Brian Kelly obviously isn’t the most popular guy among LSU fans.

The Kelly era in Baton Rouge was underwhelming, and he managed to alienate far too many people. National championships were the expectation, but Kelly was never able to get LSU to a championship level.

But I’ll give Kelly credit for one thing — he isn’t letting the way his time at LSU ended affect his view of the Tigers under Lane Kiffin.

Kelly is serving as a college football analyst this season, and he had some thoughts on LSU after watching his former employer dominate Clemson in Week 1.

The former LSU head coach thinks the Tigers have a national championship-winning defense this season.

Of course, in true Brian Kelly fashion, he had to pat himself on the back while making the observation.

“I think what I walk away from in watching the game is, is some of the things that I struggled with in the last year is that we did not run the ball efficiently,” said Kelly on The Early Read with Danny Kanell and Roy Philpott on Sirius XM (via On3). “I thought (LSU) ran the ball extremely well. And I know Blake, I hired Blake Baker, the defensive coordinator. I thought their defense looked every bit as a national championship defense, in the pieces that he has. So I guess we all know this, right? We’ve been around it. If you have a great defense and you can run the football, everybody’s working on the other pieces, right?

“Nobody’s a complete football team. And I think those are the two things that I take away. I love what the defense looks like and the running game being really effective is really gonna bode well for this football team to be in it when we get down to the last few teams.”

Kelly isn’t a bad football coach — he did some great things at Notre Dame (and he managed to beat Nick Saban while at LSU) — but he was never a good fit in Baton Rouge — it was obvious from day one.

Kiffin, despite the controversy that often surrounds him, is a much, much better fit for LSU.