Tulane Green Wave Ranks Middle of the Pack in Returning Production Next Season

The Tulane Green Wave has a lot of core players to replace in the 2025 college football season.

BRYAN TERRY/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The Tulane Green Wave has high expectations as spring practices are near, despite the loss of key production in the transfer portal.

In head coach Jon Sumrall’s first season, the team was in the College Football Playoff conversation for a few weeks before they fell short in the final games. 

Tulane football did so under a redshirt freshman quarterback, but lost the momentum garnered under Darian Mensah when he transferred to the Duke Blue Devils.

Sumrall showed the value of his coaching in the team’s competitiveness last year with many young players filling key roles and developing several backups into contributing starters.

The Green Wave didn’t reach their goals after losing the American Athletic Conference championship. After three straight appearances, they’ll look to get back there with a lot of new faces.

That garners some skepticism from outsiders, particularly before any competing quarterbacks can show their strengths on the field in spring camp.

Bill Connelly of ESPN.com (subscription required) released a ranking of the college football teams with the most returning production in 2025.

Tulane slots in at No. 70 overall out of 136 FBS teams in the nation and is the No. 24 Group of 5 team fighting for the lone slot allocated in the College Football Playoff.

The Green Wave has an overall 60% returning production percentage, with 48% of production back on offense (90th) and 63% on defense (32nd).

Connelly analyzes some trends that are important to mention before diving into the rankings, as the dominance of the transfer portal has altered his SP+ projections vastly and required a change in the system.

For transfers, Connelly looks at an incoming player’s production from their previous team in both the numerator and denominator for his new team.

In essence, a school could lose a strong quarterback, recover from those losses with a productive transfer, balance the numbers and lessen the impact on the field.

His formula also assesses the percentage of snaps, which makes the Green Wave’s incoming quarterback competitors lose some shine in the weighted percentages.

Mensah is a loss that hurts Tulane, though transfer Kadin Semonza has credible playing time to offset that. TJ Finley and Donovan Leary did not play much in the 2024 season, therefore bringing that number down. 

It’s not an equal replacement, and it’s clear that all incoming transfers for the Green Wave aren’t receiving due credit.

Connelly does point out that certain positions impact numbers more than others, and that running backs are easier to overcome turnover than others. 

Last season, the Boise State Broncos took the Group of 5 College Football Playoff slot under a Heisman Finalist campaign by Ashton Jeanty. Despite that loss of star power, the Broncos are No. 9 overall and the second-highest G5 team in the rankings.

Connelly also remarks on the overall returning production of programs being at an all-time low since he began tracking numbers. The end of Covid eligibility years and the explosive growth in the transfer portal account for much of this.

Group of 5 schools are feeling those effects even harder, as they are returning 49% production nationally compared with 58.6% for Power 4 programs.

Such is the nature of college football today, and Tulane's expectations were based more on potential and promise last year than on proven performance on the field.

Sumrall and his team have a lot of work to do in spring practice, but those weeks will be more valuable than dwelling on a ranking system that can’t account for coaching and culture.