But the blueprint for success is different at LSU than it is for Notre Dame. The entire state is emotionally invested, from the governor’s mansion 3 miles from Tiger Stadium to the farthest Gulf Coast towns. Those blue-chippers might grow up wanting to be Tigers, but they are also being relentlessly recruited by the rest of the SEC. You can’t cultivate the hard-edged ethos of LSU football with corporate slogans from a 30,000-foot view.
“He really stripped the culture of what this place is. You know this place is not regular, man,” the LSU staffer said.
The Athletic spoke with 10 people who have been part of LSU football in recent years and/or have worked for Kelly. They were granted anonymity to provide insight into how Kelly has run his programs and his tenure at LSU.
What they described was a coach who delegated too much authority, didn’t care enough about recruiting and failed to bond with his players; an athletic director who was unusually involved in football day-to-day; and a program with national title aspirations but didn’t function like its rivals....
Woodward added to his reputation by hiring Kelly to clean house and bring structure to LSU.
That’s what Kelly did. He turned over dozens of positions. The first person fired was well-respected strength coach Tommy Moffitt, who was part of all three national title teams at LSU. Now working for Texas A&M, Moffitt was on the other sideline Saturday night, celebrating a victory.
“There were people here that were here for a long time, and I’m not saying that all of them should’ve stayed,” said the LSU staffer. “But that probably should’ve been an evaluation, and that wasn’t done.”
It soon became apparent that Kelly’s LSU was too disconnected from the program’s successful recent past. In many cases, it felt like change for change’s sake. At Notre Dame, that move-fast-and-break-stuff approach worked, whether that was pushing the school to build a new indoor practice facility or altering game day traditions to make players’ schedules more efficient.
But Notre Dame wasn’t a few seasons removed from a national title, and Notre Dame doesn’t live in the same world that LSU does: the hyper-competitive SEC, where the head coach needs to be more than just the recruiting closer, and where seemingly every five minutes a different assistant coach is approaching with a smiling blue-chip recruit on the other end of a FaceTime just hoping to say hello, or hear that you know how many sacks or touchdowns he had last Friday night....
“I never saw the guy,” a former staff member said, adding that many of the college coaches he had worked for previously tried to cultivate a family atmosphere.
A former LSU player said many players on the team felt like they didn’t have a relationship with Kelly. He didn’t seem to know the first names of multiple players, the former player said, which led to a permeating culture of distrust.
“Guys didn’t feel like he meant what he said. Everyone could feel that in the building,” the former player said. “It was just the style of coaching. If you don’t truly know someone, you just see it all as a facade.”
When the player, a former starter, decided he was going to transfer from LSU, he was informed by his position coaches that he would have a one-on-one meeting with Kelly to discuss why he wanted to leave. But Kelly never showed up to the meeting, according to the former player. Asked if he was surprised that Kelly’s tenure in Baton Rouge was cut short, the former player said no.
“There’s no tolerance, no patience from the fan base for anything that’s not excellence, and he didn’t bring that,” the player said.
Other former LSU players went public with their feelings after Kelly’s firing. In the hours after the dismissal, Nabers posted a not-so-subtle video clip on his Instagram story of a foot kicking a pile of rocks. Former LSU defensive back Matthew Langlois posted on X that he was forced to medically retire in 2024 and unloaded on Kelly as a coach and leader....
Charles Turner, LSU’s starting center during Kelly’s first two seasons in Baton Rouge, told The Athletic last year that he hardly had any personal interactions with Kelly.
“I started every game for him,” Turner said. “We never talked X’s and O’s. I never sat in his office and got personal with him. He really never got to know me. He’s definitely a good coach, but as far as championships and all that other stuff, you gotta come a different way with your players. You have to let your players know that you really got ’em.”
The current staffer said Kelly has a perception problem, and he failed to realize that in the name, image and likeness era, team building and fostering relationships with players was even more important for the head coach.
“He’s a decent enough guy, but I’ll be honest, the effort just is not there,” said the staffer, “especially for what this place is and compared to what we’re competing against. We always had to recruit around him.”
Even amid NIL and the robust transfer portal, recruiting is a full-time job — especially in the SEC. The most successful coaches — Georgia’s Kirby Smart and Saban, who won six national titles at Alabama before retiring — embrace it. The coach Kelly succeeded, Orgeron, was obsessed with it.
Kelly never did it that way.
“At one point, I brought my phone over to him and said, ‘Coach, I need you to talk to this kid.’ He says, ‘Make an appointment.’ I said, ‘An appointment? I got him on the phone right now. What are you talking about?’” said a second former staffer, who added that LSU’s competitors would “use that against us: ‘He’ll (Kelly) never talk to you guys. He doesn’t even know the players’ names....’”
“He just lacks the authenticity,” the first LSU staffer said. “And I don’t want to dance on his grave, like I see a lot of people doing, but you could almost tell that he cashed out here.”
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