NEW ORLEANS, La. – The best college football teams are player led. That’s easier said than done in today’s college football landscape with roster turnover at an all-time high. Looking back at the year that the Tulane Green Wave won the Cotton Bowl in the greatest single-season turnaround in college football history, that was a landmark trait of that team.

It was also largely the same team that had won two games together the season prior. It’s just not the case for the current Green Wave squad, who barely had any players on the field last Saturday that were in West Point, Ny., last season to lose to the Army Black Knights.

One of those few wasn’t on the field, but on the sideline – linebacker Sam Howard, who led the team in tackles in the American Conference Championship loss. He was a surprise inactive for the team’s Week 8 contest just two weeks after the defense lost their other starting linebacker, Dickson Agu, for the season.

Safety Jack Tchienchou felt like the way the defense played all the way up until their final stand on their three-and-out stop was for the two unable to take the field.

“Before the game, he [Sam] talks to us, and he still did,” Tchienchou said. “And you could tell that this one meant a little bit more to him. It was just us going out to play for him and also Dickson.”

The way the defense saw the next men up step up on and off the field came just one week after head coach Jon Sumrall spoke of the team’s immaturity and sloppiness on the ESPN postgame broadcast of the win over the ECU Pirates.

What the win over the Black Knights revealed, perhaps, was that sometimes, it takes a loss of a leader like Howard for the quieter ones waiting in the wings to find their voice. Defensive coordinator Greg Gasparato agreed that Howard’s absence may have been what his side of the ball needed to find real player leadership.

“I think that we're going to be better for it once all said and done,” Gasparato said. “We've got a lot of guys on this defense that are very young that we are trying to push into leadership roles, but maybe they don't have a lot of snaps under their belt. Last year, we had Caleb Ransaw who was a known proven, he had played a lot of ball, Micah Robinson, Johnathan Edwards, Tyler Grubbs had played a ton of ball.”

“They had experience, but they had the film to kind of back up what they said. When they spoke, people, listen. I think a lot of these guys we're trying to mold into leaders, they believe in themselves, but they need to go do it on Saturdays.”

Gasparato has seen that happen over the course of the season with guys like spear Javion White, who is finding the confidence to lead. Chris Rodgers, the leading tackler and linebacker who stepped up in Howard’s place alongside Makai Williams, was another.

“At practice today, those guys are talking more than they ever have and they're leading themselves,” Gasparato continued. “They're starting to lead others and bring somebody with them. It's been fun to watch that growth. I think a lot of times when you do have that known leader, sometimes people take a backseat to that person. But then when they are out for whatever reason, you kind of feel that void and it's time to go fill it. Those guys did a really good job with that.”

It wasn’t pretty, but it was tough, and that win for Tulane might’ve been more valuable than a mark in that column when it comes to leadership it brought out team-wide.