Kiffin Questions LSU QBs + Reality Check

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Lane Kiffin discusses year one expectations and how he teaches his tempo.

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LSU held its first practice of spring.

Afterwards, Lane Kiffin met with reporters.

He dove into a lot, including his offensive tempo, which we're going to unpack here in

a little bit.

But let's start with Lane Kiffin first talking about some of the availability, and mostly

this new system that LSU in their offense is going to be working through.

Not into that, especially offensively, a new system coming in, and then a ton of movement

from the previous roster, whether it was leaving or whether it was going off to the NFL

with a number of good players that left.

So we've got to come in and we spend a lot of time, you know, kind of sitting to Michael

walking down like, you know, guys, don't mistake because, you know, you see me doing things

around the community, or prayed, or Marty Grah, or concert, you know, that there isn't

relentless pursuit at greatness here in effort, and the way that we work, and the amount

of time spent in this office, and that, in my opinion, that's the only way to do it.

And it's especially the only way to do it nowadays because you have to do so much, so fast

with so many new pieces.

And like you mentioned, offensively, all the new coaches coming in, all the new players

were defensively.

There's a number of carry-over and a number of coaches in skiing, being the same.

Relentless pursuit of perfection.

I love how he mentioned.

He's very self-aware.

This is something that I'm learning about Lane Kiffin, and I think most of us would probably

have the same observation.

Since Lane Kiffin got hired at LSU, he's done very little by way of formal media.

He did his introductory press conference that Monday, he did a post portal signing, or

the February signing day press conference, and that was it.

That was it until the press conference after the first press conference of spring.

So since Lane Kiffin was hired on December 1st, he's met with the media three times.

Three times since December 1st.

This December, January, February, now almost the end of March.

In four months, he's like three times.

But think about how visible he's been in the community.

He referenced it, parades on stage at the Boosey concert in Damien, St. Paddy's Day, he's

at Pickleball Courts, he's at Restaurants, he's at these coffee bars, he's very on social

media publicly out there showing you all the things he's doing in his social life, which

I think is wonderful in the ways he breaks into the community, but he wants to make sure

that when I get a twist to think like he's out there playing, oh no Lane, we also see

the 5 a.m. tweets of you tweeting the coffee pot at football ops or leaving football ops

at 10 o'clock at night.

I don't think anyone is denying the work ethic and the level of buy-in he has and how much

they're working to build this thing and build it quickly.

That means why?

Quite honestly, he's here.

Now, the most important part I think obviously is going to be getting his quarterbacks in

line to run this offense and he kind of talked about the off season these quarterbacks

have had.

I think they've done a good job of coming in all being new again to a new system, no

carry-over and they've done a really good job including Sam and he's obviously been

limited physically, but they spend a lot of time up here, a lot of extra time, they've

done a really good job because it's a lot on that position in our system because they

drive everything.

They're really like the point guard.

If they don't know what they're doing really well and they don't drive it, the system

doesn't work as well as it has for a long time.

Remember, in by the way, I'm going to dive a little deeper into the system in the tempo

here in just a quick second, but I love how he said it's like a point guard, but also

remember, remember, a lot of times people misuse the word unique.

They mean rare.

In a literal sense, unique means only one.

So I do think this season at LSU Football is unique.

I'm not sure, certainly not in my lifetime, we have ever quite literally seen a season

where every scholarship quarterback was gone one year to the next, even with coaching

changes.

I mean, you had three scholarship quarterbacks last year.

You had Garrett Nussmire, Michael van Buren, Colin Hurley, they're all gone.

You had to completely make over that room with your scholarship quarterbacks.

So we have quite literally never seen this before.

So you have three new quarterbacks, scholarship quarterbacks coming in to run an offense.

They're not familiar with it.

And you heard Lane Kippen there say how important it is.

It's like the point guard.

So listen, quarterback is the most important position in organized team sports, but some

systems require you to function differently as a quarterback within it.

And that sort of this thing, like here's Lane when he was asked about the tempo with which

his offense runs.

He references the quarterbacks again.

There's a whole system to this.

And I really got exposed to it, you know, only hard Kindle Browse at FAU in the Baylor

system of how spread it is in the tempo and the receivers playing right and left.

And there's a lot of little things within that.

So that takes some time too.

You know, it's almost like, I don't know basketball, well, but since basketball is going

on, you know, if you went in, you're going to press all game, you know, and you had to

get players into that conditioning, you know, like Arkansas back in the day in basketball.

40 minutes of health.

Like, that's basically what it's like.

So that's a lot of physical condition, but mental condition and it all starts with

this quarterback is like I said, he's the point guard pushing everything.

So there's a ton that goes into that.

One of the things he referenced was Chip Kelly's blur offense back at Oregon, unless you

got familiar with that, unless you opened against Oregon in 2011.

And I understand now that's been 15 years.

