Brian Kelly rendered Harold Perkins utterly useless in LSU's brutal Week 1 loss to Florida State.
If Brian Kelly can make his starting quarterback throw the ball 40 times in the middle of a hurricane, you better believe he could play his best defensive star out of position in a must-win Week 1 game.
The method behind the madness was to move pass-rusher extraordinaire Harold Perkins off-ball to transform him into the LSU equivalent of Micah Parsons. While it is good in theory to take a talent as potentially generational as what Perkins possesses and see if he can be copied and pasted into that Parsons blueprint, the Bayou Bengals lost a bad one to Florida State in Orlando. You can't undo that!
Kelly would defend his supremely sound logic after the game with this absolute gem of a quote.
"What was missing? Well, he's playing a position for the first time. So there's a learning curve there. He's learning. He's learning how to play linebacker for the first time. We put him in a position last year where he was see ball, get ball. Now he's in a position where he's got to get over the top. He's got a back coming out of the backfield. He's got to be disciplined and can't lose his eyes on the quarterback mesh. Fourth down, there's a lot going on there, and he's trying to sort it out. You're catching a young player early on in his career, and he's going through some growing pains."
While I understand a young player going through growing pains, why on god's green earth would you hamstring your most talented player this badly in a game where your team pretty much had to win?
LSU has the schedule to overcome the Week 1 loss, but what makes you think the Tigers can beat Alabama in Tuscaloosa or whoever comes out of the SEC East, in addition to Ole Miss or Texas A&M?
LSU HC Brian Kelly defends misuse of Harold Perkins in Florida State loss
In theory, the thought to make Perkins essentially a quarterback spy of Florida State star Jordan Travis makes sense. Oftentimes, the best player in the front-seven of a really good defense will do that. However, the LSU defense could have really used Perkins' pass-rushing prowess to overcome one of the weakest secondaries we have seen in Baton Rouge in years. Florida State cooked them!
Overall, there are not many teams in the SEC that will be as good as Florida State is this season over in the ACC. The Seminoles are for real and should be on your shortlist of teams who can realistically make the College Football Playoff. Yours truly has the 'Noles playing for a national title. That could change, but Mike Norvell's team was that impressive Week 1, whereas Kelly's squad underwhelmed.
Ultimately, LSU still has so much to play for. Perkins is only a true sophomore, so he has one more year of required eligibility after this. If the Tigers go 8-0 in SEC play and beat someone like Georgia or Tennessee in Atlanta, they will make the College Football Playoff for the second time in school history. Unfortunately, they have no margin for error and have been saddled with a tough Week 1 loss.
I'm no college football head coach, but I wouldn't have messed with Perkins' position vs. Florida State.
