A quick housekeeping note before we get into this monumentally important topic: I’m still more or less in holiday mode and will be for the bulk of this week, so The Hayride is going to continue to have a slower flow of content until next Monday when we crank back up.

The good news is you won’t be missing a lot, because very little happens in Louisiana politics between Christmas and the new year. If something does happen, we’ll jump in and try to provide some context and perspective where we can.

And context and perspective is what I’m hoping to provide here, because I notice that there are panicans and meltards throwing fits over a recent spate of reports about players from the LSU football roster which just managed to lose a game to the University of Houston on Saturday in the Texas Bowl to finish a pathetic 7-6 for the 2025 season now entering the portal.

Specifically, they’re up to six – as of this morning – members of the offensive line who have now entered the portal…

• Carius Curne
• Coen Echols
• Tyree Adams
• D.J. Chester
• Paul Mubenga
• Ory Williams

What needs to be understood is that none of these guys were even close to good. They all saw a lot of action (Williams not until toward the end of the season, when he did play OK and then he got hurt), and none of them were dominant players.

None of them were average players, if we’re being honest. Their grades from services like Pro Football Focus were utterly alarming. And of course that added up to LSU’s offensive line in 2025 being the worst in modern memory.

They couldn’t pass block, they couldn’t run block, they committed oodles of penalties, including a ton of pre-snap penalties… LSU’s offense, which wasn’t very good scheme-wise and struggled with some pretty uninspired quarterback play, dropped passes and very poor vision and elusiveness from the running backs, was rendered utterly inoperable by the play of its offensive line.

The only two players on the line who were consistently serviceable were Braelin Moore, the center, and Josh Thompson, the right guard. Those were the two transfers from Virginia Tech and Northwestern, respectively, that previous head coach Brian Kelly went out and landed.

As it turned out, Kelly probably needed two more serviceable transfers. Because pretty much all of the players Kelly’s staff, and most significantly offensive line coach Brad Davis, recruited out of high school and tried to develop, have been major busts.

Now six of them are in the portal, and there’s a group of nearly equal size which remains, at least as of this writing…

• Braelin Moore
• Weston Davis
• Bo Bordelon
• Khayree Lee
• Ethan Calloway
• Solomon Thomas
• Tyler Miller
• Brett Bordelon

It might not be a surprise if others leave. Moore could opt for the NFL draft, though the word is that he’s likely to stick around.

Davis was the starting right tackle most of this past year. If we’re being honest he was bad on a legendary scale. Davis was a five-star recruit who was regularly abused on the edge, and the only real saving grace where he’s concerned is that he was just a redshirt freshman. He looks like somebody who could improve, but then again that’s something you could maybe say about the six kids who are in the portal.

Why hasn’t he left?

I’ll give you a theory, which is more than a theory though I can’t claim specific knowledge of individual cases on LSU’s roster vis-a-vis who goes in the portal and who doesn’t.

Here it is, and you’ll do yourself a favor if you adopt this as your assumption this week as you watch the portal fill up with players from LSU’s 2025 roster.

New head coach Lane Kiffin and new team general manager Billy Glasscock, not to mention Kiffin’s coaching staff and front office people, have taken the last four weeks to do a deep dive on the current roster. They’ve been evaluating game tape, practice tape, weight room results, they’ve done player interviews, coach interviews with the outgoing staff and support staff. They’ve got a full bead on who everybody on the roster is from an athletic standpoint, their work ethic, motivation, what kind of influence they are in the locker room, how well they understand the current schemes and their projected ability to adapt to new ones. Team Kiffin knows all of that stuff.

And what has been happening is that they’ve sat these kids down and given them a number.

What’s the number? It’s what LSU is offering them out of the NIL budget for next year.

The six offensive linemen now in the portal, and the smattering of other players who’ve entered over the past few days, generally thought of that number as bad news. Either it’s zero, which would be Kiffin essentially cutting them from next year’s team, or it’s a lot less than they expected to get.

Bear in mind – we’ll just stick to the offensive line at this point, because it’s a pretty good microcosm of this process – that LSU is already spending a big chunk of change on NIL for these players. I don’t know that this number is accurate, but I’ve seen an estimate that LSU had about $3.5 million in NIL payments invested in the 16 scholarship linemen on the 2025 roster.

