Lane Kiffin made plenty of mistakes during his one season as the head coach of the Tennessee Vols.

From recruiting violations to calling out Urban Meyer, it was an adventurous 14 months during Kiffin’s tenure in Knoxville.

One of his most famous blunders was not offering defensive back Tyrann Mathieu, who went to earn SEC Defensive Player of the Year honors at LSU in 2011 and eventually win a Super Bowl with the Kansas City Chiefs (the Honey Badger was a three-time First-Team All-Pro in the NFL).

The former LSU safety said earlier this year on the In the Bayou Podcast that he was interested in playing for the Volunteers, but he never received an offer from Kiffin.

Mathieu dominated a camp at Tennessee as a high school recruit, but Kiffin never gave him an offer.

And Mathieu, who sounded like he’s still annoyed all these years later that he didn’t get an offer from UT, admitted that he felt “some kind of way” about getting spurned by Kiffin and the Vols.

“You know what’s funny? You know who the coach was? Lane Kiffin,” said Mathieu. “I absolutely dominated that football camp, and this dude still didn’t give me a scholarship. My grandma used to say, ‘Son just stay alive, though, you might see it again.’ It’s just crazy that I’m back around him now. I mean, he’s coaching my school. And we’ve got to have a relationship because of who I am and who he is. But I think back about not getting a scholarship at Tennessee. I really felt some type of way about that.”

Here’s what VolQuest’s Brent Hubbs said in 2009 about Mathieu’s performance at that camp.

“Halfway through Tuesday’s camp, the buzz was growing,” wrote Hubbs. “Who was the guy in the purple shorts playing cornerback? Other campers didn’t know his name, so they just started saying that he was ‘the truth’ or ‘the real deal.’ With each rep, the audience watching New Orleans defensive back Tyrann Mathieu was growing. And the audience got a full show as Mathieu excelled all afternoon and got every rep possible, even jumping to the front of the line at times.”

Lane Kiffin addresses not offering Tyrann Mathieu

Kiffin joined Mathieu on the In The Bayou podcast this week and he was asked by the Honey Badger why he didn’t get an offer from Tennessee in 2009.

The current LSU head coach put the blame on former Vols assistant coaches Ed Orgeron and Frank Wilson for the recruiting miss.

“How did you miss out on me at Tennessee that year?” said Mathieu. “I was the best player at that camp.”

“I brought Orgeron down (for the podcast) — he was supposed to stay for this question,” said Kiffin. “Because he was the recruiting coordinator that day when you came to camp. So he takes the blame for that.

“I was over more with the offensive guys, and Coach O and Frank Wilson up there. And so they kind of gave me the defensive report, and they’re like, ‘Man, he didn’t really run a good 40, [and he’s] not quite that tall.’ So I blame Frank and Orgeron for that.”

Every coach has missed on players who went on to become a star elsewhere — no one bats 1.000 in their evaluations.

Most head coaches, however, tend to say, “It’s on me as the head coach.”

But that’s apparently not how it works in Lane Kiffin’s world.