So there's some people who may not remember this.

I was covering the team at the time and one of the things that I remember about covering

that 2011 LSU team that was preparing for Oregon and actually former colleague T. Bob Abert

was on that team and he's talked about this a bunch is from the first day of spring.

From the first after the 2010 season, from the first day of spring practice going into

that opener against Oregon, everything was Oregon's tempo, everything LSU did conditioning

wise.

About this with Tommy Moffat, LSU's legendary strength and conditioning coach at that time,

everything was preparing for that Oregon tempo.

So getting your line been ready to go 70, 80, 90 plays if you have to and getting on the

ball and getting ready for the next snap.

Like it's so rare to see that type of system, even in a hurry up, no how to world in which

we live to see a team that does that almost exclusively from first whistle to last.

And that's how they operate this is that's something we all are going to have to get

used to.

We would see it once you're watching LSU, you'd see it once a year when you play Ole Miss,

when you play Kiffin Squad.

But when that's your offense and that's going to be the norm every single week, yeah, that's

going to take conditioning for your entire team, but also the quarterbacks to understand

how to function going that fast.

Yes, that is very, very important.

The other part of it obviously is the defense because now the LSU defense is seeing this

tempo every day.

It's not that a nice conversation with the defensive line, you know, at the end of

practice, like there's so far away of understanding how you have to play like from a conditioning

standpoint physically, but then a mental standpoint.

And when you play tempo, so on offense, what we do, and then when you have to defend it,

there's a lot of mental to it, you know, it's a long, really fast game, okay, that you've

got to do a lot of stuff really fast.

Like you're going to get the fastball pitcher every pitch, every inning, pulse gains.

So that takes a lot of getting used to and our defense about front as long ways to go.

And that was apparently, but I like that because we're giving them the hardest tempo they're

going to see all year already.

Schene's is not just a fastball pitcher, by the way, he's just got a four-pitch mix, which

is incredible.

Why is the best pitcher on the planet?

We thus though 101.

Incidentally, I do love the way that the footnote there where he said we're giving the defense

the hardest look they're going to get all year, which is true.

Because you're going to face a lot of tempo, you're going to face teams that go fast,

but none as fast as the team you're facing.

What I will be interested to see, and I'm not here to spin everything to the positive,

because we've seen varying degrees of success for Lane Kiffin's defenses at Ole Miss.

Last year, that was a top 30 defense.

The year before they were top 10 defense, when you had all the great transfers, Walter

Nolan, Prince Lumeon Miellen, Chris Paul Traumas, that great defense from 2024.

Now that season went nine and three for Ole Miss, but they were super and supremely talented,

especially on the defensive side of the ball.

Suffice to say, even seeing that weekend and week out, they didn't always have the greatest

defenses.

So, I'll be fascinated because this is the type of thing, especially with a mobile quarterback

where if there is a knock on Blake Baker and a style in the system, with some exceptions,

like when they played Green and Arkansas and Fayetteville two seasons ago, they really handcuffed

that offense.

But dealing with mobile quarterbacks, if it was Trinidad Chamberlain or Diego Pavia,

the guys who could make things happen when things would break down, that sort of has been

the Achilles heel of this defense, I think it's fair to say.

So, maybe sharing some trade secrets being in the room together could help.

One of the things that Lane said, if you remember, is introductory press conference.

I really stood out to me.

So now that we're going back four months, but you see, one of the benefits, great benefits

he had was growing up around some of the greatest defensive minds in the game.

If it were Nick Saban or his dad, Monty Kiffin or Pete Carroll.

And as an offensive guy, going sitting in defensive meetings to say, okay, what are they thinking

about what I'm doing, right?

And so as an offensive guy, now you might have better idea of how to attack them.

Well, reverse that here with Blake Baker.

So Blake Baker now has the opportunity to listen to Lane Kiffin and his staff talk about

how they would be attacking him.

So then he can reverse engineer that defensively, hopefully that's a great benefit.

But again, long, long way to go after one practice in spring.

The other thing I thought that really struck me was when Lane Kiffin was talking about

expectation year one, you're going to hear what he said and I'll give you some thoughts

because I think there were some messages, you know, there's some Easter eggs very deep

inside of that message.

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There's so much expectation year one under Lane Kiffin, mostly because of all of the resources

LSU is poured into this era, the 54 million a buy up, Ryan Kelly, the 91 million commitment

to Lane Kiffin, the 3 million committed to Blake Baker, 2 and a half million for Charlie

Weiss, the 40 plus million for the roster.

You get it.

You talk about a ton if you're in every day or you've heard us talk about it.

But it was interesting hearing Lane Kiffin talk about expectations.

I want to play this sound light for you from Lane talking about these year one expectations,

but it's not so much even just him talking about the expectation.

There's two things buried in this sound light that struck me that I'm curious if it struck

you to.

So I'm going to play this for you.

