Brian Kelly, LSU can breathe sigh of relief after road win at Clemson snaps Week 1 losing streak

CLEMSON, S.C. — Here was Brian Kelly, sliding behind a table strewn with microphones in the guts of Memorial Stadium, a throng of LSU fans and family members lingering on the field to sing, dance and sweat in the sticky-cool South Carolina air.

After months of retooling LSU’s $18 million roster and deflecting questions about when he was going to win one of these high-profile openers, Kelly had just watched his team throw a physical beating onto No. 4 Clemson.

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Then he threw down a gauntlet that should resonate loudly in a Southeastern Conference already shaken up after Week 1.

“You know, those narratives were never anything we bought into as a program,” Kelly said. “We know, look, people build up the first game to a level of craziness. I mean, look at the quarterbacks that are under incredible scrutiny. So I just think that in this business, you really have to stay focused on what your job is, and my job is to bring a football team on the road, play with great confidence and composure and compete their tails off for four quarters.”

The final score Saturday night was LSU 17, Clemson 10.

But with that shot across the bow — perhaps to nobody in particular, but maybe aimed in the direction of SEC preseason favorite Texas — Kelly was still scoring points on a night his offense didn’t really need to.

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Because after all the offseason talk, things always look a little different when you turn on the bright lights. And here’s the picture that emerged for LSU:

– A defense transformed by new additions like cornerback Mansoor Delane (via Virginia Tech) and a Harold Perkins renewed by better health and his ability to focus on being a disruptive pass rusher rather than playing inside out of necessity.

– A reworked offensive line that held up incredibly well against Clemson, which purported to have one of the best defensive fronts in the country.

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– And perhaps most welcome of all, a senior quarterback in Garrett Nussmeier who was in complete control of the game but did not feel the weight of having to put up 30-plus points as he often did last year (and his predecessor Jayden Daniels did pretty much every game for two years before that).

“We didn’t feel like they were stopping us,” Nussmeier said. “We were stopping ourselves with penalties and turning the ball over and things like that. So I’m proud of the defense. They stepped up big for us. That win was a huge kudos to them.

“As I spoke about in the offseason, it wasn’t just about Clemson. It’s about a new mindset that we’ve taken on.”

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After three years of waiting for LSU to break through under Kelly and deliver on the 10-year, $95 million contract that lured him from Notre Dame, is this finally their time?

Take a step back and look at the SEC with a fresh set of eyes.

We saw No. 1-ranked Texas sputter badly with Arch Manning at the controls for the first time in a big game, suggesting that perhaps his development curve as starting quarterback is going to take longer than initially thought.

We saw Alabama, ranked No. 8 in the preseason, completely fold in Tallahassee and suffer a 31-17 loss that could kickstart some coaching turmoil around Kalen DeBoer.

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And then here came LSU, ranked behind both in the AP poll, roll into Clemson and put an emphatic stamp on one of the signature regular-season wins in Kelly’s entire coaching career.

“These wins are big,” Kelly said. “There’s no doubt there’s a boomerang effect for [the team], but they had confidence coming into this game. We just need to keep doing what we’re doing.”

And what they’re doing, or at least what they did to Clemson, was devastating in effect even if it didn’t show up completely on the scoreboard.

Yes, Clemson had the ball down to LSU’s 15-yard line with a chance to tie or potentially win with a minute remaining. But that was mostly the product of first-game oddities like fumbling in the red zone in the second quarter, Kelly turning down a short field goal at the end of the first half while foolishly chasing a touchdown and missing a 46-yard field goal in the third quarter after a potential touchdown catch by Barion Brown was controversially changed to an incompletion by the replay booth.

LSU left a lot on the table, but there was little doubt from the second half on which one was the better football team. And after struggling to find the right mix on defense for the last few years — both coaching and personnel — the fact that LSU won it with a stop seemed like extra validation for the quality of this performance.

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“This group of kids wants the game on the line,” defensive coordinator Blake Baker said. “You never know until you get in the game. But my gut, my intuition, was telling me that these guys really enjoy playing together.”

Now for the caveats.

It’s Week 1. LSU has a gauntlet of big games to navigate, including Florida, Ole Miss, LSU, Texas A&M, Alabama, Oklahoma and even Vanderbilt. And Clemson may or may not be the best barometer despite its preseason ranking. Was Clemson’s inability to find explosive plays on offense totally due to LSU’s defensive improvement or merely a continuation of themes we’ve seen for several years from Dabo Swinney’s program?

Time will tell.

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But in holding Clemson to 261 total yards (just 31 rushing) while its offense was able to run the ball enough to take some pressure off Nussmeier’s arm, LSU showed the bones of a serious football team.

And unlike its biggest rivals in the SEC, there’s a quarterback with an actual track record rather than a famous last name.

“We all knew what we needed to be better at from last year, and that was a running game that allowed Garrett the opportunity to be a complete player,” Kelly said. “We couldn’t just be a one-trick pony and throw the ball all over the yard. We have to control it. When you play really good teams, you have to shorten the game in some instances and I thought tactically we did a great job.”