With heavy contact almost verboten in modern college football practices, the way Tulane's Tuesday workout ended was a complete surprise. It was similar to an Oklahoma drill, with defensive linemen and offensive linemen having one-on-one battles and the rest of the players serving as judge and jury, either cheering or booing depending on the result Tristen Fortenberry absolutely got the better of Terrell Allen on one of them, and Adin Huntington was razzed heavily for a weak effort against Gabe Fortson and forced to go back and try a second time, where he fared a little better. Javon Carter hit Jayce Mitchell hard, drawing loud cheers. while Mitchell and Adonis Friloux battled to a standstill.
I have not seen an in-season drill like this in years, and Jon Sumrall had a simple explanation for the heavy contact afterward.
"I thought we tackled really poorly in the game at times," he said of Tulane's 34-3 win against Charlotte on Thursday. "That (drill) is something we did prior to here when I was at Kentucky on the defensive staff. We used to end the team period of practice with a thud, and the whole team's watching and you either get booed or cheered. I was very, very, very frustrated during the game on Thursday and then Friday watching it again at our performance tackling. We looked like we had not been coached how to tackle, like keep your eyes up, run your feet, wrap your arms, knock 'em back. We were just like diving off the diving board lunging, hoping the guy would fall down if we got near him. It was garbage tackling technique. I will compromise a team rep at the end for everybody getting a really good fundamental technique tackle rep. Teams that get better on the fundamental stuff during the year usually improve as a team. The schematic stuff is what it is, but we have to tackle better, and I was very frustrated, so that's why we went back to elementary school football and tackled at the end."
Tulane definitely practicing tackling much less under Sumrall than it did under Fritz, who taught his Seattle Seahawks tackling technique constantly with players form tackling cushions almost every day in one of the defensive individual drill segments. I did not notice the bad tackling against Charlotte, which scored the fewest points (along with Temple in 2020) of any Wave AAC opponent, but there definitely has been sloppy tackling at times this season from a mostly good defense. Part of Sumrall's anger is making sure Tulane is pumped up for a lousy opponent in Temple, but part of it is legitimate.
Tulane's starting defensive line today was Matthew Fobbs-White at bandit, Eric Hicks at the nose, Patrick Jenkins at tackle and Kam Hamilton at end, the same as the lineup against Charlotte. Hamilton has played better at end this year than inside, and Terrell Allen has played much better since moving inside than he did at end. The coaches have learned what their players do best as the year goes along, Allen is up to 14 tackles, the same total as Hamilton. Seven linemen have double-digit tackle totals, and four more have exactly five stops on the Wave's deep front.
I talked to Sumrall, offensive coordinator Joe Craddock (for a 1-on-1), Caleb Ransaw and Josh Remetich after practice.
SUMRALL
"Good to have a normal week. Last week was fast and furious with a quick turnaround. This week more normalcy for us. We've got to keep improving and getting better."
On message to team:
"We were North Texas's homecoming week. I did kind of lean into that a little bit and told them it's going to be their party, let's go put on a show for them. Last week it was at somebody else's stadium again--Thursday night, Halloween--and everybody was ready for a party and I wanted us to be the show. Well now we have to come home and it ain't time to relax. We're coming back to our home stadium, our home crowd. We need to be ready to put on a show again. Our guys need to be ready to play. Great, great attendance expected. Sold out for Saturday, and our guys need to take pride in playing at home. For the ones in their last year of eligibility, they've got two home games left. If that doesn't give you a little extra incentive, then we've got a problem. Like their clock's ticking. The sand in the hourglass is going fast, so these guys need to be really urgent in how they approach everything we do so we can go out and play the way we want to play on Saturday."
On what stands out about Temple:
"The quarterback's playing really efficient. I don't think he gets enough credit for how he operates. The receiver, No. 5, is really dynamic. They have another guy on the outside who ran track at USC who was a national champion on one of their 4 X 400-relay teams. They are big up front. They look like a team that you expect to be from Philadelphia, just big, strong guys up front. They are athletic on the D-line. Their linebackers are really good. Their linebackers might be one of the better inside linebacker groups we've seen in the league. They have good skill. Each week in this league I've been impressed that somebody's got a strength that you're like, just wow, this guy's really good. They are playing hard. Against East Carolina they scored a bunch of points, and they beat Tulsa, so they're played in some better games recently than people probably recognize."
