LSU’s road to the CFP begins with another tough season opener

ATLANTA (WGNO) — The expectations for LSU football this year are the highest they’ve been in the Brian Kelly era.

We can talk about the stacked roster, transfer portal class, and quarterback Garrett Nussmeier returning all we want.

Still, the reality is, it’ll be hard for the Tigers to achieve their national championship goal if they don’t conquer their season-opener demons.

LSU has lost five straight openers, and this year, Brian Kelly’s team will visit Clemson to start the 2025 regular season.

A contest that the Tigers are greatly anticipating.

“If you go through our weight room, we’ve got a Clemson paw print on the bags that we hit every day. It’s on every monitor in the building to go 1-0. It was important to have a tangible, specific goal for us to start the season,” said LSU head coach Kelly.

The Clemson paw print symbolizes a shift in how LSU will approach the opener. A more one-game-at-a-time mentality.

“I needed to look at, critically, what we were doing relative to our preparation for the first game and playing a team like Clemson, which is a national championship program that has a great pedigree. I felt like I needed to change the way we looked at the opener,” said Kelly.

It’s a mentality that Garrett Nussmeier and the rest of the players have embraced as well.

“I think we acknowledge that the last five week one openers haven’t gone our way. We’re not hiding from that fact, and we know it’s a thing. We’ve had a change of mindset of going 1-0. At LSU you always have an expectation to compete for a championship, and I think sometimes in the offseason, that gets lost in our heads of focusing on that too much. I think this switch has been more of just focusing on the week one game,” said LSU quarterback Nussmeier.

The LSU Tigers will battle Clemson on Saturday, August 30th at 6:30 p.m. on WGNO and ABC affiliates.

We will break down the season opener during our one-hour Sports Zone Saturday Night Football postgame special.

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