Kelly preparing his team for adversity on the road
LSU heads outside of the Louisiana border for the first time under head coach Brian Kelly when it travels to Auburn for Saturday's 6 p.m. SEC Western Division showdown.
In a wacky series that has seen everything a richter scale-registering game-winning TD, an old gymnasium burning to the ground next to Jordan-Hare Stadium, Auburn scoring three fourth-quarter TDs off LSU interceptions, a game-winning LSU TD pass with one second left, a last-second LSU TD coming after time expired leading to head coach Les Miles being fired and the Tigers winning on 42-yard Cole Tracy walk-off field goal, Kelly is preparing his team for everything and anything.
“Part of building your football team is to handle some adversity,” Kelly said at his weekly in-season Thursday night presser. “We'll be able to handle some adversity along the way and you expect adversity. So, we've talked about there's going to be adversity and and handling it and understanding that it's going to take place and you just emotionally need to deal with it.
“We haven't gotten to chaos yet, but we'll get there. But we're not on that chapter yet. Adversity, we're definitely working on.”
Kelly said previously injured defensive starters Jay Ward and BJ Ojulari have practiced all week and will. Offensive starters Armoni Goodwin (hamstring) and Garrett Dellinger (broken hand) will not play.
Here's Kelly on other subjects:
On LSU and Auburn both starting true freshmen
“You have four freshmen starting on both sides of the ball and playing well. What does that say about their development? Well, they were really good players coming in. Certainly, they had the athletic ability but you need more than just athletic ability to play as a true freshman. You have to have traits past your ability.
“And all of those guys are extremely coachable. They trust what they're being taught and then they translate that to the field. That's probably the way you get on the field quicker as a freshman is that you can do it mentally. And if you've got the physical traits, and you match with the ability to do it mentally, the kids who have that get on the field.”
On getting offensive consistency
“Consistency on the offensive side of the ball is gonna be really important for us and certainly getting off to a good start is. But so is playing playing mistake-free, eliminating self-inflicted wounds. We've done a really good job taking care of the football. If we can continue to do that, eliminate some of the pre-snap penalties, we're gonna be okay. We're getting better at the areas that we need to in terms of efficiency on offense. We're going to have to run the football, we're going to have to have some balance..
“And then defensively, we've got to be able to stop the run. That's kind of the bigger picture for me.”
On signing University of Arkansas defensive backs and Louisiana natives Greg Brooks and Joe Foucha out of the transfer portal
“Defensive backfield was thin. There certainly was a need to address it and it couldn't necessarily just be through a freshman class. Remember now, we didn't have a whole lot of time to recruit. It was late January before we got a staff together. So, I felt like we would really not have an SEC-quality secondary if we just relied on freshmen. That prompted that decision to really lean heavily on a secondary that would be made up of players from the transfer portal.”