Don't look for Eldrick Washington to play for Tulane any time soon or maybe ever again. Although he is listed as a starter at defensive end on the depth chart the Green Wave released Tuesday, he was wearing a bulky knee brace on his right leg and was on crutches at Tuesday's practice and not moving well on the sideline. I will get an update today on his status, but the redshirt senior, who went down in the first quarter against FIU, could be out with a significant injury.
The Wave has a capable replacement in freshman Cameron Sample, who already had double the number of tackles as Washington before he got hurt, but his absence would affect depth with no proven player behind Sample at end. Apparently, Peter Woullard also is out. I did not notice him missing practice last week, but he did not play against FIU and obviously would have gotten a lot of action with Washington unavailable. True freshman Patrick Johnson had three tackles against FIU, but having a pair of true freshmen as the top two guys at a spot is not ideal. I wish the game had been on TV so I could watch the tape and see exactly what the rotation was after Washington went out.
I'm not going to sugarcoat the loss, but I will point out teams play differently every week. If the Wave has another one like that one, the season will be in trouble, but if it was an outlier, a bowl bid is still within reach. Heck, the Wave is tied for first in the loss column in the AAC West, so upsetting USF would change everything. College football is strange. LSU beat Auburn, which beat Ole Miss, which beat South Alabama, which beat Troy, which beat LSU, so by comparative scores, LSU can beat itself by 59 points. We'll find out in the next two weeks if Tulane is capable of competing with and beating the top teams in the AAC and whether this team is closer to its performance against Tulsa or closer to its performance against FIU.
Willie Fritz gave his assessment of USF on Tuesday:
"They have a Heisman Trophy candidate for a quarterback, run the ball extremely well and have the good backs, a big offensive line. The quarterback's a big-time run threat, and they also throw the ball very effectively. They have some big, talented receivers. Defensively I don't think they get enough credit. I believe they are one of only two teams in the top 10 of the country in rushing yards allowed and yards per game. The other team in that category is Alabama, so they've got some pretty good company. They have good corners. They play a lot of man coverage, a big defensive line up front, so it's going to be a tremendous challenge for us. We need to have a great week of preparation and play lights out Saturday night."
Going forward, Fritz wants his staff to make better adjustments once a game starts, and he counts himself in that group.
"Sometimes with what we do offensively, you don't get exactly what you hope you're getting," he said. "You always work on the what ifs, but you can't work on 20 different things. You have to narrow down your focus. We just didn't make the adjustments quick enough and be able to go out and execute the adjustments. Offensively they ran a few different things they'd never shown. They ran some unbalanced, which they'd never show, played more zone read, which they had shown very little, and fly sweep, which they had shown very little, especially to the short side of the field. You've got to make adjustments on the fly. It's hard to fit things up. You need a few practice opportunities, but unfortunately in the game you don't get those."
Fritz is not a big believer in momentum from week to week:
"You can't bring points with you from the week before," he said. "Each game is its own game. You look around college football, there's a lot of parity right now. That's why you get a Clemson and a Washington State and a Washington get beat. There are a lot of good players across the country. I thought their quarterback was an excellent player. I have a couple of buddies who were at the game, they are pro scouts, and they feel like that guy is going to be in an NFL camp for sure. No. 81 is a high quality receiver. They have their share of good players, and we knew that ahead of time."
Fritz talked at length about his offense and what needs to happen.
"We have our base plays. We have to make them work no matter what we're doing. Then we have some plays, I'm not going to call them gimmick plays, but plays you hope take advantage of their coverage and their front that might be a little bit different. You just hope that all 11 guys are on the same page. It's all about execution. When you get up there and you draw them up on the board, we generally have them all blocked, so every play looks like it's going to be a winner. But if one guy doesn't do his job, you've got problems. It's just executing and having faith in the system and the play call and doing your assignment to the best of your ability, and as a coach you have to do a good job of matching your personnel and taking advantage of your strengths and sometimes trying to hide your weaknesses as well.
"There might be some plays you'd like to run, but you just don't have the hosses to run it. So you can be stubborn and keep running it or pull that away and move on. That's what you have to be able to do. That's something we talk about on a daily basis is personnel. Part of my job, being the general manager, is making sure we're playing the right guys. Dontrell Hilliard, I don't think he got enough touches last week."
Fritz also was asked about how Tulane could beat Tulsa 62-28 and lose to FIU 23-10 while Tulsa rebounded to beast Houston 45-17.
"That's college football right there," he said. "I'm sure Houston felt like they were prepared, and I'm sure Tulsa sat around and pouted about the game they played here and about getting their butts kicked. You don't want to have a game beat you twice. We talked about it on Monday. We talked about some of the upsets and who would have thought what happened to us would have happened to us and who would have thought what happened to Tulsa would have happened to Tulsa. Not very many people, so you have to play every single week."
Fritz was very supportive of Jonathan Banks right after the FIU game. He elaborated on those thoughts Tuesday.
"He's played well for us. He's a tough-minded kid. He was very disappointed, and I told him he was one of many guys who didn't play well. Unfortunately the quarterback and the head coach get too much credit when things go well and too much blame when things go wrong. I told him join the club, buddy, and I'll hang with you."
I asked Fritz why the passing game was so bad against FIU all around.
"Number one, it was good coverage by them a lot of times," he said. "Number two, we missed a lot of shots. We had guys open and missed them and we have to hit them. Sometimes that's not always the quarterback. You see a guy running, and the quarterback's looking to the other side, and then all of a sudden he throws it and the guy speeds up. That's too late to recover. Protection. He couldn't hold it and pat the ball one more time. We got beat inside a few times, so that was a team effort."
