Lane Kiffin’s first night in charge of LSU looked less like a debut and more like a takeover.
A weather delay pushed kickoff from 6:49 p.m. to 8:41 p.m., but once the Tigers got rolling, nothing Clemson tried could slow them down. LSU hammered a ranked opponent 51-10, and the numbers behind it were just as loud as the score.
The offense, with Charlie Weis Jr. handling the play-calling while Kiffin directed everything around him, set an LSU record with 38 first downs. The Tigers went 11-for-16 on third down.
Clemson managed only eight first downs and converted just once on 13 third-down chances against defensive coordinator Blake Baker’s unit. LSU’s defense forced nine three-and-out punts and 10 punts overall.
LSU also piled up 644 total yards, its most since a 667-yard night against South Alabama in 2024. On the ground, the Tigers rushed for 309 yards, their best total since Nov. 11, 2023, when LSU beat Florida 52-35.
This time, transfer running back Dilin Jones led the way with 113 yards on 23 carries. Kiffin has always leaned into the run game, and this group looked built to punish defenses at the line of scrimmage.
New transfer quarterback Sam Leavitt added another layer to the attack. He ran for 113 yards and two touchdowns on 12 carries, then settled in as a passer to finish 16-of-28 for 230 yards.
One of his best throws was a 32-yard touchdown to Ole Miss transfer Winnie Watkins. Leavitt completed passes to eight different players, including seven new transfers.
The defense was just as ruthless. Clemson finished with 40 rushing yards and averaged 1.5 yards per carry.
LSU last scored this freely against a major-conference opponent in that 52-35 win over Florida in 2023, and this opener matched another benchmark too: LSU has not scored so much and allowed so little in a coach’s first game since Nick Saban’s 58-0 win over Western Carolina on Sept. 2, 2000.
Afterward, Kiffin leaned into the atmosphere almost as much as the performance. A football was tossed to him as he headed toward the locker room, and he threw it back.
He said, “Felt like I was back at Mardi Gras,” and added, “It was pretty awesome. It was pretty electric.”
He also praised the crowd for sticking around through the delay.
“I think the whole day was really neat - how electric the campus was,” he said. “That’s what LSU is supposed to be.
That’s why we’re here. I’m not making huge statements.
It’s one game, but I’m just saying, that’s the LSU swagger.”
He kept coming back to the same point: this was the atmosphere LSU is supposed to have.
“That’s the energy,” he said. “That’s how the stadium is supposed to be.”
Kiffin said the delay could have emptied the place, but didn’t.
“It’s hard to come in and play here, hard to play on offense (for the opponent), especially quarterbacks,” he said. “I commend the fans a lot because you could have left.
You have this big delay. You’ve been up all day (with many drinking most of the day and early night).
And all of a sudden, you don’t know how long the delay is going to be. And it’s raining.
And there’s lightning, and you could leave.”
He said the crowd’s energy showed up before the game ever restarted.
“But we came out to an electric atmosphere,” Kiffin said, and again he wasn’t talking about the lightning. “I think it started there.
It started seeing the fans’ energy there. And so, that was really cool to see, and I appreciate that a lot.”
For Kiffin, the contrast with his old stomping ground in Oxford was impossible to miss. He had gone 0-3 in Tiger Stadium as Ole Miss’ coach, including a 29-26 overtime loss two years ago next month that still lingered in the building.
He called the visiting locker room “that locker room sucks over there,” and said, “It’s great to be on this side. I’ve been over there when it’s been really intense, and I was glad to be on this side.
It was pretty awesome, really cool.”
Then he reached for a Bruce Springsteen line to describe it all, comparing Tiger Stadium to “The Mansion On The Hill” from Nebraska. For Kiffin, LSU now feels like the house he used to look at from the outside.
“If you’ve only been on that other side of something, you’re always like, ‘What would that be like?’ Kind of like maybe you drive by a house somewhere,” he said.
“And you’re like, ‘Man, what if we ever lived over there?’ And now you get to.
It’s pretty cool.”
Welcome to Baton Rouge, Mr. Kiffin.
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