Give Brian Kelly one thing. The LSU head coach doesn’t often overflow with so-called “coach-speak.” Ask him a question and you generally get an honest answer, or at least what he believes.

But, like all of them, he is prone to ramble about at times.

His Tigers are three games into the season, his third year down in these bayous, and, as has been mentioned many times, his long coaching history suggests the third season is when his teams take heroic leaps and bounds.

The Tigers certainly aren’t there yet.

As you may have heard, the College Football Playoff has been expanded to 12 teams, and thus far nothing the 2-1 Tigers have done has them mentioned prominently as being in the mix yet.

How does Kelly feel?

Taking his latest news conference as a guide, it’s hard to get a good read on him.

But, fortunately, I’m here to translate for you.

Among the things he said:

“We beat South Carolina on the road in a sold-out stadium in the SEC against the team that beat the pants off of Kentucky, who played Georgia right down to the end. If you want to do that (comparison) game, I guess we’re going to beat Georgia by a lot.”

He’s just funning with you. He can afford to as he doesn’t play Georgia. Or if the Tigers do — better put on your big-boy pants — it would be in the SEC Championship game, meaning a spot in the CFP would already be secured.

“Winning is a habit. Losing is a habit. If you have losing habits you can’t win games like those (at South Carolina).”

This team at least knows that it knows how to win, which wasn’t particularly evident in the season opener against Southern Cal.

“This group has the right habits now. We have to be able to clean up things technically.”

It might start with making a habit of better tackling.

“When you have first-year coordinators (Blake Baker on defense, Joe Sloan and Cortez Hankton on offense), they’re learning their personnel — who they want to use, and who are the best 11 in each situation, and what schemes put us in the best position to succeed.”

It’s not always as easy as the NFL Saints made it look by hiring offensive coordinator Kling Kubiak. But that explains all the mixing and matching on defense.

“It’s becoming a lot clearer. We’re a lot closer to finding those things out.”

Maybe they found some defensive combinations. Or …

“We’ve done a deep dive on all of it, but I’m not ready to kind of publicly talk about what we’re going to do going forward.”

They think they found something in moving Harold Perkins to strong side outside linebacker (again), Whit Weeks to the middle, and rotating safeties and cornerbacks.

“More than anything it’s about creating havoc (on defense), and we did that.”

 They were on to something there, with five sacks, four other tackles for losses, an interception and four forced fumbles.

“If we make two plays that we should make, just being fundamentally sound on defense, we’re going to give up less than 250 yards in total offense.”

If ifs and buts were candy and … oh, but they did give up fairly uncontested runs of 75 and 66 yards. But maybe do you feel better needing to correct those mental errors as opposed to feeling like you were often outphysicaled the week before against Nicholls State.

On if freshman running back Caden Durham earned the starting job with 98 yards and two touchdowns on 11 carries for what had been a dormant running game:

“That’s yet to be determined We’re not at the point where he’s going to be THE guy … all of those guys are going to be a part of it.”

There’s always room for a committee at the running back position — particularly with the NCAA transfer portal always looming. But look for Durham to get first chance for now.

“We left two touchdowns out there … we didn’t score inside the 5 (-yard line) twice. You just score those two touchdowns and that’s 50 points.”

And the red zone offense better get cleaned up. South Carolina had a good defense, but there are better defenses down the road — and LSU probably is still a team that will go only as far as its offense takes it.

“We’re not that far off.”

But, right now, a lot of teams can say the same thing.

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU

athletics. Email him at

scooter.hobbs@americanpress.com