The Wave has a capable replacement in freshman Cameron Sample, who already had double the number of tackles as Washington before he got hurt, but his absence would affect depth with no proven player behind Sample at end. Apparently, Peter Woullard also is out. I did not notice him missing practice last week, but he did not play against FIU and obviously would have gotten a lot of action with Washington unavailable. True freshman Patrick Johnson had three tackles against FIU, but having a pair of true freshmen as the top two guys at a spot is not ideal. I wish the game had been on TV so I could watch the tape and see exactly what the rotation was after Washington went out.
I'm not going to sugarcoat the loss, but I will point out teams play differently every week. If the Wave has another one like that one, the season will be in trouble, but if it was an outlier, a bowl bid is still within reach. Heck, the Wave is tied for first in the loss column in the AAC West, so upsetting USF would change everything. College football is strange. LSU beat Auburn, which beat Ole Miss, which beat South Alabama, which beat Troy, which beat LSU, so by comparative scores, LSU can beat itself by 59 points. We'll find out in the next two weeks if Tulane is capable of competing with and beating the top teams in the AAC and whether this team is closer to its performance against Tulsa or closer to its performance against FIU.
Willie Fritz gave his assessment of USF on Tuesday:
"They have a Heisman Trophy candidate for a quarterback, run the ball extremely well and have the good backs, a big offensive line. The quarterback's a big-time run threat, and they also throw the ball very effectively. They have some big, talented receivers. Defensively I don't think they get enough credit. I believe they are one of only two teams in the top 10 of the country in rushing yards allowed and yards per game. The other team in that category is Alabama, so they've got some pretty good company. They have good corners. They play a lot of man coverage, a big defensive line up front, so it's going to be a tremendous challenge for us. We need to have a great week of preparation and play lights out Saturday night."
Going forward, Fritz wants his staff to make better adjustments once a game starts, and he counts himself in that group.
"Sometimes with what we do offensively, you don't get exactly what you hope you're getting," he said. "You always work on the what ifs, but you can't work on 20 different things. You have to narrow down your focus. We just didn't make the adjustments quick enough and be able to go out and execute the adjustments. Offensively they ran a few different things they'd never shown. They ran some unbalanced, which they'd never show, played more zone read, which they had shown very little, and fly sweep, which they had shown very little, especially to the short side of the field. You've got to make adjustments on the fly. It's hard to fit things up. You need a few practice opportunities, but unfortunately in the game you don't get those."
Fritz is not a big believer in momentum from week to week:
"You can't bring points with you from the week before," he said. "Each game is its own game. You look around college football, there's a lot of parity right now. That's why you get a Clemson and a Washington State and a Washington get beat. There are a lot of good players across the country. I thought their quarterback was an excellent player. I have a couple of buddies who were at the game, they are pro scouts, and they feel like that guy is going to be in an NFL camp for sure. No. 81 is a high quality receiver. They have their share of good players, and we knew that ahead of time."
Fritz talked at length about his offense and what needs to happen.
"We have our base plays. We have to make them work no matter what we're doing. Then we have some plays, I'm not going to call them gimmick plays, but plays you hope take advantage of their coverage and their front that might be a little bit different. You just hope that all 11 guys are on the same page. It's all about execution. When you get up there and you draw them up on the board, we generally have them all blocked, so every play looks like it's going to be a winner. But if one guy doesn't do his job, you've got problems. It's just executing and having faith in the system and the play call and doing your assignment to the best of your ability, and as a coach you have to do a good job of matching your personnel and taking advantage of your strengths and sometimes trying to hide your weaknesses as well.
"There might be some plays you'd like to run, but you just don't have the hosses to run it. So you can be stubborn and keep running it or pull that away and move on. That's what you have to be able to do. That's something we talk about on a daily basis is personnel. Part of my job, being the general manager, is making sure we're playing the right guys. Dontrell Hilliard, I don't think he got enough touches last week."
Fritz also was asked about how Tulane could beat Tulsa 62-28 and lose to FIU 23-10 while Tulsa rebounded to beast Houston 45-17.
"That's college football right there," he said. "I'm sure Houston felt like they were prepared, and I'm sure Tulsa sat around and pouted about the game they played here and about getting their butts kicked. You don't want to have a game beat you twice. We talked about it on Monday. We talked about some of the upsets and who would have thought what happened to us would have happened to us and who would have thought what happened to Tulsa would have happened to Tulsa. Not very many people, so you have to play every single week."
Fritz was very supportive of Jonathan Banks right after the FIU game. He elaborated on those thoughts Tuesday.
"He's played well for us. He's a tough-minded kid. He was very disappointed, and I told him he was one of many guys who didn't play well. Unfortunately the quarterback and the head coach get too much credit when things go well and too much blame when things go wrong. I told him join the club, buddy, and I'll hang with you."
I asked Fritz why the passing game was so bad against FIU all around.
"Number one, it was good coverage by them a lot of times," he said. "Number two, we missed a lot of shots. We had guys open and missed them and we have to hit them. Sometimes that's not always the quarterback. You see a guy running, and the quarterback's looking to the other side, and then all of a sudden he throws it and the guy speeds up. That's too late to recover. Protection. He couldn't hold it and pat the ball one more time. We got beat inside a few times, so that was a team effort."
