Tulane Green Wave Preview 2022: Season Prediction, Breakdown, Key Games, Players
Tulane Green Wave Preview 2022: Previewing, predicting, and looking ahead to the Tulane season with what you need to know and keys to the season.
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Tulane Green Wave Preview
Head Coach: Willie Fritz, 7th year at Tulane, 31-43
27th year overall, 185-112
2021 Preview: Overall: 2110, Conference: 1-7
Keys To The Season
Season Prediction, What Will Happen
Tulane Top 10 Players | Tulane Schedule
Tulane Green Wave Preview 2022
Last year was weird.
This was a rock-solid .500 ball club over the previous four years under Willie Fritz with three bowl appearances and some good moments, but the 2021 version fall apart.
Lots of turnovers, too many misfires, bad defense, inefficient offense, poor caddying. Last year was when the program was supposed to be hitting its stride, and instead it totally flopped.
But Fritz is an excellent head coach, there’s too much experience and talent in place to have another off year, and there should be a bounce back into a winning season and bowl appearance as it prepares for a new world next year.
The school is sticking around the American Athletic Conference, and it’s about to be a whole lot easier without Houston, UCF, and Cincinnati around.
Seven years into the Fritz era the program isn’t exactly rebuilding, but this is the season to reestablish itself before looking to be more of a power player in 2023.
Tulane Green Wave Preview 2022: Offense
Turnovers. No, the passing offense wasn’t good enough, but it wasn’t awful. No, the rushing attack didn’t dominate, but it wasn’t bad. The offense averaged 387 yards and 28 points per game, and it needs to be far, far better after only hitting 30 points once in the last ten games.
The turnovers killed any and everything the team tried to do. More on that in a later blurb. On the plusside …
The offense gets nine starters back. The offensive line has four decent starters and enough depth to be okay. It has to be better at keeping defenses out of the backfield, but there’s experience around Sincere Haynesworth at center and Joey Claybrook at left tackle.
The running backs are deep. Tyjae Spears is a quick speedster who averaged 6.7 yards per carry with a team-high 863 yards and nine touchdowns, Cameron Carroll is more of a pounding option, and on the way is Ashaad Clayton from Colorado to potentially take over in the rotation.
Michael Pratt did what he could last year. The sophomore quarterback ran for five touchdowns and threw for close to 2,400 yards with 21 touchdowns and eight picks, but he struggled to keep the chains moving.
The receivers are there to do a lot more. Jha’Quan Jackson is a dangerous deep threat, Deuce Watts is a strong, reliable veteran, and Tyrick James is a solid tight end who led the team with 429 yards and four scores.
Tulane Green Wave Preview 2022: Defense
The defense didn’t do a whole lot to help out the offense. It was a disaster against the decent passing teams, struggled against the run, and allowed 34 points and 428 yards per game.
It got ripped to shreds by Ole Miss, Oklahoma, East Carolina, and SMU, but there were problems against just about everyone. The 5.81 yards per play allowed were the most since 2017, but with seven starters back and a slew of good pass rushers, things should be better. At least that’s the hope.
Darius Hodges led the team with 16.5 tackles for loss to go along with five sacks. The star defensive end flirted with the transfer portal, but he’s back. He’s the best of the bunch up front, but the linebackers are going to be the other main playmakers. Nick Anderson was a good tackler and made a whole lot of plays behind the line, and Dorian Williams is one of the AAC’s best middle linebackers.
The line needs 6-1, 300-pound Adonis Friloux to be more of an anchor on the nose. Losing Jeffery Johnson to Oklahoma stinks, but Patrick Jenkins if coming in from TCU to be a part of the rotation on the end.
The pass defense was a problem. It was helped by a great pass rush, but it still wasn’t enough to come up with enough stops against the great passing teams on the slate.
However, there’s talent in the secondary starting with Macon Clark, the leading tackler with 74 stops and four picks at one safety spot. The corners have to start taking the ball away, but everyone can tackle.
Keys To The Season
Season Prediction, What Will Happen
Tulane Top 10 Players | Tulane Schedule
Tulane Green Wave: Keys To The Season, Top Game, Top Transfer, Fun Stats NEXT
Tulane Green Wave: Keys To The Season, Top Game, Top Transfer, Fun Stats
Tulane Green Wave: Key To The 2022 Offense
Yeah, the turnovers. Enough of those.
