Shannon Sharpe blasts Brian Kelly for attacking players

Shannon Sharpe didn’t mince words when it came to Brian Kelly.

After calling the LSU head coach’s meltdown in his postgame press conference “BS,” Sharpe went on his Nightcap show with Chad Johnson and got fired up over Kelly placing the blame on his players after the 27-20 loss. While Kelly did take accountability, saying that perhaps he’s not doing a good enough job, that wasn’t good enough for Sharpe.

The First Take personality said that 62-year-old Kelly should have led by taking accountability rather than starting his press conference by saying he was angry with his players.

“You lead with that,” said Sharpe. You don’t say after you called out your players and then say, ‘I gotta do a better job of coaching,’ you say, ‘I gotta do a better job of coaching,’ and you leave the other part out until you get behind closed doors. You can’t lead… ‘Oh, I gotta do better…’ You done reamed the team. You done said it was them. And then, hold on. If they keep doing the same thing you talked about, what is it?

“There’s a disconnect here. So, the wires are getting crossed because why aren’t they understanding what you’re saying? Or are you saying it in a form they can’t understand? That’s your job as a coach. When you see them on the sideline, and they feel like they’ve got the game won, what are you doing?”

After lamenting the season-opening loss, Johnson and Sharpe agreed that LSU should be able to compete with all of the top teams in the SEC (Alabama, Texas, Ole Miss, Oklahoma). They excluded Georgia because Kirby Smart’s team is probably head and shoulders better than everyone else this season, but that doesn’t mean the Tigers won’t be able to compete in the SEC.

That is, unless Kelly continues to throw his players under the bus, says Sharpe.

“At some point in time, you keep blaming your players, they gonna be like ‘Uh, no coach, you,'” he said.

While Johnson said LSU players won’t fold on their head coach, the same can’t be said for the NFL. But there’s a difference there, and Sharpe said you’re dealing with “grown a** men.”

“He got a mortgage, he got a wife,” said Sharpe. “A lot of them got wives, got kids. You think you can talk to him like you can an 18 or 19-year-old? Because that 18 and 19-year-old is trying to get where that grown a** man is already that. And a lot of these grown a** men make more than the coaches. They will fight the you-know-what out of a coach. I ain’t telling you what somebody told, Ocho; I’m telling you what I know.”

We know that Kelly attacking his players wouldn’t work in the NFL, which is perhaps why he never made the jump. We also know that Sharpe isn’t too fond of Kelly, as he admitted prior to the segment, in which he called LSU’s head coach “overrated.”

Sharpe isn’t the first ESPNer to criticize Kelly’s coaching methods. On Monday, Paul Finebaum said he’s tired of hearing a coach who’s paid $11 million say that he needs to do a better job coaching when it’s available to him throughout the game.

There’s a disconnect there, as the Tigers have now lost three straight season openers under Kelly. Perhaps it’s time for a change in approach.

[ Nightcap ]

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