Brian Kelly adds insult to injury, poaches assistant coach from Notre Dame’s staff

Brian Kelly poaches top assistant Jacob Flint away from Notre Dame to lead LSU’s new strength and conditioning program.

LSU football head coach Brian Kelly is just getting started, as he is expected to hire away Notre Dame co-director of strength and conditioning Jacob Flint this offseason.

Flint would replace longtime LSU strength and conditioning coach Tommy Moffitt, who had been an institution in Baton Rouge. Kelly’s connection to Flint is a strong one, as he played for the new LSU head coach at Central Michigan and worked for him in South Bend and at Cincinnati previously. Getting the strength and conditioning coach right is paramount to a program’s success.

Under Kelly, Notre Dame continually had one of the better offensive lines in the entire Power Five.

Brian Kelly expected to hire Jacob Flint to be LSU strength and conditioning coach

While Flint may not calling the X’s and O’s, he will have arguably the greatest impact of any coach Kelly hires onto his LSU staff. Nobody spends more time with the players than the head of the strength and conditioning program. The connection the players build with the person in that role is crucial to a team winning and losing on fall Saturdays. Kelly is bringing with him a guy he trusts.

Even if it was a tad odd for Kelly to kick Moffitt to the curb like that, it makes sense given that he has his own guy to run his strength and conditioning program in Flint. Though his work behind the scenes will go a long way towards getting LSU back to good, the return on investment could be greater in Baton Rouge than whatever Kelly realized in South Bend. Louisiana has so much talent.

While LSU is expected to win big under Kelly, the way he will go about doing so might be different.

For more NCAA football news, analysis, opinion and unique coverage by FanSided, including Heisman Trophy and College Football Playoff rankings, be sure to bookmark these pages.