Tulane Coach Will Hall on QBs and TEs, Part 2 of 5

Competition is fierce at both positions. Expect even more coming up.

Tulane coach Will Hall on his TEs and QBs | On SI Tulane - Doug Joubert

Shortly after Will Hall was introduced as the new head coach at Tulane, On SI Tulane had a chance to sit down to do an exclusive, one-on-one interview before Spring camp ever opened.

As we approach the start of the Fall version of Hall Ball, we are looking back at that interview to give us a chance to see where we stood before any of us saw Hall's processes. We'll be re-releasing the videos over the next two weeks as the countdown to Fall Practice for Tulane football continues.

Today, how is the QB situation and what to expect from tight ends this Fall. Though the transcript is below, this portion of the interview can be found on our YouTube channel.

We knew from watching you what you had done at Southern Miss that you love tight ends. You are tight end-aholic, so to speak, and we saw you brought in a couple of them that were pretty impressive in the transfer portal. Is that is that something that that you still are going to rely upon is uh heavy tight end usage possibly?

We like to base out of one tight end, but we play two a whole lot. We will play three sometimes. Very rarely will we not have one in the game at least. We want guys that are multiple. We like to fill the room with two types of kids, one, that can really win the C-gap (the space between the offensive tackle and the receiver or slot) and the other type that can really get open. If we can find a guy that can do both, that's great, but we want to be able to do both. And again, when those guys are in the game, are we loading the box or are we spreading it out? We want the defensive coordinator to not know for sure.

You bring in the kid from Houston (Zeon Chriss-Gremillion). He was at Louisiana-Lafayette, but you already had some pretty good names in there. One that comes to mind, a kid who played in the MAC, (Kadin) Semonza. Is there anybody, when you brought in Zeon, that you were feeling pretty good about how he would fit into your mold of quarterback?

When we looked at the portal this year at quarterback, what we wanted to do is to have some competition with Kaden from an older (player's) standpoint. We wanted to have two older guys to compete, because we really believe in these three younger guys we have. We've got three young guys in Jay Beamon, Cade Scott, and then we early enrolled Trace Johnson, and we just think whoever wins out of those three young guys is going to be the next Michael Pratt, Darian Mensah. We think we've got a great one on our hands. We think we got more than one great one, whoever wins it. We wanted to continue to develop that position. That's a position that has to be developed. When you look at Pratt and Mensah, they were high school signees that were developed. We didn't want to over-sign transfers and squish the development of those kids, but at same time, we've got to be good right now. We've got two transfers (Semonza & Chriss-Gremillion) that have played and played at a high level.

When you look at Semonza at Ball State in the MAC, he was the MAC freshman of the year. He played at a high level for Mike Neu who was the quarterback coach for the Saints. So, in a very similar West Coast passing system.

Then you bring in a guy like Zeon who was dynamic in the Sun Belt at UL, and then really helped coach Fritz get that Houston program off the ground last year, (with) wins versus TCU and Kansas State where he was a one man wrecking crew. So we feel like we got two older guys that have competed and won and proven it. Then we've got three young guys that were highly recruited and have a ton of potential. So, we think we got a good mix of old and young.

On Tuesday, the third part of our early interview with Will Hall, where he'll talk about the Tulane defense and his coaching mix on his staff.