The Green Wave have to be better in the red zone – they dropped three games, possibly four, because of misfires inside the 20 – but more than anything else they have to stop turning the ball over.
They lost close fights with UCF and Tulsa when there weren’t any giveaways – red zone issues had something to do with that – but for the most part the disaster of last year had a whole lot to do with giving it up 25 times with three or more in five games.
By comparison, the 2020 team turned it over multiple times just twice in 12 games.
Tulane Green Wave: Key To The 2022 Defense
Stop the deep stuff already.
To be very, very, very fair to the Tulane secondary, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Houston, SMU, Cincinnati, and Memphis could bomb away on just about everyone, but allowing 8.1 yards per attempt and coming up with just three interceptions in nine of the last ten games was a problem.
Also to be fair, the secondary was better than it was in 2020 when getting to play Army and its run-only offense was the only thing that saved the defense from plunging deeper into the statistical abyss.
Fortunately, there aren’t as many high-powered passing teams on this year’s slate, and the secondary should be a strength talent-wise. Reducing the yards to around 200 per game and give up seven yards per throw would be a huge change.
Tulane Green Wave: Key Player To The 2022 Season
CB Kiland Harrison, Soph.
And junior Lance Robinson. The Tulane corners need to make more plays.
The Green Wave are bringing in some options from the transfer portal, but it’ll be sink-or-swim time for the young corners.
The defense only came up with nine interceptions last season, and just one of them came from a current cornerback, Robinson, who made nine tackles on the year. Harrison made just two tackles as a freshman, and now he’s being thrown into the mix.
It’ll help to get …
Tulane Green Wave: Key Transfer
S Lummie Young, Duke
The corners are the concern, but the safeties are relatively set. The secondary that got hit way too hard last year needs as many good veteran options it can get, and in comes Young to help the cause.
The 6-1, 205-pound former Duke Blue Devil made 145 tackles with two sacks and seven tackles for loss, and he came up with one pick and six broken up passes and three fumbles. He’ll be an instant factor.
Tulane Key Game To The 2022 Season
at Houston, Oct. 29
Just how much of a factor will Tulane be in the American Athletic Conference race this year?
It should start out strong with UMass, Alcorn State, and Southern Miss early on to potentially blow past last year’s two-win total right away, but the trip to Kansas State will be a problem.
There’s one more game in September coming on a short week. Houston should be one of the big stars of the AAC, but pull off this win, and all os a sudden the season expectations get jacked through the roof.
Tulane Green Wave: 2021 Fun Stats
– Red Zone Scores: Opponents 46-of-51 (90%) – Tulane 33-of-46 (72%)
– Field Goals: Opponents 14-of-21 – Opponents 7-of-14
– Onside Kicks: Tulane 4-of-5 – Opponents 0-of-0
Offense, Defense Breakdown
Season Prediction, What Will Happen
Tulane Top 10 Players | Tulane Schedule
Tulane Green Wave Season Prediction, What Will Happen NEXT
Tulane Green Wave Season Prediction, What Will Happen
The Green Wave won’t go 2-10 again.
For all the problems and all the failures of last year, it had Oklahoma in trouble and would’ve been closer to its normal 6-6ish self under Willie Fritz had the team been tighter in some of the good fights late in the season.
The team has too much talent and experience to be awful, but it has to stop with the mistakes – and take advantage of the scoring chances when they’re there – to win the 50/50 games.
More than that, the schedule is better. There’s no Oklahoma or Ole Miss, with a trip to Kansas State the one tough battle against a Power Five program.
Set The Tulane Green Wave Regular Season Win Total At … 5.5
Assume three wins before getting out of September – UMass, Alcorn State, Southern Miss – and there’s a good shot at a huge start with a winnable home game against East Carolina followed up by a trip to USF.
The finishing kick is a problem with at Tulsa, UCF, SMU, and at Cincinnati in November, so most of the wins and the production has to come in the first two months.
Whether or not this will be a winning season comes down to pulling off an upset in November.
Offense, Defense Breakdown | Keys To The Season
Tulane Top 10 Players | Tulane Schedule
