Former Alabama Quarterback Defends LSU Coach Brian Kelly

Being a head coach at LSU is a pretty hard job. Sure, you have a large salary, plenty of funding for your program, access to the best recruits, and national attention. But you also have one of the loudest, and impatient, fan bases in the country.

You can win a National Championship, and have people posting on Tiger Droppings that you should be fired 2 weeks later. That's not hyperbole either, that's just real life for coaches at LSU.

If you're someone like Brian Kelly, you get that.

Kelly took over the LSU Football program after fan favorite coach Ed Orgeron won a National Championship with a team that many consider to be the greatest college football team of all time. Coach O had built an amazing team, had a Heisman Trophy winner, tons of first round NFL Draft picks, and was bowl eligible in every year (not counting the weird Mickey Mouse pandemic season) he was the Tigers' Head Coach. Even with all of that, LSU football felt it was worth a $17 million buyout to have Orgeron not coach there anymore.

Of course, this changed opened the door for Kelly to leave Notre Dame for LSU. But now he's starting to get some of that "Orgeron treatment". Kelly came in and won 10 games right away, and made the SEC Championship game his first season. They ran up 63 points in their Citrus Bowl win that year too. He followed that up with another 10 win season, and pushed Jayden Daniels to LSU's second Heisman Trophy in 5 years. So why are LSU fans becoming impatient with Kelly already? A former LSU rival is asking the same question.

Former National Champion Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy says he doesn't get the negativity surrounding Brian Kelly. During the "Always College Football" podcast, McElroy had this to say about Kelly:

“I think Brian Kelly is a really good coach. He won a lot of games at Notre Dame when people said it couldn’t be done anymore. He revitalized that program. It became a steady player in the College Football Playoff conversation. Now he takes over at LSU, has won 10 games in consecutive years, has had a Heisman Trophy winner. I don’t really know what there is to be negative about with Brian Kelly. Like, he won 10 games, he has been to the SEC Championship already."

McElroy went on to say that he thinks a lot of the negativity in recent weeks comes from NIL comments Kelly made that went viral. But McElroy says he doesn't agree with backlash for the comments:

“As it relates to the paying players conversation, which is where I think a lot of the negativity around Brian Kelly this offseason has surrounded him? I listened to his comments and I don’t get the sense that he is not supportive of NIL. I see the headlines, I see the stories, I see what people are saying – ‘Oh, he’s going to get sued’, ‘Oh, he’s going to do this’, ‘LSU is not in NIL’. Yeah, they are. There are plenty of guys at LSU under Brian Kelly’s leadership that have done really well when it comes to NIL. What he said is he’s not going to be in the business of buying players. I think what that means, the way I interpret it is he is not going to be real excited about bringing in a player that’s number one priority is maximizing his NIL value.”

While its not uncommon to see a winning coach at LSU getting negativity from fans and media, it is rare to see someone so tightly affiliated with Alabama coming to their defense.