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By Aman Sharma
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Lane Kiffin promised better LSU Tigers rosters are coming, a pledge the first-year coach made after the Texas Longhorns rallied to beat his team 22-21 in Baton Rouge.
The defeat followed a blown lead against Alabama one week earlier and dropped the Tigers to 6-4, effectively ending their College Football Playoff hopes.
The Tigers’ final two regular-season games, a trip to No. 8 Tennessee and a Nov. 28 visit to Arkansas, no longer carry playoff stakes. LSU spent $54 million to buy out Brian Kelly, then landed Kiffin, previously at Ole Miss, on a seven-year, $91 million contract.
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Kiffin didn’t hedge when asked about LSU’s long-term foundation.
“I’m not concerned about that at all,” he said. “I’m concerned that we lost. I’m not concerned about the future. I said it weeks before when we were winning, that we’ll have better rosters. And that’s no poor reflection upon these players. We just will. We will have been here. We’ll have built depth. We won’t have senior days with two scholarship players.”
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LSU held a 21-10 cushion with 5:52 showing on the third-quarter clock. The offense punted on each of its last four drives, its longest such run all year.
Texas answered with a pair of field goals. Trailing by five with six seconds remaining, Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning sent running back Raleek Brown in motion, and Brown took a quick swing pass 4 yards for the score without being touched.
Quarterback Sam Leavitt, a prized transfer, threw three interceptions, two on red-zone trips. Kiffin called them “poor decisions.”
ESPN Research found that LSU’s streak of 111 straight home wins after holding a double-digit lead past halftime is over. The last such loss was to Tennessee in 2005.
Kiffin conceded the spending raised the bar.
“I get it,” he said. “Underperformance, doesn’t matter if the game’s been close or they go down to the last, whatever, six seconds. We were brought here to win, and we need to win more than that.”
He pointed to Texas coach Steve Sarkisian, who finished 5-7 during his first year in Austin.
That comparison has a catch. LSU’s roster budget jumped from approximately $18-20 million in 2025 to well over $40 million in 2026, CBS Sports reported.
Kiffin owns a 15-28 career mark versus AP Top 25 teams. His next crack at a ranked opponent is a road game against No. 8 Tennessee.
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