Paul Finebaum describes stakes in Week 1 for LSU, Brian Kelly's future

The LSU Tigers are opening the season with a major test against the Clemson Tigers. After failing to win a single Week 1 game since he took over in Baton Rouge, Brian Kelly is already feeling the pressure to win on the road to start next season.

This season, the goal for LSU is to make it to the College Football Playoff. The Tigers are still capable of going there, even with a loss to Clemson. However, as Paul Finebaum explained on McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning, the pressure is going to crank up.

“This is a different situation,” Paul Finebaum said. “This could be a 31-30 game that Clemson wins with 0:00 on the clock, and it’s still not gonna make any difference to LSU fans because they’ve been there too many times. There’s no such thing as a must-win in the opening game when you have a 12-team Playoff. Especially with LSU’s schedule, you probably have three losses that will still get you into the CFP, but I don’t need to give this audience an education on LSU fans. Everybody knows one, or two, or three, or 100, and they will overreact if this is a loss”

In his time at LSU, Brian Kelly has found success. With a 29-11 record, he’s put together two double-digit win seasons and went to the SEC Championship Game once. Ultimately, he’s capable of getting to the Playoff, but he hasn’t done it yet there. So, that’s where fan pressure comes from.

“I think if they have a good year and get to the Playoff,” Finebaum said. “I don’t think this game will matter a whole lot. I think it was 2016, 17, one of those years remember when Alabama played Florida State in the opener. It was one vs. three. It ended up hurting Alabama because Florida State was so bad. That’s not the case here, but I think we overemphasize opening games with all the questions everyone gets asked.”

The challenge for Kelly and LSU is, if they do lose, the schedule is very difficult. So, if one loss becomes two losses, then they get into must-win territory very early in the season. Missing the Playoff again may not cost Kelly his job, but it would continue to increase pressure on him.

“I think, if he loses this game, he’s going to deal with two or three weeks of a lot of noise and he absolutely must beat Florida in a couple of weeks and deal with the schedule. The schedule, for those who don’t swim in these waters every day, is pretty treacherous,” Finebaum said. “Especially with road games at Ole Miss and at Alabama, of course. That’s where he’d had to deal with the pressure, but one thing about Brian Kelly, he’s dealt with it. He’s not shrugging his shoulders, but pressure at LSU is not a whole lot different from pressure at Notre Dame, which he had to deal with, especially after a losing season up there where a lot of people thought he should have been fired.”

LSU and Clemson are scheduled to kickoff on August 30th and 7:30 p.m. EST. Clemson will play host at their Death Valley, making it a road test for Kelly and the Tigers.