Tulane football is not short on players who will compete. That much was clear in the 28-24 win over South Alabama, when the Green Wave found a way at Yulman and reminded everyone what this roster can look like when the plan matches the talent. The problem sitting over this 2-2 start is not effort in the locker room. It is decision-making in the offices above it. From the December search to the portal to the Week 1 depth chart to who is wearing the headset on Saturdays, the staff has spent nine months choosing caution when the moment called for conviction. The players have been asked to live with those choices. That is the story of this season so far. The hire that set the tone: When Jon Sumrall left for Florida after a College Football Playoff run, Tulane held one of the best Group of Five jobs in the country. The search did not treat it that way. Blake Baker, a former Green Wave linebacker and then LSU’s defensive coordinator, was the first choice. Tulane interviewed him. Memphis interviewed him. Lane Kiffin used that interest the way a Power program uses it. He kept Baker in Baton Rouge on a three-year deal reported at $9.3 million. Baker later said the alma mater pull was real, then said there was “not a better defensive coordinator job” than the one he already had. Tulane became the leverage, not the landing spot. By the time Baker was off the board, the rest of the short list had moved. Bob Chesney went to UCLA. Charles Huff went to Memphis. Billy Napier landed at James Madison. Jason Candle took UConn. The window closed, and the athletic department promoted from inside. Will Hall knows this place. He coordinated the offense here in 2019 and 2020. He came back in 2025 as passing-game coordinator. Continuity after a historic year had an argument. It was also the option left after the favorite used the opening to get paid at LSU and every other serious name took a job elsewhere. A championship program spent its most important offseason decision waiting, then settled. That is how the year started. It is also how the year has been coached. Caution in the portal: Hall was open about the quarterback plan. The staff did not want to “over-sign transfers and squish the development” of the young players already in the room. The idea was two older quarterbacks to compete, then let Trace Johnson, Jay Beamon, Bruno and Cade Scott grow behind them. That sounds careful. In this sport, it also sounds like a staff more worried about hurting feelings in the meeting room than about winning the first month. The previous year Sumrall brought in 4 potential guys fighting for one job. Jake Retzlaff was gone. The 2025 offense ran through him. The response was not a finished portal veteran who had just won at this level. The response in the portal was way more to be desired. The same hesitation showed up on the DL. The Wave added players. What the staff did not add was a true veteran pass-rush closer, the kind of player who wrecks a game in September while a new defensive staff is still installing, granted that was supposed to be McCallister but he is no longer on the roster. Through the first three games Tulane had one team sack. A defense that posted 34 sacks across 13 games a year ago was generating almost nothing. That is not the players failing to rush. That is a personnel plan that asked a transitioning front to create pressure without the one piece that makes a new scheme look fast. Protect the room. Don’t scare anyone into the portal. Those are coaching and front-office choices. They have shown up on third down, run defense, and pass rush. Week 1 starter Decision: Chriss-Gremillion at Duke. Hall cited experience, dual-threat ability, fewer turnovers in practice, and speed. That is a coaching evaluation. It is also the evaluation that put the wrong plan on the field for the opener. Duke 17-3. Chriss was pulled at halftime. Semonza finished the game and started the next one. Against South Alabama he threw for 212 yards, Jaylin Lucas ran for 214, and Tulane won 28-24. Led an amazing comeback and beautiful throw. None of that is an indictment of Chriss as a player. He did what the staff asked him to do in a system still being installed. The mistake was the decision itself: taking the more natural passer off the card for Week 1 on the road against a Power conference defense because the staff liked the look of the dual-threat package in August. Starting Semonza a week later was the correction. The correction should not have been required. I like Semonza a lot and want nothing more than success for him but he is not a finished product. No quarterback in this room is, because the staff chose not to bring in a finished one. That, again, is on the people drawing the depth chart. Callaway on the headset: Russ Callaway is in his first season as Tulane’s offensive coordinator. He held the same title at Florida a year ago. He last called plays as a primary play-caller