The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly from Tulane's 35-24 Victory over FAU
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Saturday, Tulane out-slung the Florida Atlantic high-powered offense to claim a Homecoming victory over the Owls. Here's what we came away with from the Greenie win.
The Good
You can't score on every possession. Sorry, this Tulane offense won't do that until coach Jon Sumrall gets that "pretty" game he keeps planning on. So, when your offense scores on half their possessions in the first half, and two of their five drives in half number two, and, most importantly, every one of those scoring drives ended up in a touchdown, that's good.
The Tulane running game made the difference in the second half. After the first 30-minutes of play, Florida Atlantic owned the time of possession by over seven minutes. That flipped completely in the 2nd half, so much so, the Green Wave only came up a few seconds short of catching up with an extremely efficient and potent FAU offense. Credit the Tulane offensive front and redshirt freshman running back Jamauri McClure. Some sizable holes were opened by the dominant front, and McClure showed some jitter-bug type moves, slashing the Owls defense for runs of 11, 19, and 26-yards en route to a 10-rushes for 94-yards kind of day.
The Tulane defense showed some moxie. Florida Atlantic is a good offensive club. They are not good on defense. So, TU knew FAU would get their yards and some points along the way. The Wave D did a decent facsimile of a bend-but-don't-break defense, letting the Owls dink and dunk up and down the field, giving up only one big play of 50-yards. That's a drastic improvement over what this young defensive backfield has shown earlier. Three interceptions, a fumble recovery, and forcing FAU off the field on two separate fourth down attempts was impressive.
Tulane misses Sam Howard. He is an athletic leader who makes a difference when he's healthy. With that said, the Green Wave is finding itself another leader to complement Howard. We talk about it at length in our Takeaways column yesterday. He is senior quarterback Jake Retzlaff. You want your quarterback to be one of your most important leaders. Think Michael Pratt in the Cotton Bowl year. Retzlaff is earning his way into his teammates' hearts and confidence by overcoming injuries as he did against Memphis and bringing a gunslinger mentality to the position. Yes, he has swagger, but it's not a pretense. He has earned that by what he brings to the offensive table. But, perhaps even more importantly, he is a genuinely likeable guy. You can see it amongst his offensive and defensive teammates. Much like the aforementioned Pratt did for the 2023 Cotton Bowl team, Retzlaff and Sam Howard can take this team as far as their shoulders can carry them.
The Bad
Only a slightly bad: punter Alec Clark, who has been nothing short of brilliant for Tulane this year, came up a little short on two of his punts. Two end-over-enders off the Aussie's leg: one a short one that just didn't sail like we're used to and was downed midway through FAU territory, the other bouncing into the end zone instead of dying inside the ten. He did connect on a 53-yarder that was a beauty to behold, though
The Ugly
We know, we know: they're college students and they're going to find their way out of the stadium a lot of times before the end of a game. But come on, folks: the section ended up getting packed by midway through the first quarter, a typical New Orleans thing to do. Then, before the third quarter was done, half the students had disappeared for The Boot, or wherever Tulane students go now to celebrate. Point of contention: that did not happen against Duke earlier this year, when students stayed in droves and stormed the field. After the game, quarterback Jake Retzlaff made a passing mention of students leaving early, talking about how full the section was in the first half. This is probably the last time those students will see their team, as the last regular season home game will be the Saturday after Thanksgiving when most students will already be home. That's a shame.
The Green Wave head to Temple this Saturday for a 2:45 p.m. kickoff from Philadelphia.
Doug has covered a gamut of sporting events in his fifty-plus years in the field. He started doing sideline reporting for Louisiana Tech football games for the student radio station. Doug was Sports Director for KNOE-AM/FM in Monroe in the mid-80s, winning numerous awards from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association for Best Sportscast and Best Play-by-Play. High school play-by-play for teams in Monroe, Natchitoches, New Orleans, and Thibodaux, LA dot his resume. He did college play-by-play for Northwestern State University in Natchitoches for nine years. Then, moving to the Crescent City, Doug did television PBP of Tulane games and even filled in for legendary Tulane broadcaster, Ken Berthelot in the only game Kenny ever missed while doing the Green Wave games. His father was an alumnus of Tulane in the 1940s, so Doug has attended Tulane football games in old Tulane Stadium, the Superdome, and Yulman. He was one of the 86,000 plus on December 1, 1973, sitting in the North End Zone to seeTulane shutout the LSU Tigers, 14-0. He was there when the Posse ruled Fogelman and in Turchin when the Wave made it to the World Series. He currently is the public address voice of the Tulane baseball team.