BATON ROUGE - LSU football head coach Brian Kelly spoke to the media on Wednesday morning after the first day of fall camp.

The Tigers are just one month away from facing the Clemson Tigers on August 30 at 6:30 pm on WBRZ.

SHORT PRACTICE:

"Well, I think this is all about acclimatization, right? We're going to have seven days where you have to acclimatize your football team. So we felt like the data that we have compiled over the last three years relative to short term soft tissue injuries, we wanted to be able to increase the player load each and every day, so we'll go from 12 to 16 to 18 to 20, we'll go four days, we'll have a day off. We'll go three days and have a day off. So within that first seven is the highest incident for soft tissue injuries. We want to make sure that we get through these seven days acclimatized without any soft tissue injuries, and two recovery days so then we can get into really two weeks of camp. And, you know, obviously game week prep, we'll have three weeks to duplicate our process."

NEW PLAYERS AND HOW THEY’RE BUILDING:

"If we're putting the team together for the first time today, I'd be nervous. I really would, but we've been doing this for seven months with this group, so seven months of observation, seven months of leadership development, seven months of working physically and technically and tactically and bringing this together. I feel really good about the football team that we put out on the field in three and a half four weeks. But again, I would say that this has been an ongoing process that started back in January, and we've seen, you know, the things that need to happen relative to a team caring about each other. You know, being on time, playing with with, you know, a passion and effort, and you know, certainly holding each other to a high standard. I love what I've seen about this football team. I feel that's why I've been bullish on our team. Now we've got to go play. You got to go win the games and execute when you need to execute. But I like where we're at."

FRONT OFFICE MOVES AND WHY:

"I would say that, I would probably say five years ago and and it's accelerated as fast as any component in college football here, that, to me, is what college football is about, right? It's not about, you know, do you have the resources? It's about adapting to the current trends that we're confronted with, and in particular this instance, where you now have revenue sharing, which requires contracts, which requires lawyers and agents, which then you respond in kind by, you know, adding those that can interface on a day to day basis with them. I can't do all that. It's impossible. Can I be in the center of it? Can it be centralized around me? Yes, but then I have to have others that can go and execute those conversations and the things necessary to adapt to college football today."

SEASON OPENER:

"I'll go back to January. What's happened since January is the response to your question, if you're just reacting to not having a win in the opener, to feeding them chicken wings instead of steak, then you're reacting in a manner that doesn't give you an opportunity to be successful. We've addressed this in January. We addressed it with the guys that we brought in. We addressed it in the way we trained our football team. We addressed it in spring ball, and then into our off season. And again, we've made it pretty known. You know what our goal is, and our goal is to go one and all. And so if there's anything that is slightly different from in years past, it's that we were so much more intentional about getting to August 31 in January, and that focus has remained the same for the last seven and a half months."

WHIT WEEKS AND HAROLD PERKINS:

"Presence, right? Presence, I think we all can, you know, appreciate the day one. And you know, we're, we're trying to feel ourselves, you know, a little bit in terms of getting our feet in the ground and playing football. But presence is impactful, right there. You see them, you feel them, you hear them. And so when somebody is not around in a room, you can kind of feel the temperature change a little bit. The temperature is a little bit different when those two guys are in the room. And so, you know, people talk about missing somebody, you know, it's hard to replace great players, but it's even harder to replace, you know, great leaders, and those guys lead by example and make a huge difference. "

DOM MCKINLEY:

"Well, he's forced our athletic development staff, our training staff, athletic training and weight training. We ran out of weights for him to max squat. He was 650 pounds Max squad. And so I just throw that out to you as how powerful he is, and he's such a great kid. He's so grounded, he wants to get better every single day, and he has elite, you know, strength and numbers from that perspective. So, yeah, he's going to play a major role in what we do. He's still learning. Coach going to get him with him right on his hip every day, but he's but he's enjoyable to coach."

STAFF RETURNING INTACT:

"I mean, I think, you know, year two build some continuity and but I think it's a comfort level with the individuals in themselves. Like, you know, Joe doesn't have to go out and prove anything. Cortez doesn't have to prove anything. Just be who you are, right? I mean, first year you're kind of, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. I think there's a lot more comfort in terms of just doing their jobs. And then Blake, you know, obviously, you know, getting him some tools, you know, where he can go be Blake Baker, you know, and call the defense the way he wants to. And so, you know, we address those things in the off season again, you know, we come to camp, so it's like, okay, everything starts today. But, you know, we're in the last lap of this, you know. And so a lot of this work has been, you know, things that we've been intentional on for the last seven and a half months. But I would say comfort level and just giving them the tools to just go do your job. You don't have to do any more than that."