at Samford. The offense this fall has looked like a staff still arguing with itself about what it wants to be. The scoring line is the tell: 3 points at Duke, 28 at home against South Alabama, 20 at Kansas State, 24 against USM. 18 points per game. Three hundred fourteen yards per game. When Lucas gets 214 on the ground, this team can win a one-score game. When the run game is contained and the passing attack has to carry a series, the operation slows down and the play sheet feels a series or two behind. That is not receivers dropping balls (minus USM) or backs missing holes as a rule. It is structure. Protection. Tempo. Play selection on second-and-medium. The things a play-caller is paid to solve. Hall is an offensive coach. That is why he was hired. Leaving the call sheet with a first-year coordinator while the offense searches for an identity is the same pattern as the hire and the portal: defer, protect, wait. The first change should be the headset. Will Hall should call the offense from here on out. That is not a public firing. It is the head coach taking ownership of the unit he was sold as being able to run. A defense that has not been put in position to look like itself: Tayler Polk inherited real pieces. Jack Tchienchou and Dickson Agu are still here. Chris Rodgers (Hurt) is still here. Kevin Adams III has been around the ball. The names are familiar. The results have not matched the standard this program set a year ago. Tulane is allowing 24 points and 429 yards per game. Opponents are running for 211 yards a night. The pass rush has not arrived until they played a bad USM team. The players are tackling and competing. They are not dictating, because the staff did not give this front the veteran disruption it needed and has not yet found a way to manufacture it with what is here. Granted some positives did come from USM. A playoff defense does not become average because the calendar flipped. It becomes average when the scheme and play-calling haven’t been up to par and need to be re-tooled. Give Trace Johnson a real plan: Trace Johnson is a true freshman. He is also the best pure passer on the roster, and people inside the building have said as much since spring. Hall has called him driven, accurate, and the kind of player who would have carried a different recruiting label if he were three inches taller. Johnson was in the offices watching film at 5 a.m. the morning after he was told he was not in the Week 1 mix. That is not a kid hiding from the moment. That is a kid the staff recruited as the next Pratt or Mensah, then parked. From here on, he should get a shot. Not a garbage-time cameo. A plan. If the offense keeps settling, the coaching staff owes this season a look at the quarterback it asked fans to be patient for. Protecting the room in January only works if the room is used. Using it means Johnson is in the conversation now. What is still true: The South Alabama win was not a fluke of officiating or weather. It was this roster when the staff simplified enough to let the skill players work. Lucas looked like the most explosive back on the field. Johnnie Daniels and Maurice Turner give Tulane a backfield that can tilt a game. Destyn Hill and Anthony Brown-Stephens can take the top off a coverage. Tchienchou, Agu, and Adams will play. The locker room that went to Oxford in December did not forget how to compete in nine months. Hall knows Yulman. He knows this city. The American schedule is still in front of them, Army, Memphis, UTSA, the November stretch. None of that is closed. A 2-2 start in a transition year is not a death sentence if the next set of decisions is better than the last one. The last year-plus has been a study in hesitation at the top: letting Baker walk the job to a raise in Baton Rouge, refusing to crowd the quarterback room, passing on veteran edge help, naming the wrong starter in Week 1, and handing the offense to a coordinator still finding the fit. The players have answered when they have been put in position. The correction is not a press conference about culture. It is Hall taking the headset, Johnson getting real snaps, and this staff coaching the roster it has like a playoff program it is. South Alabama showed what this team looks like when the decisions catch up to the talent. That version is still available. The rest of the season will tell us whether the people making the choices are done being careful. Look you may not agree with me on this or like it, but I’m just trying to be 100% honest with how I feel with the state of Tulane football. I love this team to much to settle for mediocrity. I want nothing more than success for all the players, Tulane and its coaches now and in the future. Hopefully in Jan we can look back at this and say I was dead wrong and everyone can call me an idiot. Nothing would make me happier! #RMFW #RollWave #WinTheAAC Make sure to follow Patrick Harkness on X