt, who go fired from LSU by Brian Kelly. The longtime (LSU) strength coach that won three national championships who went to A&M. So, the staff hires when he came in, the way it was handled, the (faux) southern accent, the recruiting pictures, like all of it, it just didn’t fit. It didn’t work. Now, if he had won, everybody would’ve forgotten about all that and it wouldn’t have mattered.

“But Brian Kelly is a good football coach, he always has been. I think the misses with the assistant coaches is what ultimately got him fired. Finally getting the defense working a little bit, the timing didn’t work well, because you had Jayden Daniels and a superstar level offense … and then you had (Garrett) Nuss(meier) doing it and it just didn’t fit together at any point in time with the history. And Brian Kelly’s personality didn’t fit – older, from up North, not a Cajun type of guy.”