I am flying to Fort Worth tonight and will be at interviews the next two days. Tulane is practicing at Kennedale High, Larry Brooks' school, so it is a homecoming for him.
Here are Fritz's quotes from Monday (Tuesday's practice was closed). I was working on the Advocate feature on the fan with special needs, NIck Beck, and spent more time with him than watching the light workout, which ended early.
FRITZ
No helmets today. Is that typically what you do on a Monday (practices are closed during the year on Monday with no interviews; it wasn't until the end of Fritz's first year that I realized they practiced Monday, unlike CJ, who practiced Sunday and had them take Monday off)?
"Yep. Normally on Monday we lift, meet and do kind of a walkthrough and go over mistakes you make from the previous game and all that stuff. We came out here for about an hour and five minutes. Tuesday will be a big work day. Wednesday will be a big work day. We'll back of quite a bit on Thursday and then back off a little more on Friday."
How do you feel like the New Orleans stage of the preparation has gone?
"Good. It's been good. It's a unique setting. I had a little bit of experience with it when I was at Sam Houston State when we'd play our semifinal game in the middle off December and play our championship game on Jan. 11 one year (his dates were off; the champ game in 2011 was Jan. 7 and the one in 2012 was Jan. 5), so it's quite a bit of a break. You know, there's not a whole lot you can do in between, so we took about eight days off and the guys were excited about that and we came back in a good frame of mind ready to work."
NOTE: The 35 days separating the SMU game and the bowl game is tied for the longest gap in school history, shared with 1979, 1980 and 1998. The Wave played its final regular season game in December before its two Sugar Bowls and one Rose Bowl on New Year's Day.
How much does that experience dealing with long breaks over Christmas help you?
"Oh, I don't know. Both teams probably handled things the same way. There are just not too many teams that are playing this late. I've compared notes with a few people that have played later. It's just a little bit different. It's not like you're having a bye week. We had a lot more than that."
As you compare these extra bowl practices to last year, what do you think you guys have benefited the most from?
"The same thing as last year, identifying some of the young guys. We did a lot of good on good up until this week. We have seven practices where it was like a preseason camp practice for us or a spring ball practice for us. That was good for identification purposes on what guys could and couldn't do because sometimes you get away from guys and they're down on the scout team and you don't watch them closely as you do other guys."
Is self-assessing tough during the year, and it ie easier during the gap before the bowl game?
"We've got some analysts who do that for us and do a really nice job of it. I really feel like that's a big part of my job. Sometimes guys are so weird about the game plan and the scheme and they may not see something that's been kind of obvious sitting there, and that's something we try to look at. Maybe a guy isn't playing quite as well as what he should be playing. And then we get into analytics. It's kind of interesting. We have Pro Football Focus and they grade every single guy in the nation in Division I football. Sometimes you need to see how they grade a guy compared to how we grade a guy because this is a totally a guy that doesn't know anything about our players that's grading in Timbuktu. You don't know where he's grading from, and sometimes he sees something a little differently than you do."
Spears cannot play and redshirt, right?
"Yeah, we've got plenty of backs. We wish he could play, but unfortunately we played him that second to last one (SMU). He's played four and we're going to go ahead and redshirt him and he's going to have an unbelievable career at Tulane."
You only have three freshmen who aren't redshirting this year. How nice is it to have that luxury?
"One of the things good about it is almost all of them got some type of experience. There's going to be a few more that are going to play this week who haven't played a whole lot for us but will play in some kicking game and some different situations. We are hoping Sorrell Brown is going to play. It would be the first time he's played in a couple of years (since high school, two separate knee injuries have sidelined him in 2018 and 2019). That would be neat, too."
Here are Fritz's quotes from Monday (Tuesday's practice was closed). I was working on the Advocate feature on the fan with special needs, NIck Beck, and spent more time with him than watching the light workout, which ended early.
FRITZ
No helmets today. Is that typically what you do on a Monday (practices are closed during the year on Monday with no interviews; it wasn't until the end of Fritz's first year that I realized they practiced Monday, unlike CJ, who practiced Sunday and had them take Monday off)?
"Yep. Normally on Monday we lift, meet and do kind of a walkthrough and go over mistakes you make from the previous game and all that stuff. We came out here for about an hour and five minutes. Tuesday will be a big work day. Wednesday will be a big work day. We'll back of quite a bit on Thursday and then back off a little more on Friday."
How do you feel like the New Orleans stage of the preparation has gone?
"Good. It's been good. It's a unique setting. I had a little bit of experience with it when I was at Sam Houston State when we'd play our semifinal game in the middle off December and play our championship game on Jan. 11 one year (his dates were off; the champ game in 2011 was Jan. 7 and the one in 2012 was Jan. 5), so it's quite a bit of a break. You know, there's not a whole lot you can do in between, so we took about eight days off and the guys were excited about that and we came back in a good frame of mind ready to work."
NOTE: The 35 days separating the SMU game and the bowl game is tied for the longest gap in school history, shared with 1979, 1980 and 1998. The Wave played its final regular season game in December before its two Sugar Bowls and one Rose Bowl on New Year's Day.
How much does that experience dealing with long breaks over Christmas help you?
"Oh, I don't know. Both teams probably handled things the same way. There are just not too many teams that are playing this late. I've compared notes with a few people that have played later. It's just a little bit different. It's not like you're having a bye week. We had a lot more than that."
As you compare these extra bowl practices to last year, what do you think you guys have benefited the most from?
"The same thing as last year, identifying some of the young guys. We did a lot of good on good up until this week. We have seven practices where it was like a preseason camp practice for us or a spring ball practice for us. That was good for identification purposes on what guys could and couldn't do because sometimes you get away from guys and they're down on the scout team and you don't watch them closely as you do other guys."
Is self-assessing tough during the year, and it ie easier during the gap before the bowl game?
"We've got some analysts who do that for us and do a really nice job of it. I really feel like that's a big part of my job. Sometimes guys are so weird about the game plan and the scheme and they may not see something that's been kind of obvious sitting there, and that's something we try to look at. Maybe a guy isn't playing quite as well as what he should be playing. And then we get into analytics. It's kind of interesting. We have Pro Football Focus and they grade every single guy in the nation in Division I football. Sometimes you need to see how they grade a guy compared to how we grade a guy because this is a totally a guy that doesn't know anything about our players that's grading in Timbuktu. You don't know where he's grading from, and sometimes he sees something a little differently than you do."
Spears cannot play and redshirt, right?
"Yeah, we've got plenty of backs. We wish he could play, but unfortunately we played him that second to last one (SMU). He's played four and we're going to go ahead and redshirt him and he's going to have an unbelievable career at Tulane."
You only have three freshmen who aren't redshirting this year. How nice is it to have that luxury?
"One of the things good about it is almost all of them got some type of experience. There's going to be a few more that are going to play this week who haven't played a whole lot for us but will play in some kicking game and some different situations. We are hoping Sorrell Brown is going to play. It would be the first time he's played in a couple of years (since high school, two separate knee injuries have sidelined him in 2018 and 2019). That would be neat, too."