Tulane D-Line Young, but Strong & Deep

After another American Conference championship run and a visit to the College Football Playoffs, the entire starting defensive line for the Tulane 2025 football team graduated or moved elsewhere through the transfer portal. You could throw up your hands and give up the ghost early., but that would belie the point that the Green Wave rotates their front heavily and have been doing so ever since this run through the American began.

Once Will Hall accepted the position as head coach of the Wave, he assembled his staff. As of February, his defensive line coach was Landius Wilkerson. Before that month was out, Wilkerson left uptown for the defensive line position at Arkansas. Enter Eric McDaniel.

A native of Georgia, McDaniel played at Purdue. Then, after getting his Masters in Education, worked his way through FBS and FCS schools, coaching or assisting in the D-line at Appalachian State, Louisville, Army, and Troy, Hall hired him away from former Tulane coach Jon Sumrall in March. McDaniel was serving as an assistant defensive line coach at Florida.

"(It's a) winning program," coach E-Mc told the media of why he came to Uptown. "It was easy for me. I think coming here to a winning program, that set it over the top."

McDaniel inherits nary a starter. That doesn't faze him in the least.

"I've got a young, talented group," McDaniel noted. "This isn't the most experienced group, but that's okay. It's my job to get them there.

"Right now, it's an all-out position battle," E-Mc observed. "That's how you want it to be. When the dust settles, I truly believe we'll have a deep room. We'll figure out who goes where, mix and match it, and I believe we can cause some destruction."

On SI Tulane has already observed that in both Spring and Fall sessions. The Wave defensive front is in an almost constant rotation, moving players in and out nearly every down, and nothing changes: for almost all of Spring practices and a majority of the Fall, the D-line has more than held its own against the offensive line, stopping up run gaps, pressuring the quarterbacks into uncomfortable positions.

"I believe in a healthy rotation," McDaniel noted, "making sure we're fresh. Because the benefit of being a D-line coach opposed to an O-line coach (who's) going with that same five or six all the time. At D-line I can keep them rolling, keep them fresh , so that way we can continue to attack, because we've got to run more. I'm going to put that on my guys. We've got to run around and hit, because that's what we're going to do."

Though young for the most part, there are two guys who are in that starting four almost every session: redshirt senior Derrick Shepard, Jr and another redshirt senior, transfer Ed Smith IV.

"They've got experience," McDaniel expounded. "They're the guys who have played the most snaps. Both of those guys have to keep the consistency up and rise to the occasion, because we're the young room, you have to lead."

The Green Wave will practice each morning this week through Saturday, when Hall will have his squad go through a "soft scrimmage," before taking a day off Sunday.

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