On not overlooking Temple:
"I don't even think about anything else other than this week. Like anybody in our building that thinks about anything other than the game that's right in front of us, they're an idiot. If they do, I will call that out real quick. I am ultra in the moment to the point that if somebody comes to me and wants to talk about a game that's after this one, I might lose my mind on them. If anybody on our staff wants to talk about any other game or any our players want to talk about any other game than Temple, they are going to feel really uncomfortable because I'm going to go crazy. I'm so focused on this game. Our building has to. Everybody in our building, that's how you do things when you don't perform your best because you worry about something you have no control over. We have no control over Saturday yet. We want to have great Tuesday meetings as a staff, and our players need to go down after practice and lift and continue to maintain strength, and I want our guys to show up Wednesday with a good mindset for practice. I can't even think about Saturday yet."
On no recent history with Temple for Tulane:
"I don't know any of these teams really. We've played all these teams and I'm like, I've never played this team before. They are all such new weeks. The history part component, when there's recent history, that's one thing. When there's history but it's like we played these guys 10 years ago, half our guys were 10 years old or whateever. There are some recent history games we can draw on with a lot of our opponents, but we don't have recent history with Temple. There's not really anything to point back to. With Rice and with UAB, reflecting back on those games I was able to show our guys, hey, these were really close games last year, but I don't have to point very far. Temple's had some success in this league, so we just have to make sure we're prepared to play our brand of football and play to our standard. Really as we go into every game I'm so focused into playing to our standard, and that's why sometimes when we win, y'all probably think I'm frustrated because I'm like we didn't do this well enough. I just want us to play our best. Whatever that is, the scoreboard fall out the way it does. I just want us to play the best we can play."
On second in nation in time of possession:
"I don't lean into we have to win the time of possession. It's what you do with your possessions. I do think in certain games and the flow of certain games it's important. Last week when we were playing a short week, a Saturday on the road and a Thursday on the road, I did feel the need for our offense to stay on the field and protect our defense because the week before against North Texas we had played 80-something snaps. You have to consider where are we as a team, what was the last game like, what does this look like going into the next game. I felt like we needed to take care of the ball and control the clock because the travel back-to-back weeks was going to wear us down and the number of snaps we played the week before was going to wear us down and then some of that's a component of games, you go back to South Florida, we had an 11-minute drive to end the game. We didn't get points on it. We kneeled it out. At the end of the game I'm not one of these guys that wants to see how many points we can score. If we can bleed the clock for 10 minutes at the end of the game, I'm fine with that. I got no problem not giving the football back, so we're going to play complementary football. There are certain situations where we've been explosive this year and scored fast, but there are certain times where you need to run the ball, take care of your defense and play complementary football, too."
On if he will watch college football playoff rankings show tonight:
"Yeah. I'll look at that a lot closer than I do the election results, I can promise you that. This affects my day-to-day life probably a lot more."
I have not seen an in-season drill like this in years, and Jon Sumrall had a simple explanation for the heavy contact afterward.
"I thought we tackled really poorly in the game at times," he said of Tulane's 34-3 win against Charlotte on Thursday. "That (drill) is something we did prior to here when I was at Kentucky on the defensive staff. We used to end the team period of practice with a thud, and the whole team's watching and you either get booed or cheered. I was very, very, very frustrated during the game on Thursday and then Friday watching it again at our performance tackling. We looked like we had not been coached how to tackle, like keep your eyes up, run your feet, wrap your arms, knock 'em back. We were just like diving off the diving board lunging, hoping the guy would fall down if we got near him. It was garbage tackling technique. I will compromise a team rep at the end for everybody getting a really good fundamental technique tackle rep. Teams that get better on the fundamental stuff during the year usually improve as a team. The schematic stuff is what it is, but we have to tackle better, and I was very frustrated, so that's why we went back to elementary school football and tackled at the end."
Tulane definitely practicing tackling much less under Sumrall than it did under Fritz, who taught his Seattle Seahawks tackling technique constantly with players form tackling cushions almost every day in one of the defensive individual drill segments. I did not notice the bad tackling against Charlotte, which scored the fewest points (along with Temple in 2020) of any Wave AAC opponent, but there definitely has been sloppy tackling at times this season from a mostly good defense. Part of Sumrall's anger is making sure Tulane is pumped up for a lousy opponent in Temple, but part of it is legitimate.
Tulane's starting defensive line today was Matthew Fobbs-White at bandit, Eric Hicks at the nose, Patrick Jenkins at tackle and Kam Hamilton at end, the same as the lineup against Charlotte. Hamilton has played better at end this year than inside, and Terrell Allen has played much better since moving inside than he did at end. The coaches have learned what their players do best as the year goes along, Allen is up to 14 tackles, the same total as Hamilton. Seven linemen have double-digit tackle totals, and four more have exactly five stops on the Wave's deep front.