WIDE RECEIVERS:

"I mean, we're too deep in a swing, maybe two swings in terms of, you know, I'm talking about eight receivers. We have eight SEC high caliber receivers. These guys are really good football players, and so it's incumbent upon us to put them in a position to succeed for themselves and for our team. I think that's the biggest management right now, is doing that and then being smart, right? You know? And when you have that kind of depth, you can you can lessen the player load for these guys across the board and keep them fresh. And so what we've told them is it's one A, 1b I mean, and we're going to be rolling guys in and out. But I would be less than honest if I didn't say it's, it's as deep as I've ever had. Now we got to go play."

NIC ANDERSON:

"We kept him out of contact today. He had gone through our concussion protocol. He got into a little fender bender, and so we wanted to make sure so he's cleared our concussion protocol. So today was his day of non contact. He'll be he'll be able to get into 11 on 11, seven on seven tomorrow."

GARRETT NUSSMEIER GROWTH:

"I think we've, we've documented some of the things that he needs to be better at, and that is, you know, his worst play needs to be zero, you know. And that's okay, you know, zero is okay. We can live with zero. What we can't live with is, you know, catastrophic mistakes. And I think you have to live through that to know what your limits are, right? And so I think he knows what those limits are in terms of, you know, managing a bad play and making it zero. I think that's experience. I think physically, he's taking care of his body. So he understands that he ran 21.4 miles per hour. That's high four fives he can run. So I think he clearly understands that when the opportunity arises that he can take off and and be an effective runner. So I think that's the growth, and then that's just the technical things, right? I mean, on time, throws never turned down a profit, you know, meaning, if there's a check down, you know, check it down. It doesn't have to always be down the field. So I think that's experience. I think some of it's technical, and I think he's in great position to do that."

OFFENSIVE LINE:

"Are you asking that the five guys that started today is that the five that's going to play against Clemson?, not necessarily just, you know, Well, we're still competing for positions, right? You saw what we did. Raymond Moore moved into the center position. DJ Chester moved to left guard. So you guys can figure that one out. But DJ is going to compete, you know, with Paul and on the right side, Josh is going to compete with Cohen Adams. You know that that's competition. Karis Kern is going to push Tyree Borland going to push Weston Davis. You know, I think that, you know, those are pretty much you know what you should be seeing and you know how that will move. There'll be some times that maybe DJ, you know, slides in at center. We've got a guy that played 13 games at center. Let's keep them sharp. So I think you'll see some moving around there. But there's competitive battles right now on that offensive line, so we have to evaluate them as a group at five, and then individually, who makes up that best five? So I think you'll see some of that happen over the next couple of weeks."

TYREE ADAMS:

"Right now he's penciled in as the starting left tackle, but we're going to let a freshman go beat him out and give him an opportunity to do that look. I think his growth has been immense. You know, his maturity, his physical development. I think we all saw him play a really good game against an elite pass rusher in Baylor. So we've seen him play too, and so if you add what he's done in the off season, the way he's led, the confidence that he plays with, I think we are in store for some great things for him."

VERTICAL PASSING GAME:

"I mean, we've got guys that can run. Chris Hilton is healthy. He's had a great off season. You saw him at be at his chattiest that was, that was a new form for Chris. I was proud of him the way he stepped outside his comfort zone. So there is a carry over right when you are handling yourself that way and you've never been that way,  you become more assertive as a player. He's much more served as a player as well. It's a great you know, obviously mirroring of who he is. And then Baron Brown, I mean, you've got two guys that can play that exposition, that can run past anybody, whether it's a go, a post, a dig, and that is an incredible weapon, and it allows us, as I said earlier, is to lower the player load. You know, we can, they're a and b, right? They're going to get a lot of touches, a lot of snaps. And then you had Aaron Anderson, who's the ultimate playmaker, you know, look, we have to be careful with with all of our players, but, you know, we want to keep Aaron ready for Saturdays too. And so you've got Kyle Parker, who I am really high on, and I think he's going to have an incredible year. But now you can add Kyle Parker to the slot and then into the boundary. You got xavion, you've got Nick Anderson, you've got some depth there, but the real deal here is that we're going to get over the top of a lot of defenses with those two guys."