Tulane Tweaks Conditioning To Play a Bit Faster at Rice

After a game like last weekend, the Tulane Green Wave have to look to strike the balance between tweaking some changes that are clearly necessary, whatever they may be, and not overcompensating and swinging the pendulum too far the other direction.

Aka, if we showed up and practice was being ran entirely differently, that would be a bad sign.

A good sign is the slight alterations that the Green Wave implemented this past week of practice.

Something head coach Will Hall brought up on The Current podcast hosted by Corey Gloor on Monday was that he and director of strength and conditioning, Colin Kenyon, take responsibility for and feel like the team has overtrained a bit.

This is the first season in recent memory as well where Tulane only has one bye week, previously having two in the last several seasons.

That really matters to a team who played two Power Four programs on the road and no FCS team this year.

And to be clear, none of this is said in an attempt to explain away what transpired on the field last Saturday.

But it’s a theory that absolutely has legs, and one that could prove important this weekend. The team certainly isn’t getting more rested by the week.

Last season, the Wave had a bye in Week 6, and another one in Week 9. At the time, it felt like the three-week span didn’t exactly require another rest period.

There’s no question that the additional period of rest made a difference in Tulane’s strong finish.

In 2024, the byes were in Weeks 7 and 13, which felt a bit late. Complaints about the timing of bye weeks is much more of a luxury than having just one all season.

Not just that, but in Week 5 – earlier than both first byes in the last two seasons that had another one coming after them.

Even without potential overtraining, that’s a really tough break schedule-wise.

So, this week, practice was basically business as usual. But the lengths were shortened, with less full speed and coverage reps, and they took their pads off midway through Wednesday’s practice and ended the morning in spiders.

There was plenty that went wrong on the football field, and as we’ve broken down this week, plenty of reasons for a team to look slow.

There’s no reason to compound any football-related issues with conditioning ones, and with the Wave already dealt a poor hand with respect to their bye week timing, this feels like the right tweak to make.