If I’m an LSU fan, I’m not panicking about Lane Kiffin after the loss to the Kentucky Wildcats, and here’s why.

I understand nobody wants to lose any game on the schedule, especially on the road. And I know it doesn’t make the sting any easier when somebody writes to tell you not to panic. But the LSU Tigers are exactly where they should be in Kiffin’s first season, and I’d argue they’re ahead of where most people should have expected them to be.

Of course, there are flaws. There’s a reason LSU lost that game. You lost the turnover battle, and you couldn’t run the football effectively enough. Those are real problems.

But then again, all of those things happened, and it still took a two-point conversion in overtime for Kentucky to win the ball game. That’s not a team getting exposed. That’s a coin flip that didn’t go in the Tigers’ favor.

Lane Kiffin’s first year was never going to be a coronation

Look at what this LSU team is working with in Year 1. Kiffin is playing his third choice at quarterback because he went after both Brendan Sorsby and Demond Williams and didn’t land either one. The Tigers are also missing their best offensive weapon, Trey’Dez Green, due to injury. And both of their losses were close, close losses on the road.

Need I remind you what that combination usually looks like for a first-year coach at a blue blood? It looks a lot worse than this.

And you may say, Tegan, LSU has every resource in the country, so why shouldn’t they be dominating right now? Well, they do have every resource. They have a ton of young pieces, and they have the portal king at the helm. But to expect Kiffin to just walk in and waltz his way to a national championship was delusional to begin with.

I think this is going to take a little bit more time than the national media perceived when it came to LSU.

The Kentucky matchup was a scheme problem for the Tigers

I think LSU’s defense is solid. I just think Kentucky, with its scheme and the way that staff prepares, is really difficult to handle when you try to play man coverage against it.

I picked Kentucky to win this ball game. I believed Will Stein could manipulate man coverage, and man coverage is what you see Blake Baker lean on time and time again. That’s a bad stylistic matchup, and it showed. It’s not an indictment of the entire program.

And speaking of Baker, I fully expect him to take a Group of Five head coaching job at the end of this season. That opens the door for Kiffin to do what he does best: evaluate talent and replace coordinators with his own vision for this program. I’m not saying that as a knock on Baker. I’m saying it because I think Kiffin is going to put his stamp on this staff the same way he’s already putting his stamp on this roster.

Why Kiffin left Ole Miss in the first place

Here’s the piece I think a lot of people are glossing over. I believe what Kiffin noticed at Ole Miss was that the resources there, compared to the scale of an LSU, would never keep him as consistently in the national championship conversation as he wanted to be.

He didn’t come to Baton Rouge for a quick fix. He came for the ceiling. And LSU’s ceiling, with the money, the recruiting footprint, and a coach who works the transfer portal better than anyone, is about as high as it gets in the entire country.

So when I see a team with a quarterback pursuit that went the way it did, with its top weapon sidelined, and two road losses decided by the thinnest of margins, I don’t see a program in trouble. I see a program that’s still being built, and built on a foundation that is still really good.

This isn’t me trying to give LSU fans a reality check. It’s the opposite. You guys are on the absolute right trajectory, and I still 100 percent believe Kiffin is going to get you there.