LSU opened fall camp on Wednesday as fourth-year head coach Brian Kelly and staff put the Tigers through a 12-period practice here at the Charles McClendon Practice Facility.
LSU opens its season on Saturday, Aug. 30 at Clemson in what will likely be a Top 10 matchup. It will be LSU’s first trip to Clemson and the first meeting between the teams since January 13, 2020, when the Tigers claimed the CFP National Championship with a 42-25 win in New Orleans.
Wednesday’s workout was the first of four straight for the Tigers this week before using Sunday as a recovery day. The first seven days of camp will serve as an acclimatization period for the Tigers with practice periods and time outside ramping up each practice.
“This is all about acclimatization,” Kelly said following Wednesday’s workout. “We are going to have seven days where we have to acclimatize our football team. We feel like the data 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.
“We will go from 12 (periods), to 16, to 18, to 20. We’ll go four days and have a day off; we’ll go three days and have a day off. Within that first seven is the highest incidence for soft tissue injuries. We want to make sure we get through these seven days acclimatized without any soft tissue injuries. Then we can get into two weeks of camp and game week prep giving us three weeks to duplicate our process.”
LSU’s training camp roster features 64 returning players along with 18 transfer portal additions and 28 true freshmen.
“We have been doing this for seven months with this group,” Kelly said of the mix of returnees and newcomers, “Seven months of observation, seven month of leadership development, seven months of working physically, technically and tactically in bringing this together. I feel really good about the football team that we put out on the field in the next four weeks.
“This has been an ongoing process that started back in January and we’ve seen the thing that needs to happen relative to a team caring about each other, being on time, playing with a passion and effort and holding each other to a high standard. I love what I see about this football team and that’s why I’m bullish on our team. Now we have to go play and execute when we need to execute, but I like where we are at.”
Wednesday also marked the return of linebackers Harold Perkins and Whit Weeks, who both missed time last year due to injuries. Weeks was hurt in the Texas Bowl against Baylor, while Perkins missed the final nine games with a knee injury. Weeks is a preseason All-America after earning first-team All-SEC honors last year. Perkins is a two-time All-SEC selection and earned Freshman All-America honors in 2022.
“Their presence is impactful,” Kelly said. “You see them, you feel them, you hear them. 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. It’s hard to replace great players, but it’s even harder to replace great leaders and those guys lead by example and make a huge difference.”
LSU gets back on the practice field on Thursday morning for its second workout of fall camp.