The Tulane Green Wave have struggled out of their bye weeks, but they might really need it this time.
The Tulane Green Wave now have a week to try to figure out what their identity truly is heading into conference play.
Bye weeks can be tricky. It’s a disruption of player’s routines, schedules, and it just tends to bog teams down.
The Green Wave have been no stranger to the concerns of bye weeks in the last several years.
They won the last two years coming out of their bye weeks under Jon Sumrall. But the team always came out slow, flat footed, and in danger of handing the game away.
In 2024, it was against the Rice Owls, who Tulane was expected to handily beat. They eventually won 24-10, but it was 10-7 at half, and that final score was aided by a fumble recovery for a touchdown to seal it.
Before the bye, they beat the UAB Blazers 70-20.
In 2025, the Green Wave handled the Tulsa Golden Hurricane pretty easily in a 35-10 defeat to open conference play.
Then they had their bye week, and faced the East Carolina Pirates the week after.
They barely won in a 26-19 nailbiter.
So, there’s a paper trail here of Tulane falling flat out of the bye week – and that was when things were fully functioning Uptown.
This year’s edition of the Green Wave needs to solve quite a few things during this downtime that might actually come in handy for once.
They need to figure out what they’re doing at quarterback. Perhaps they go back to Kadin Semonza, or they use this critical weeklong period to get Trace Johnson heavy catchup reps with the ones and settle him into the offense.
It was noteworthy that he seemed to look for the receivers lower down the depth chart as he likely had more familiarity throwing to them, with him only taking backup reps the last three weeks after previously serving as third string heading into the season opener.
They must decide who is the starting quarterback heading into conference play. If that ends up being Johnson, then that seems like it for the rest of the season with only one quarterback lower than him on the depth chart in Dagan Bruno, who we certainly might see a bit of against the Army Black Knights if the Wave decides to really lean on and match their running attack.
Then they must figure out who the real playmakers are around him. Anthony Brown-Stephens was targeted an astonishing 14 times last Saturday.
It feels like Fat Hill has faded into the background a bit.
The tight ends were utilized much more as blockers against the Golden Eagles. Will they be expected to be more of a run-based role or will that still try to be an emphasis in the passing game?
Usually, bye weeks can breed complacency and just a bit of falling asleep at the wheel.
The Wave may really need this time to figure things out for once.