I talked to Sumrall, offensive coordinator Joe Craddock (for a 1-on-1), Caleb Ransaw and Josh Remetich after practice.
SUMRALL
"Good to have a normal week. Last week was fast and furious with a quick turnaround. This week more normalcy for us. We've got to keep improving and getting better."
On message to team:
"We were North Texas's homecoming week. I did kind of lean into that a little bit and told them it's going to be their party, let's go put on a show for them. Last week it was at somebody else's stadium again--Thursday night, Halloween--and everybody was ready for a party and I wanted us to be the show. Well now we have to come home and it ain't time to relax. We're coming back to our home stadium, our home crowd. We need to be ready to put on a show again. Our guys need to be ready to play. Great, great attendance expected. Sold out for Saturday, and our guys need to take pride in playing at home. For the ones in their last year of eligibility, they've got two home games left. If that doesn't give you a little extra incentive, then we've got a problem. Like their clock's ticking. The sand in the hourglass is going fast, so these guys need to be really urgent in how they approach everything we do so we can go out and play the way we want to play on Saturday."
On what stands out about Temple:
"The quarterback's playing really efficient. I don't think he gets enough credit for how he operates. The receiver, No. 5, is really dynamic. They have another guy on the outside who ran track at USC who was a national champion on one of their 4 X 400-relay teams. They are big up front. They look like a team that you expect to be from Philadelphia, just big, strong guys up front. They are athletic on the D-line. Their linebackers are really good. Their linebackers might be one of the better inside linebacker groups we've seen in the league. They have good skill. Each week in this league I've been impressed that somebody's got a strength that you're like, just wow, this guy's really good. They are playing hard. Against East Carolina they scored a bunch of points, and they beat Tulsa, so they're played in some better games recently than people probably recognize."
On not overlooking Temple:
"I don't even think about anything else other than this week. Like anybody in our building that thinks about anything other than the game that's right in front of us, they're an idiot. If they do, I will call that out real quick. I am ultra in the moment to the point that if somebody comes to me and wants to talk about a game that's after this one, I might lose my mind on them. If anybody on our staff wants to talk about any other game or any our players want to talk about any other game than Temple, they are going to feel really uncomfortable because I'm going to go crazy. I'm so focused on this game. Our building has to. Everybody in our building, that's how you do things when you don't perform your best because you worry about something you have no control over. We have no control over Saturday yet. We want to have great Tuesday meetings as a staff, and our players need to go down after practice and lift and continue to maintain strength, and I want our guys to show up Wednesday with a good mindset for practice. I can't even think about Saturday yet."
On no recent history with Temple for Tulane:
"I don't know any of these teams really. We've played all these teams and I'm like, I've never played this team before. They are all such new weeks. The history part component, when there's recent history, that's one thing. When there's history but it's like we played these guys 10 years ago, half our guys were 10 years old or whateever. There are some recent history games we can draw on with a lot of our opponents, but we don't have recent history with Temple. There's not really anything to point back to. With Rice and with UAB, reflecting back on those games I was able to show our guys, hey, these were really close games last year, but I don't have to point very far. Temple's had some success in this league, so we just have to make sure we're prepared to play our brand of football and play to our standard. Really as we go into every game I'm so focused into playing to our standard, and that's why sometimes when we win, y'all probably think I'm frustrated because I'm like we didn't do this well enough. I just want us to play our best. Whatever that is, the scoreboard fall out the way it does. I just want us to play the best we can play."
On second in nation in time of possession:
"I don't lean into we have to win the time of possession. It's what you do with your possessions. I do think in certain games and the flow of certain games it's important. Last week when we were playing a short week, a Saturday on the road and a Thursday on the road, I did feel the need for our offense to stay on the field and protect our defense because the week before against North Texas we had played 80-something snaps. You have to consider where are we as a team, what was the last game like, what does this look like going into the next game. I felt like we needed to take care of the ball and control the clock because the travel back-to-back weeks was going to wear us down and the number of snaps we played the week before was going to wear us down and then some of that's a component of games, you go back to South Florida, we had an 11-minute drive to end the game. We didn't get points on it. We kneeled it out. At the end of the game I'm not one of these guys that wants to see how many points we can score. If we can bleed the clock for 10 minutes at the end of the game, I'm fine with that. I got no problem not giving the football back, so we're going to play complementary football. There are certain situations where we've been explosive this year and scored fast, but there are certain times where you need to run the ball, take care of your defense and play complementary football, too."
On if he will watch college football playoff rankings show tonight:
"Yeah. I'll look at that a lot closer than I do the election results, I can promise you that. This affects my day-to-day life probably a lot more."
