Spring Transfer Portal Wasn't Great for LSU Football yet defendable
![Sep 30, 2023; Oxford, Mississippi, USA; LSU Tigers head coach Brian Kelly watches from the sideline Sep 30, 2023; Oxford, Mississippi, USA; LSU Tigers head coach Brian Kelly watches from the sideline](https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_crop,w_4295,h_2415,x_0,y_0/c_fill,w_720,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto/images/ImagnImages/mmsport/162/01hy45smw92mgzxbprvb.jpg)
This Spring the LSU Football team had a clear plan as they wanted to land starting-caliber defensive tackles. Brian Kelly said himself that this was the plan and based on the visitor schedule this Spring you could see that Kelly wanted land some of the Nation's best available defensive tackles.
Despite hosting and offering scholarships to nearly a dozen different players at defensive tackle as well as at other positions the LSU Football team landed only one transfer in Grand Valley State defensive tackle Jay'viar Suggs.
The LSU Football team targeted plenty of SEC Caliber talent but, they all chose different Power Five and SEC Schools. The primary reason that LSU didn't land a solid Spring Transfer class is NIL as Brian Kelly said they aren't in the market of "buying players. Many took this as Brian Kelly saying that he didn't believe in NIL however, this is being misconstrued.
What Brian Kelly really meant when he said this was that he wasn't in the market of buying players of a certain type of player. There were a ton of transfers that have had okay results none of the players were of the top-tier caliber that we saw in the fall. It's been rumored that a few of the players that LSU targeted were asking for around a million dollars from a team that would take them.
The LSU Football team has made the 2025 recruiting class a clear priority as they hold the nation's second-ranked recruiting class. The new normal will require mass spending on NIL to land a class of LSU Football's caliber.
The question becomes would you rather spend top dollar on a defensive tackle that will only make an impact for one year or spend that money on a recruit that can be a potential key piece for several years? By not spending big on transfers this Spring, Brian Kelly isn't saying he won't buy players but, that he'd be willing to buy the right players.
Brian Kelly's approach is the proper approach
The approach by Brian Kelly to target regular recruits rather than transfers is the right move and a strategy that more teams will start to adopt. Bringing in a player the team paid massive amounts of money for one season could be negatively received by the locker room. It also doesn't make too much sense for a program to put all their eggs into one basket paying a massive sum of money for one season. The final point is a ton of the players that LSU was targeting in the portal weren't the top-end players that would immediately fix the defense and a player like Suggs who wants to be at LSU to develop is the proper move.
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