DALLAS — Lane Kiffin learned a lot from former Alabama coach Nick Saban — especially about the dangers of preseason praise and high expectations being placed upon a team by fans and media.
“In respect to Coach Saban, this is really, as he said, this is a rat-poison situation here to have all this attention on our players, and it means nothing because it’s all about the work that they put in, the process they do daily," the Mississippi coach said Monday as SEC Media Days kicked off.
At LSU, third-year coach Brian Kelly knows well that all the hype and hoopla that builds in the offseason doesn't matter in the fall.
Kelly and Kiffin shared the spotlight on Day 1 of the SEC's four-day, talkin'-season extravaganza. Their teams enter the 2024 season with very different vibes: Ole Miss is getting plenty of buzz; despite consecutive 10-win seasons, LSU looks like a team with many unanswered questions.
“I don’t deal in expectations,” Kelly said.
Since leaving Notre Dame, the Tigers have not been what was expected in both of Kelly's seasons at LSU.
Last year, they were a preseason top-five team in the AP poll, coming off a surprising SEC West championship in 2022 that included a victory over Alabama. LSU then started the 2023 season losing two of its first five games. The Tigers were out SEC championship contention by early November.
While a 10-4 record had LSU fans feeling good after Kelly's debut season, going 10-3 last year — even with quarterback Jayden Daniels winning the Heisman Trophy — was a letdown.
“Our mission is certainly to win championships,” Kelly said. “I get how we get to that conclusion.”
Kelly overhauled his staff after the defense bottomed out last year (109th in the country in yards per play allowed), bringing Blake Baker back to LSU from Missouri and making him the highest-paid defensive coordinator in the nation.
Instead of diving into the portal to plug holes, Kelly brought in a relatively small transfer class of 10 players.
LSU tried to patch roster deficiencies through the portal last year, but it didn't work.
“If you’re in the transfer portal for need-based — in other words, you're filling needs — you haven’t done something right in the natural recruiting season,” Kelly said. “I think you need to use the transfer portal to top off the tank, so to speak.”
After three seasons of top-10 national high school recruiting classes, LSU might be better situated to contend this year than last, even while replacing Daniels and two wide receivers that were selected in the first round of the NFL draft.
“This will be the deepest team that we’ve had,” Kelly said. “I don’t know what that’s going to be relative to the expectations.”
Garrett Nussmeier, who has waited four years to finally be entrenched as QB1 at LSU, gives the Tigers a chance to mitigate the loss of Daniels.
“The pressure is something I enjoy,” Nussmeier said. “I try not to worry about the expectations.”
At Ole Miss, Kiffin has been called the portal king.
Coming off an 11-win season, the Rebels return quarterback Jaxson Dart, receiver Tre Harris and tight end Caden Prieskorn. Sensing an opportunity with Alabama in transition and the College Football Playoff expanding to 12 teams, Ole Miss added a star-studded portal class with the help of a robust effort by the Grove Collective, which provides name, image and likeness compensation to Rebels athletes.
Defensive tackle Walter Nolen (Texas A&M), receiver Juice Wells (South Carolina) and defensive end Princely Umanmielen (Florida) are just a few members of the 24-player portal class expected to be significant contributors.
The Rebels' only losses last season were to Alabama and Georgia. Kiffin hopes the additions close that gap.
“It doesn't mean we're going to win, but we're looking more like them in warmups,” he said.
He is also keenly aware that chemistry counts and there is work to be done beyond X's and O's.
“As you look over time, look in professional sports, there are plenty of teams that were supposed to be good or added these great free-agent teams and they came together, all these free agents, and don’t play well together,” Kiffin said.
Ole Miss is at LSU on Oct. 12. The Rebels beat the Tigers last year but have not won in Baton Rouge since 2008.
For Kelly, it could be a chance to defy expectations again and show that his more methodical build at LSU is right on track. Year 3 has been good to Kelly at his previous jobs. He went 11-3 in his third season at Cincinnati and 12-1 in Year 3 at Notre Dame.
“I can tell you in Year 3, I’ve had really good success with getting our football team to be the most accountable, trusting team that I’ve had here at LSU,” he said. “That’s usually been pretty good at my other stops.”
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