LSU Football: Why we might be overhyping Brian Kelly and his transfer portal additions

New LSU football head coach Brian Kelly was hired to replace Ed Orgeron to bring some consistency to the Tigers.

Orgeron won a national championship at LSU — which is always the goal in Baton Rouge — but he was unable to keep the Tigers competing at a championship level.

The hope is that Kelly will be able to bring the consistency he had at Notre Dame — where it’s extremely difficult to win a national championship — to LSU.

The thought process is that Kelly will have more talent to work with in Baton Rouge than he had in South Bend. More talent = more championships.

At least that’s the plan.

Are we overhyping Brian Kelly and LSU football’s transfer portal additions?

When Kelly got to LSU, he immediately started bolstering the Tigers’ roster via the transfer portal.

LSU has added 13 transfers during this cycle. As a result, the Tigers’ have the No. 3 ranked transfer portal class (per 247Sports).

But they may not be as good as it sounds.

According to 247Sports, the Tigers are one of the biggest “losers” during this transfer cycle.

That’s because LSU lost 12 players to the portal with an average ranking of 90.23.

The 13 players that LSU added have an average ranking of 87.92.

That’s a net rating loss of -2.31.

So while Kelly added some much-needed players from the portal, the Tigers’ talent in 2022 will be less than it was in 2021.

Now, this isn’t all Kelly’s fault. Turnover happens in the middle of a coaching change. In most of these cases, there was nothing that could’ve been done.

Kelly was just the victim of circumstance.

But I think we have to point this out in fairness to Kelly. He’s not working with quite as much talent some might think. The expectations shouldn’t be sky-high for Kelly in 2022. Not until he can get LSU’s talent back to where it needs to be.