Tensions will rise after LSU Tigers lost 24-19 to Ole Miss on Saturday because there are now many jobs at stake after this, especially the coach’s. While the defense played as well as it could, the offense seemed to be lost in the Rebels’ stadium. Head coach Brian Kelly has already gone off on the media for questioning his offense this season, but now the tables have turned, and Kelly is placing the blame on his players and himself. There are possibly other fundamental issues involved for the dysfunction in the LSU locker room.

As much as the “Nuss’s injury” has affected LSU’s ability to be competitive offensively, it is very clear the disconnect between Brian Kelly, offensive coordinator Joe Sloan, and QB1 Garrett Nussmeier is just as big of an issue. Former LSU QB Rohan Davey knows the strain of that dynamic all too well. He described his own experience under Jimbo Fisher years ago, a relationship that began with friction. “Didn’t like him, didn’t like how he talked, didn’t like anything about him. Just met him, didn’t like him.” For Davey, that disconnect mirrors what LSU’s locker room is dealing with now. The fix, in his view, is less about scheme and more about relationships.

Davey laid out his plan plainly, with urgency that LSU fans surely echoed watching the Tigers sputter. “So we had to get to know each other, know each other’s personalities, so on and so forth. But if you don’t spend time with that guy and include that guy and what’s going on in the offense. Include that guy and what’s going on in your first 10, 12, 15, whatever it may be. Because that’s the guy pulling the trigger. If he doesn’t feel like he’s a part of it, every time he comes and says something about what he wants or doesn’t want, it gets vetoed or it doesn’t get put in. Well, that’s a problem.” Davey is saying that Nussmeier has to be treated like the axis of the offense, not a cog in Kelly’s machine.

“They need to bring Nussmeier in there, set him down, let him tell them, hey man, who are your favorite players? Show us your favorite players,” Davey continued with his plan. After all the quarterback is the one pulling the trigger and getting them out of the “emergency situation” LSU is in, kind of right now, as per him. The words feel like a warning. Tigers may not be broken yet, but the cracks are widening.

That LSU offense didn’t do much to help against Ole Miss either, failing to cash in drives and stumbling when it mattered most. And while execution always rests on the players, leadership flows from the top down. Instead of standing in the fire with his team, Brian Kelly threw his squad under the bus. “Garrett Nussmeier’s got to play better. Every player on offense has got to play better,” Kelly said in his postgame press conference. “There’s many, many players that have to play their best when their best is needed.” He even widened the blame to his coaching staff, saying his assistants weren’t preparing their units to compete.

That kind of finger-pointing is gasoline in a locker room already under pressure. Kelly has been quick to embrace and hype up his roster in victory, but with the first loss of the season, suddenly the players are left to carry the weight alone. That inconsistency is toxic, and it begs the question, does this team trust its leader to steer them through adversity?

Brian Kelly finally points the finger at himself

Accountability. That’s the job. When you’re the head coach at LSU, the lights are always on, and when things go wrong, the finger is supposed to point at you first. For days, Brian Kelly had been pushing blame on his players after the Ole Miss loss, but Monday on The Paul Finebaum Show, he finally flipped the script.

“I’ll go back to our preparation. We got 85-90% drop eight and I look at our plan and I didn’t like our plan. That falls on us. That can’t happen. We’ve gotta be prepared for everything and put our players in positions to succeed,” Kelly said. It was the first time since Saturday that Kelly openly admitted he came up short. LSU only had 254 yards of total offense compared to giving up 480. A measly 57 rushing yards is not the kind of stats that can be boasted about. Even when Ole Miss committed 14 penalties, and gave up over 100 yards in yardage for those penalties, the LSU offense could never capitalize.

He doubled down too: “I think there’s a lot of disappointment in the way we prepared our team. And I take full responsibility for that.” LSU fans will note this change in tone. It’s long overdue. It doesn’t get any easier for the Tigers as they look ahead to face South Carolina, Vandy, Texas A&M, and Alabama in that order. If this season also turns out to be a bust, Kelly is going to find himself on the hot seat.