So Team Kiffin looked at the production they got out of that $3.5 million. So far it looks like they decided Moore was worth what he was getting and pretty much everybody else with eligibility remaining was not. So they “lowballed” – I’m using that term advisedly, because from Kiffin’s perspective it isn’t a lowball offer at all, but rather a much more accurate reset – those six kids, who then decided to test the waters in the portal.

And the eight players who haven’t left are, other than in the case of Moore and Solomon Thomas and Tyler Miller, two highly-touted true freshmen who didn’t see the field this year, the guys who come cheap. Including Davis, who if he doesn’t end up in the portal will have almost certainly listened to the NIL number Kiffin gave him and was willing to give it a go at that price.

And this doesn’t just apply to the offensive line, but it’s the mentality Kiffin and Glasscock clearly have: it’s no longer operable to look at a player who was highly recruited and say that he just needs time to develop. Maybe down the road after Kiffin has rebuilt the program and has everything in place, there might be a return to that idea.

Now, you look at a player and you ask what he costs against the NIL budget, and then you ask not only whether his productivity justifies that number but whether, for the role on your team that player occupies, he’s the best use of that money.

Take Tyree Adams, for example, who was LSU’s starting left tackle for most of the year. I don’t know what Adams’ NIL number was, but for a top-quality SEC left tackle, a guy with first-round draft pick status or near it, it’s not outrageous to think $600,000-800,000 is a workable NIL figure.

Adams didn’t play at that level. Is it implausible that he might rise to that level before he’s done playing college football? Not completely. He’s an average SEC lineman now.

But what does Adams think of his worth? If he thinks as a starting SEC left tackle he’s worth $600,000-800,000, that meeting with Kiffin will come as a big disappointment to him. Because Kiffin is going to say “Yes, I will spend that amount to fill that position. But no, I’m not spending it on you based on the evaluation I’ve made, and you’re looking at half that figure or less if you’re going to return.”

And before you panic that Kiffin is running off the talent LSU has, bear in mind three things.

First, that Kiffin and Glasscock are pretty much universally recognized as absolutely great talent evaluators. What they did at Ole Miss in building a roster full of kids, mostly through the portal, who greatly outplayed their stock as high school recruits makes that recognition justified.

Second, that LSU remains a major, major brand in college football – a brand that Kiffin’s arrival, for all the controversy it might have generated, has only increased. Those kids across the country who are in the portal right now have their agents contacting LSU looking for opportunities. Kiffin ended up leaving the Texas Bowl at halftime after he’d done a TV hit in the booth because his phone was blowing up with agents looking to do deals.

And third, that LSU is sitting on one of the largest pots of gold in NIL money of anybody in college football. And every kid from the underachieving, dysfunctional 2025 roster who enters the portal adds to that pile of money based on what he was getting last year or was budgeted for in 2026. That money is going to get spent on somebody else, and the chances are pretty good, based on the first two things above, that Kiffin will find a better player for less money than the previous staff was paying the kid who just left.

It’s a cold, hard way to look at things, and it takes some adjusting, but on the other hand college football is now a professionalized game and this is how the professional game works.

Again, in a year or two, when the kids on that roster are Kiffin’s players and there is some sweat-equity investment between the coaches and players under the new regime, you might see a little more loyalty. But with a new staff coming in after a disaster of a season like 2025 was, the more roster turnover you see, the better.

And so far, what you’ll notice is there aren’t a whole lot of defensive players jumping to the portal. Ashton Stamps, who lost his starting job at cornerback and didn’t play at all this year, Austin Ausberry, who only has a year of eligibility left and hasn’t played hardly at all, and Ahmad Breaux who played a bit as a sophomore this year but looks likely to get submerged under some younger players at defensive tackle, are the only three defensive players in the portal. Generally speaking, the poor performance against Houston aside, the defense was at least functional, and with the defensive staff remaining intact from 2025 Team Kiffin is making an effort at retaining current players that they aren’t making on offense.

Those meetings at which the NIL number is presented are generally friendlier.

There will likely be more portal entries from the 2025 roster, and that probably includes a defensive player or two.

But I wouldn’t panic about it. Kiffin needs to overhaul this roster, and with every underachiever who leaves he’s going to have more money and playing time to offer in order to overhaul it.

When the portal opens on Friday, and Kiffin starts bringing people in on recruiting visits this weekend, it’ll begin to make sense. Just relax and enjoy the show.