Makai Williams Shines in Expanded Role in Tulane Win at Charlotte

The Tulane Green Wave would have liked to wrap that game up against the Charlotte 49ers much more handily, in regulation.

But no football game is a given, and they could have easily come out of the gate looking closer to their UTSA Roadrunners performance than anything else.

They seemed to not have their heads in it as much against the Roadrunners. Self-inflicted as it may have been, they had nothing but fight in the final two minutes of regulation and through overtime in the 38-31 victory.

There were plenty of standout individual performances to talk about in the matchup. Guys young and old stepped up in big moments.

No one stood out more than linebacker Makai Williams.

Williams has been at Tulane since 2023. He primarily played on special teams his first season until Jon Sumrall’s staff came to town, and injuries to the position thrust him into a heavier role.

In 2025, linebacker Dickson Agu went down in Week 5 of the season for the year. Then Sam Howard got hurt and missed nearly a month of action. That put both Chris Rodgers and Makai Williams into major starting roles, with Rodgers taking on an extra load with Agu’s injury.

Then this season, Rodgers gets injured in Game 2 and hasn’t played since. Williams instantly became the starter alongside Agu.

He’s led the team in tackles in a few games, and while he wasn’t the leading tackler on Friday, he was the defender that made the most impact with how much he was asked to take on and do in that game.

Williams looked like was operating as a spy for 49ers quarterback Conner Harrell and was tasked with rushing him and disrupting run lanes in a role we haven’t really seen Williams take on so critically.

He was completely up to the assignment.

Williams was the fourth-leading tackler on the evening with three solo and six total tackles. But he had a team-leading two tackles for loss, one of the team’s three sacks, a pass breakup and a quarterback hit.

That is a wildly impressive stat line for what he was asked to take on. The mental load didn’t seem to bother him at all.

He’s a guy that could have easily looked to test the waters elsewhere in the transfer portal but is a true Tulane guy through and through and waited for his playing time to come on the field at the place he started.

It paid off in a big way in Friday night’s win.