The faster timeline breaks from recent years, when Tulane waited until season-opener week to settle on the quarterback competition winners.
There are a lot of ways to conduct a quarterback competition, and the Tulane Green Wave will see a few tweaks to theirs this upcoming season.
Head coach Will Hall offered some insight at American Conference media days down in St. Petersburg, Fl., this past week about the competitors and how things will unfold.
For one, he has since decided to trim down the competition to four signal callers who separated themselves in spring game: Kadin Semonza, Zeon Chriss-Gremillion, Dagan Bruno, and Trace Johnson.
Those four were able to separate enough from Cade Scott and Jay Beamon to take control of the race.
However, Hall went a step further.
While he did stay mum on his plan to employ quarterbacks – will it be one total, several throughout the year or even in one game, etc. – he did set a deadline.
According to Guerry Smith of Nola.com, Hall will name his starter about two weeks into camp on the 14th practice, he announced, ahead of the Sept. 5 season opener against the Duke Blue Devils.
That’s when he noted that the battle won’t necessarily be over, and that he’ll still decide on a plan on how to play them all throughout the year.
It is, however, a marked change into how the past few have been conducted.
It was relatively clear that Darian Mensah had an X-factor about him, but he wasn’t crowned starter until the week of the season opener in 2024.
Last season, it looked like things were trending towards Brendan Sullivan, but then an injury in the final weeks of camp allowed Jake Retzlaff to pull away.
Hopefully, this quarterback competition isn’t swayed by any injuries, but it will look to be over much quicker than the last few – at least in preparation to open the year against the Blue Devils.
That should help build a more deliberate offense around that signal caller and how his skill set fits the offensive system best with a bit of time to tailor and tweak things and solidify some chemistry.
It was noticeable that the receivers last season and Retzlaff barely had any time on task.
Anyone who wins this year’s competition has a leg up there with, at minimum, an entire spring camp and summer workouts under their belt.
But the receivers will also get the second half of training camp to nail things down with the quarterback who will be throwing to them Week 1, and that’s real valuable insight.
