Kiffin on LSU's defense: "They spent a lot of money, and it shows."

Lane Kiffin was one of the first coaches to fully embrace the transfer portal in this new era of college football, albeit begrudgingly at first. Kiffin’s Ole Miss teams of the past few years have included several transfers and the same is true this year as he continues to have Ole Miss as one of the top teams in the SEC year after year.

Over the offseason, Brian Kelly and LSU finally bought in as well, diving into the portal and getting the No. 2 portal class in the country according to On3.

As a result, the defense has gone from historically bad to a potential top five unit in the span of just two seasons. Defensive coordinator Blake Baker has his unit humming through four games in his second season, but Lane Kiffin understands another reason why LSU has taken a leap forward.

“Well, I think second year in a system defensively helps a lot of times and they’ve improved their personnel also,” Kiffin said. “You got three of the four starting D-linemen are portal guys. Three of the four secondary D-line are portal guys. So, they’ve done a great job with that.

They’ve heavily invested financially into the portal and made that decision. That’s no secret. Coach Kelly’s talked about how much money they’ve spent, and it shows. Those are three guys that were heavily recruited and probably the three most expensive portal DBs in the market, and they got them all. So, they did a great job with that. Now they’re coaching them really well, and they’re playing great.”

Kiffin understands what it takes to win nowadays in college football and has seen the Tigers make the financial commitment to Kelly and this roster in 2025 to be competitive coming off of an 8-4 season. In a season with ample urgency, this game against Ole Miss certainly is one to have circled and Kiffin understands the challenge ahead.

“Yeah, I think LSU’s done a great job,” Kiffin said. “They’ve always assembled great high school talent regardless. The last three coaches won national championships there. If you look at 20–25 years of players coming out, you could argue they’ve had the most talent of anybody in the country, and you see it all over the NFL. They’ve always had that recipe of being LSU and being able to get top players in the country and keep your own home.

Now you add the portal into it, which they’ve embraced this offseason and done a great job at. Highly invested, spent a lot of money, and it shows. They have one of the best rosters in America with veteran portal guys on top of all the great high school players. So, it’s a big challenge, and we’re excited for it.”

On the same day Kiffin has talked about the Tigers’ new-look roster, Kelly was not afraid to shy away from the fact the talent upgrade has been the crux for this team’s progress this season. Ultimately, Kelly agreed with Kiffin’s statement: LSU did spend the money and is now reaping the benefits.

“We’re getting more experienced and veteran players on the field. From a coaching standpoint, let’s not overrate this, we’ve got better players,” Kelly said. “Blake is a better defensive coordinator, I’m a better coach, we’re all better and it has a lot to do with your players playing the game.

“You need resources, and our fan base rallied. We had really good support that allowed us to be competitive in the NIL market place. We built a front office that identified the talent, then we had the resources to close the deal for that caliber of player.”

LSU and Ole Miss kickoff at 2:30 p.m. CT in Oxford, Mississippi on Saturday in a battle between two unbeaten, top 15 teams.