Brian Kelly rips criticism of LSU's sloppy play as his defensiveness rises in wake of season-changing loss

The LSU Tigers have a littany of issues this season already. Between sitting at 5-2, sliding down to 20th in the most recent polls, watching Ashton Stamps opt to transfer, and losing left tackle Tyree Adams to an ankle injury for several weeks, head coach Brian Kelly has his hands full with problems. As usual for Kelly, he's responded with frustrating excuses, blame, and defensiveness.

Protecting his LSU program makes sense as the heat rains down on him. Throwing players under the bus can't happen, and this roster is his to own anyway. But there's a fine line he tries to toe and often misses the boat on when he's given head-on questions about performance.

In his Wednesday press conference, Kelly was asked about LSU's drops this season. PFF has credited the Tigers with 16 drops, and they're usually on the conservative side. Here was his response.

Brian Kelly calls LSU's mistakes 'magnified' after key losses

While Bauer Sharp, Aaron Anderson, and Barion Brown have each been credited with three drops each, there's no question LSU has self-inflicted problems in key moments. Zavion Thomas and Brown were attributed two drops against Vanderbilt, and Sharp and Kalen Johnson earned one against Ole Miss. It's fair to say that's a favorable total for the playmakers.

Kelly agreed those two games saw difference-making mistakes from the pass-catchers.

"Yeah, you know. I think that you know, anytime you know you lose a football game, you know, every little thing becomes, you know, magnified. And certainly there were a couple of plays that we could have made. But I think you know, when you look at the body of work, it hasn't been a group that has been sloppy and dropping the football and has caused us to come up short, you know, against Ole Miss and Vanderbilt."

Kelly then continued to talk about how the fundamentals shouldn't be an issue for this team as they have put in the work to avoid such costly mistakes.

"But having said that, you know, it's certainly something that we want to be flawless at. And those kids catch the ball every day, in the morning, afternoon at practice. And you know, we want to be better in everything we do, whether it's a drop here, there, or not playing with low pads or tackling. I think those are all the fundamentals read that that we go to work on every single day, including, you know, catching the football."

Drops are like the yips, and it's good that Kelly isn't planting a seed of pressure on his guys to press even more. The vibe around LSU is bad because they can't protect quarterback Garrett Nussmeier and his receivers aren't playing up to their talent level and billing. But criticizing them publicly won't work well, either.

Kelly is defensive of his starters because he has to be, and the fan base and locker room would turn on him if he shifts complete responsibility elsewhere. We'll see how it pays off as Texas A&M looms this coming Saturday.

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