Are the Tigers a Contenders or Pretenders? Comparing 2026 to Years Past

On October 22, 2022, LSU Football posted a clip of then-head coach Brian Kelly in the locker room saying, “October is for pretenders. November is for contenders.”

Kelly told this to his 6-2 team following a 45-20 win over a seventh-ranked, Lane Kiffin-led Ole Miss. The next game the Tigers played would go down as the biggest win of the Brian Kelly era at LSU. On November 5, in Baton Rouge, Kelly and LSU hosted Alabama for Nick Saban’s last game coaching in Death Valley. The contest would head into overtime. The Crimson Tide would score first and kick the extra point to make it 31-24. LSU would score on their first offensive play in overtime on a 25-yard Jayden Daniels read option. Kelly made the call to go for two and the win instead of kicking the extra point. You remember how that went, right? Daniels lined up in the shotgun, ball on the left hash, two receivers split out to the right, one tight end on the left, and Mason Taylor lined up as the H-back on the right side; then Taylor motioned across to the left, then back to the right, then the snap, Taylor drifted toward the pylon as Daniels rolled a few steps to his right and fired one over to Taylor, who fell over the goal line for the successful try.

“It’s good! LSU does it! Mason Taylor!” Chris Fowler vociferated over the broadcast.

Whether watching at home or rushing the field, it certainly felt as if LSU had returned to contender status in just the first year under Brian Kelly. It was not to be. Kelly led the Tigers to a late-November loss at Texas A&M before dropping a fourth game of the season in the SEC Championship Game to Georgia.

2023 started the way 2022 did: with a loss to Florida State and the Tigers behind the 8-ball. With a 55-49 loss to Kiffin’s Ole Miss, LSU had two losses before November arrived. That would be followed up by one final 42-28 death blow to LSU’s playoff hopes at the hands of Nick Saban and Alabama.

With 10-4 and 10-3 records under his belt at LSU, 2024’s hopes were that Kelly would finally be able to build the roster the way he needed to contend. Once again, LSU lost a season opener to USC in Las Vegas. Breaking the fourth wall a bit: this was the game where I began to question if this Brian Kelly experiment would work out. The loss to Lincoln Riley and the Trojans was brutal, considering Riley was also a name on the hot board to replace Ed Orgeron when Kelly was hired. A six-game win streak followed the loss to Riley’s USC before the Tigers would drop three straight to Texas A&M, Alabama and Florida, spanning from October 26 to November 16. The Tigers, led by Kelly, proved they were pretenders again, missing the playoff even in its first expanded year.

Maybe 2025 would be different after Kelly took the Tigers to Clemson and won their first season-opening game since 2019 in a hard-fought 17-10 battle. Kelly and LSU would rattle off three more wins before facing Kiffin and Ole Miss in Oxford in a top-15 matchup. This matchup with Ole Miss cemented two ideas in the minds of LSU fans. First, Garrett Nussmeier’s injury situation was worse than advertised; second, if LSU decided to move on from Brian Kelly, Lane Kiffin would be a very entertaining coach to have in Baton Rouge.

LSU would drop that game and two more before the end of October, including the repugnant 49-25 loss to Texas A&M that saw the Tigers blow an 18-14 halftime lead, which resulted in the removal of Brian Kelly. Under interim head coach Frank Wilson, LSU would finish the regular season 2-2.

In 2022, Kiffin was the opponent Kelly defeated right before making the famous “contender” statement. In 2025, Kiffin was the coach whose top-15 matchup sealed the fate of Kelly’s tenure in Baton Rouge. Now in 2026, Kiffin is the one standing at the podium in Baton Rouge, tasked with proving he is a contender. Yet 6-2 in 2026 carries a completely different weight than 6-2 did in 2022 or 2024.

2026 LSU at 6-2 is one of the most dangerous teams in the country. Most dangerous does not necessarily mean best; dangerous here means unpredictable, erratic, inscrutable, enigmatic. It is the tiger in an enclosure you know would maul you if ever given the chance. Brian Kelly’s 6-2s felt more like Mike IV in 1981, escaping and wandering around campus, full of potential to cause damage but ultimately sedated with three tranquilizer darts and returned to his habitat.

The stats back the idea of LSU being more dangerous in 2026 than in years past. Through eight games, Kiffin’s numbers are better than Kelly’s four-season averages in every category (Kiffin first, Kelly second): yards per game, 510.0 to 440.4; yards allowed per game, 258.1 to 366.1; passing yards per game, 318.0 to 288.2; passing yards allowed per game, 172.8 to 222.7; rushing yards per game, 192.0 to 152.2; rushing yards allowed per game, 85.4 to 143.4; points per game, 40.1 to 33.3; and points allowed per game, 16.0 to 23.7. . It is, however, just eight games into the season; the numbers are hard to ignore, and with Alabama, Texas, Tennessee and Arkansas left on the horizon, those stats may be a bit inflated. A counterpoint to that is that Brian Kelly never had to play a nine-game conference schedule.

Kelly came the closest to a playoff berth in Year One. Can Kiffin and company do what Kelly never could and reach the playoffs this year and beyond? With the way Kiffin is building the roster and the program’s philosophy, the same falloff would be unlikely. Only time will tell if this year’s Tigers are contenders or pretenders.