Brian Kelly Talks About Maason Smith's Injury & The DL Plan Moving Forward

by Staff Reporter

September 6, 20222 Comments

Stephen Lew-USA TODAY Sports

During his weekly press conference on Tuesday, LSU head coach Brian Kelly confirmed Maason Smith's ACL injury and talked about the defensive line plan which will include Mehki Wingo and others moving forward:

quote:
Q. Can you confirm Maason's injury and how that affects the rotation on the D-line?

BRIAN KELLY: Yes, I can confirm, our doctors confirmed an ACL tear yesterday after an MRI. Obviously we're crushed for him because he was celebrating for a teammate on the play. Trying to show his support for a teammate.

So any time you suffer an injury under those circumstances it's extremely disappointing. He's a great player. You're going to miss great players, but it's next-man-in now for us from that standpoint.

So you got to count on other guys to step up, and they did in the game. I think our defensive line rallied, played as hard as they could.

You certainly wouldn't, after film study, single that out as a reason for not having success. So we'll call on some other players to step up in that role, and we'll have to be in some instances creative, and putting guys if position where we can succeed defensively.

Q. Coach, with Maason Smith injured for the remainder of the season, Mehki Wingo is expected to take on a larger role filling his shoes. Those are large shoes to fill. How effectively do you believe he'll do that, and what's his attitude been like since the game?

BRIAN KELLY: Oh, Mehki has been amazing. Been a great leader. He won this week's squad team points again. He's a terrific leader.

He played very well in the game. He's active. Yeah, I mean, Maason Smith is -- you know, it's hard to compare anybody to him. His size, athleticism. But Mehki Wingo is going to be Mehki Wingo.

What he does is extremely effective as a football player, and he gets now obviously a bigger share of that work. It'll be incumbent upon others to step up as well.