The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly in Tulane's 20-17 Loss to Army
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The Tulane football team fell in their American Conference opener on Saturday in West Point, as Army kicked a last-second field goal to top the Green Wave, 20-17. It was a game of triple option on the Army side, as expected, and a stop-and-start offense on the Tulane side, as we have seen all year.
The Good
For three quarters, the Tulane defense stood toe-to-toe with a triple option attack that has baffled most teams for years, including the Green Wave. The Wave D allowed only seven points from the Army offense over 45-minutes of play. There were some decent runs by the Black Knights in the first three periods of play, but nothing to write home about. Tayler Polk and his defensive coaches could have published a book on how to defend it, as the Tulane defensive front was getting penetration and allowing the Wave linebackers and safeties to make the plays, which they did.
In the fourth quarter, the Greenies defense couldn't get off the field, as Army held onto the ball for almost 10-and-a-half minutes of that final period. However, that blame does not solely belong to the Wave D.
The Bad
The Tulane offense couldn't get out of its own way for most of their time in New York.
After the Tulane defense held Army to three and out to open the game, the Green Wave offense had a rhythm going with Kadin Semonza at the helm in their first drive. Short rushes by Jaylin Lucas, Johnnie Daniels, and DJ Dugar (Dugar seeing his most extensive playing time of the year), kept the Black Knights honest, while Semonza peppered the Army secondary with passes of 11, 17, and 9-yards,driving down the field into the home team's territory. Then, as has occurred so often this year, something happened to interrupt that rhythm, as Semonza's pass over the middle was bobbled by Fat Hill and intercepted by Army at its 26.
In past games, it was a silly penalty or, as happened later in this game, a few dropped passes, or an over or underthrown ball to a wide open receiver, or a blocking scheme that is not executed, or a running back climbing up the back of an unmoving offensive lineman.
If it was the same issue with the same athlete every time, that would be one thing. Instead, it seems like it's someone different from down-to-down or week-to-week. A different wide receiver dropped passes against South Alabama than those that did against Army. Different offensive linemen, wide receivers, tight ends, and running backs miss the blocks from week-to-week. It feels like that old "Whack-a-Mole" game, except with a football team. It's got to be frustrating.
The Ugly
The quarterback-receiver connections are not being made on a consistent basis. Whether it is a ball thrown to the wrong spot or a receiver adjusting the wrong way, this most basic of steps in the passing game needs to be happening regularly, and it's not.
The timing necessary to complete a pass doesn't just come together overnight. It comes from repetition and trust among quarterback, receivers, and coaches.
When Jake Retzlaff took the starting quarterback job of the 2025 edition of Tulane football, he and his receivers took a while to get on the same page. Even when it seemed like there was that rhythm between QB and wide out, there were times at the end of the season when you wondered if they were even in the same book.
So whether it's Kadin Semonza, or Trace Johnson, or Dagan Bruno, or the "where did he go, wasn't he the starter once?" Zeon Chriss-Gremillion, the QB, receiving corps, and coaches must be rowing the boat in the same direction, altogether. That has not happened consistently in five games.
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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.