Jordan Rodgers puts Brian Kelly on hot seat if LSU loses season opener to Clemson

ESPN’s Jordan Rodgers is ready to put Brian Kelly on the hot seat if LSU loses the season opener to Clemson this weekend. Kelly goes into Year 4 with a lot of pressure to lead the Tigers to the College Football Playoff.

Compare that to Notre Dame, his former stomping grounds, Kelly needs to catch up. His replacement and former defensive coordinator, Marcus Freeman, just led the Fighting Irish to the national championship game, falling just short to Ohio State.

Kelly led LSU to the SEC Championship Game just a few years ago, but haven’t returned there since. Opening against a fellow CFP contender, and maybe national title contender, is no easy task. But there’s an expectation that LSU has to come out a winner.

“It didn’t help that Notre Dame made it to the national championship and he fell short,” Rodgers said on Get Up. “Brian Kelly will absolutely be on the hot seat if they lose an opener again, which would be three in a row for Brian Kelly and six in a row for LSU, especially if it looks the way we saw last year, where the defense has not improved. 

“We know the offense is going to be good. We know the weapons around Garrett Nussmeier are elite. I’m not worried about that. If LSU doesn’t fix the defensive side of the football, they will not live up to the expectation, the potential of making a College Football Playoff run, which I think they’re built to do. And if that’s the case this weekend, that seat is going to get pretty warm for Brian Kelly, and there’s going to be a lot of noise outside the program about ‘here we go again.’”

Rodgers isn’t the only one putting a lot on Kelly’s plate this Fall. ESPN’s Paul Finebaum knows there’s a lot at stake for the long time coach.

“This is a different situation,” 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”