I don't want to see if you notice the same two things I did.

Here you go.

These things can be really scary.

So we don't really look at it that way.

We don't have goals and say, okay, we need to have this many wins or play else.

We don't we don't talk that way because that's really outcome based, not process based.

And a lot of those things are determined by things out of your control.

And that's not easy.

I was actually sitting there during an offensive meeting today and Charlie was up here running

and I looked up there.

I don't know how to give my math is, but in 18 years, only three times has this program

been in your six games.

It's a hard thing to do.

So I don't set, hey, this is what we need to do year one because that really doesn't

matter.

It's much more about the day to day process and always trying to find a way to improve

our players and coach better and get into the highest level.

Two things I noticed.

So Lane Kippin isn't showing away from what the expectations are on this program.

It's why he's here, right?

He came here because he felt like he had the resources here to win and consistently win

championships and LSU has given him everything he's asked for.

But the two things, number one, when he said we're having a staff meeting in here and Charlie

was running.

It's all about Charlie White's in offensive meeting.

I don't think that was a throwaway line.

I don't think that was by accident.

By the way, I think Lane Kippin is really smart and really calculated.

I don't think there's much he does that is without thought.

Even down to the way he posts on social media, the pictures he shares, the things he retweets.

I don't think he's just on Twitter hit and retweet.

I don't think he's just on an Instagram story.

I think he is very thoughtful about the way he positions a photo or the language he uses

or how he answers questions and a press conference.

And I think that was very intentional.

So as to say, so as to crop up Charlie White's there, because I, we, I think a lot of us

just assume Lane Kippins offense, Lane's Kippins team, and he was saying, because he could

have just, just as easily said, you know, look at these numbers up here.

And if you've never been what he's referring to in the team room at LSU, it's an auditorium

style room.

And at the top of the room, there's across the top of the room is all the years of the

significant, the national championships as he put it to New Year's six, you know, the

sugar fiesta orange, peach, all that sort of stuff.

And all those years with corresponding goals and logos are up there.

He could have just as easily said, look at the top here.

Look at these years.

It's three and 18 that this program has been to a New Year six.

He didn't have to mention I was here in an offensive meeting and Charlie was running it.

I think he is continuing to try to elevate, intentionally elevate Charlie White, so our

perception of Charlie White's maybe what his reality is of what White's role, the significance

of Charlie White's role.

And then the other thing there, him saying the three and 18, he's not wrong.

But I think in, in one, on one hand, he's acknowledging the very real and large expectations

that this program has in year one and will forever have with him and whoever is the

coach because of the resource and the buy-in.

But he's also telling you there, keep in mind, your norm is not New Year six.

That's not your norm.

Your norm is, and by the way, LSU's norm over the last decade and a half to two decades

is eight and five.

That's the average.

LSU is generally an eight and four and nine and three football team.

And then every year, every now and again, boom, you'll pop a big one.

You know, I don't know about his math, the three and 18, but you can look at the 2019 season,

the 2018 season when he went to the Fiesta Bowl and you go back to 2011 when they played

for the national championship.

But it's been few and far between, even if you want to count 2010 with the Cotton Bowl,

remember the Cotton Bowl at the time there was no New Year six.

That was still in the, in the BCS era before we even got to the 14 playoff era in 2010.

So the Cotton Bowl wasn't even at that level yet.

So I think what Lane is saying there is, listen, yeah, I know we got outsized expectations

and I'm, that's our goal is to win at that level.

I'm not going to state a year one goal, but remember, remember what this program is year

in and year out.

And that's fair.

But the reason he's here is to exceed those expectations, to raise that floor and elevate

the standard that's been here at LSU to avoid the seven and six of a year ago or the,

12 and 13 that LSU was the last two seasons under Edozer on whether it went five and

five in the COVID year and then six and seven the following year when Ed was fired in 2020.

So it's all to say there is obviously always going to be tremendous expectation on LSU

football and Lane Giffin is embracing it, but I think he's such a thoughtful calculate

with guy with the way he says and presents things.

You know, one of the things that nobody's going to want to hear is his patients while

you turn over 60 players on your roster, implementing this new system with all the tempo, tons

of new coaches, how quickly can you realistically boom hit the ground running?

Well, you better figure that out quickly because it's Clemson week one, Louisiana Tech week

two, and then you're in Oxford week three at Ole Miss for a game that is going to be

maybe the marquee game as far as theater on the entire college football calendar for 2026.

Of course, we'll be following it all the way along.

So the Tigers will be back on the practice field Thursday.

It's player interviews afterwards, but I'm going to keep diving into a lot of what Lane

Giffin had to say during that introductory press conference here on Loftone LSU.

So if you're new, thanks for being here.

What a great time to find the show as LSU, baseball's in full swing, basketball will make

a new hire, and then of course, football is in spring practice now under Lane Giffin.

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