Just took a look at this....I kinda knew the scenario but not the numbers.
LSU started this season with 71 scholarship players, by far the lowest in the SEC (anywhere, really, sans Arizona State and West Virginia), which includes some number of walk-ons that were given schollys. Of those, there are 12 scholarship seniors. Pretty sure that's on the low side for us, but I'd have to check to be sure.
The last several years of the Miles era LSU was perpetually the youngest team in the SEC, except Tennessee for 1 or 2 of those years, which went along with his shifting recruiting pitch of selling the program as a quick NFL pipeline. We were never undermanned, though.
Interestingly, we still rank in the top 10 in 247's composite talent.
Basically, Orgeron recruited 1) talented kids 2) who didn't stay.
Depth and experience matter, and we don't have it. I guess it's better than the 39 scholly players we brought to the bowl game last January. This team should lose a lot of games.
Can't say I'm overly impressed with Kelly so far, but I should probably give him more of a fair chance than a usual first year coach. Kinda impressive how fast O drove this thing off the cliff. For all his talk about loving LSU, we were only a golden parachute in the end. Kelly needs to keep the locker room attitude positive b/c the hard times aren't over, and build the roster back up. Then we'll see what we've got, I guess. Several of the freshman look really promising.