Brian Kelly didn’t mince words after LSU began the season with a 27-20 loss to USC. Neither did Shannon Sharpe, who called for the head coach to take more accountability.
During his post-game press conference, Kelly told reporters he’s “angry at my football team” for the first time since joining LSU in 2022. He berated the Tigers for “selfish” penalties and said Trojans quarterback Miller Moss “outplayed” Garrett Nussmeier.
On his Nightcap podcast, Sharpe acknowledged that he’s “not the biggest Brian Kelly fan” because of how he left Cincinnati and Notre Dame. Chad Johnson noted that Kelly eventually took the blame for his team’s performance, but Sharpe thought he shouldn’t have publicly “reamed” his players.
“You lead with that,” Sharpe said (h/t Awful Announcing). “You don’t say after you called out your players and then say, ‘I gotta do a better job of coaching.’ You say, ‘I gotta do a better job of coaching,’ and you leave the other part out until you get behind closed doors.”
The ESPN personality wondered if there’s a “disconnect” if Kelly still isn’t getting through to his players. Although he thinks LSU has the talent to compete with SEC adversaries other than Georgia, Sharpe theorized that the coach could lose his team by continuing to publicly berate them.
“At some point in time, you keep blaming your players, they gonna be like ‘Uh, no coach, [it’s] you,'” Sharpe theorized.
When Johnson said some NFL players would “fold” and turn on a coach who blames them, Sharpe noted that college football teams have experienced upperclassmen with families and NIL contracts. He doesn’t think they’ll let a coach treat them like kids anymore.
“A lot of these grown a** men make more than the coaches. They will fight the you-know-what out of a coach,” Sharpe said. “I ain’t telling you what somebody told, Ocho. I’m telling you what I know.”
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