Kelly owns LSU's blowout loss to FSU: Tigers not the 'team I thought we were'

LSU head coach Brian Kelly expressed frustration and took responsibility following the Tigers' disappointing 45-24 loss to Florida State in their season opener Sunday.

"We certainly are not the football team I thought we were," Kelly said postgame, according to Stewart Mandel of The Athletic. "We need to do a much better job developing our football team. We clearly were short in a lot of areas, and that falls on me.

"For some reason, we thought we were somebody else than we were, the two-time national champion Georgia Bulldogs or something. I don't know what we thought, but we were mistaken," Kelly added.

LSU was solid in the contest's first two quarters and carried a 17-14 lead into halftime. However, the Tigers - who started the season as the nation's fifth-ranked team, ran out of gas, allowing 31 unanswered points to the Seminoles in the second half, including 21 fourth-quarter points.

Kelly's outfit became the first AP top-five team to lose its season opener by 20-plus points to a lower-ranked team since 1988, according to ESPN Stats & Info.

"I take full responsibility for not having our team playing the kind of football that I thought we would," said Kelly, adding that LSU didn't play the second half with "a sense of urgency," according to reporter Jerit Roser.

"This is a total failure on a coaches' standpoint and a players' standpoint that we have to obviously address and we have to own."

Sunday's game, which took place in Orlando, was a marquee matchup between a pair of top-10 teams with potential big playoff implications, as Florida State entered the week as college football's eighth-ranked program.

The Tigers headed into their second season under Kelly's watch surrounded by high expectations after posting a 10-4 record in 2022. LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels, one of the nation's top Heisman Trophy candidates during the preseason, finished Sunday's game with 347 passing yards, 64 yards on the ground, and one total touchdown. He was outplayed by Florida State quarterback Jordan Travis, who accounted for five TDs.

"Being the leader, the quarterback of the team, I've gotta get the guys going. I've gotta set the urgency, and I've gotta set the tempo," Daniels said postgame.

LSU faces Grambling State in its second game of the season before visiting Mississippi State.