LAS VEGAS – For most coaches, Week 1 is about shaking off the rust, watching some young players get their first game experience and hopefully doing everything they can to get off to a 1-0 start.

For LSU’s Brian Kelly, however, Week 1 has become an annual existential crisis.

Late Sunday night at Allegiant Stadium, Kelly answered questions from the media after his third straight neutral-site loss to open the season, this time a heartbreaking last-second 27-20 loss to No. 23 USC. It didn’t take long for him to tell the assembled room how angry he was about the outcome.

In fact, his very first words were, “This is the first time since I’ve been here (at LSU) that I’ve been angry at my football team.” He went on to cite two costly unsportsmanlike penalties on his players late in the game and the Tigers’ inability to finish the game.

A few minutes later, Kelly pounded his fist on the table while answering another question, startling some sleepy sportswriters who suddenly snapped awake as his voice rose.

“We’re sitting here AGAIN talking about the same things, about not finishing when you have an opponent that is capable of shutting them down,” Kelly said. “What we do on the sideline is we feel like the game is over. And I’m so angry that I have to do something about it. I’m not doing a good enough job as a coach. I have to coach them better because it’s unacceptable that we haven’t found a way to win this football game.

“It is ridiculous.”

Again, this was after the first game of the season.

Kelly’s team actually played pretty well on Sunday night. This wasn’t the disastrous 2022 Florida State game in New Orleans, Kelly’s debut at LSU, in which the Tigers committed every special teams mishap imaginable and lost 24-23 on a blocked extra point. Nor was it the ugly 2023 rematch against FSU in Orlando, in which the Noles pulled away 45-24 in the second half.

This was a thrilling, evenly matched game between two teams trying to find themselves after losing their respective Heisman quarterbacks (USC’s Caleb Williams and LSU’s Jayden Daniels). Lincoln Riley’s Trojans showed off a much improved defense that actually contained ball carriers and limited explosive plays. Kelly’s defense, itself a disaster for most of last season, allowed a not-so-great 7.5 yards per play, but was improved enough that the Tigers held a 17-13 lead late in the fourth quarter.

Then the dam broke.

After preventing a USC fourth-and-goal attempt on LSU territory with 8:38 left, LSU safety Major Burns committed a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that pushed the Tigers back to their own 21-yard line. Kelly then had a long conversation with Burns on the sideline. LSU went three-and-out and punted back to USC. Three plays later, Trojans quarterback Miller Moss threw a beautiful 28-yard touchdown pass to Ja’Kobi Lane that put USC ahead 20-17 with 5:44 left.

Tigers quarterback Garrett Nussmeier, who completed 29 of 38 passes for 304 yards, led his team from their own 20 to the USC 14, but missed a completely open Aaron Anderson that would have scored at least one more first down. The Tigers settled for a 31-yard field goal with 1:47 left to tie the game.

You probably know how things turned out.

USC seemed to be settling for a game-winning field goal attempt until Moss found receiver Kyron Hudson down the sideline for a spectacular 20-yard catch that, coupled with a targeting call on LSU’s Jardin Gilbert, put the Trojans on the LSU 13-yard line with 18 seconds left.

At that point, USC tailback Woody Marks scored the winning goal with a handoff up the middle, and Kelly got that familiar contorted expression on his face that always seems to express half bewilderment, half resignation.

annual tweet pic.twitter.com/5qCSxnHTAa

— College Football Without Context (@nocontextcfb) 2 September 2024

“It’s clear that we don’t know how to behave when we take the lead in a game,” Kelly said afterward. “In this game, you have to have that killer instinct. You have to shut teams down. We had the chance to shut this team down and then we got complacent.”

Usually, in moments like this, the coach reminds us that the season is still long, that they still have plenty of time to solve their problems, etc. Since I haven’t heard anything like that from Kelly, I feel obligated to personally remind the LSU coach: Hey man, it’s a long season. You still have plenty of time to fix these problems. Don’t worry too much.

Unfortunately, he has already done so.

“To be the kind of football team I want, we have to avoid the stupid mistakes,” he said. “We have to have the mindset that when an opponent is behind, we have that killer instinct. And we have to play a lot better against each other.”

Did we mention that his team only played one game?

GO DEEPER

2024 College Football Playoff Predictions: Miami Advances to Our 12-Team Roster

Kelly made an interesting comment when he lamented the Tigers’ lack of complementary football. He said, “We put too much pressure on our defense to force them to do something they weren’t ready to do. They fought, but we have weaknesses and they’re not going to go away overnight.”

It brought back memories of Kelly’s surprisingly candid comments after the transfer portal closed in the spring without LSU adding a defensive tackle as many expected. “We’re not in the market to buy players,” Kelly told WAFB-TV, which sounded to some like a preemptive excuse in case the Tigers’ defense, which finished 109th in the FBS last season, wasn’t significantly better.

In his remarks on Sunday night, one could hear the impression that he was pleasantly surprised that the defense limited Lincoln Riley’s offense, featuring Moss and the ridiculous receivers Zachariah Branch, Hudson and Lane, to “only” three touchdowns, which still wasn’t enough.

“I think our defense has improved from last year,” he said. “But we have to help them, too. We can’t drop three games in a row and then send them back out.”

That moment happened in 2024, but it just as easily could have been 2014 or almost any year since. Kelly has won at least 10 games in each of the last seven seasons as a head coach (five with the Irish, two with LSU), yet these big-game disappointments feel less like exceptions and more like the rule.

Notre Dame fans have largely come to terms with it because the Irish haven’t even been that successful in decades. LSU, on the other hand, has seen its last three coaches win national championships (and the last two were fired anyway). Fans of the Tigers, who took over Las Vegas only to be disappointed again, won’t have the same patience if this continues.

No punches or harsh words will calm them down.

(Photo: Candice Ward/Getty Images)