Tulane 2026 Football Schedule

Tuesday morning, Tulane head football coach Will Hall held his weekly media gathering. Here is Part 1 of a transcript of his words, edited lightly for clarity and conciseness

Hall Opening Statement

Great comeback win for us on the road. To go on the road in this league and lose the turnover battle two to zero and win a game is really, really hard to do. I got a lot of respect for Charlotte, they are so much better than their record. They've scored 69 points in the last two weeks on two football teams that play really good defense. when you look at what Temple's done defensively and what we've done defensively. So, Coach Fitch, their OC, I think, is one of the top offensive coordinators in America, has been forever, has done a great job everywhere he's been. And, uh, credit to our young men for battling back and and making some plays.

I thought our young quarterback really grew up in that game, made a lot of plays, thought our O line played one of their best games of the year. And I thought our defense made plays when we had to late, to give us the victory. We made some explosive plays in the kicking game. We also had a blunder where we had a turnover, which is disappointing. But to win a road game with this young team in this league after losing the turnover battle zero to two, I haven't researched it, but I bet that hadn't happened much this year where a road team won with a minus two turnover ratio. So, uh, huge, huge comeback win.

Got a tremendous challenge this week. This football team (Tulsa) is really good, man. Trey Lamb's an excellent football coach. I've known Trey for a long time. uh known as daddy forever. Coached his brother for a minute. Uh got a lot of respect for Trey. He's come up through the small college ranks a lot like I did and and and coach Hatch did. Willie Fritz did. He's worked his way up. He's earned this job. He's in year two. They're so much better than they were last year.

They've got a great quarterback (Baylor Hayes). He's a playmaker. He's a winner. They've got great skill on offense. They have some great skill at returners. Defensively, they've really upgraded their D-line from last year, and you can see that they are literally inches away from being right there in the mix of being in first or second place in this league. They are literally inches on that two-point conversion from uh North Texas and then inches on a block punt from Army. Like, I mean, you give them six more inches, three in the North Texas game and three in the Army game, and they're sitting right here going down the stretch. Instead of one and three, they're three and one in conference play. They've had two weeks to get ready for us. Second week in a row we've played a team with two weeks to get ready for us, which is a tremendous challenge. We're at home and we've got to play well. That's the challenge to our football team is to have the discipline and the toughness to take a victory and do the things that it takes to do it again. That's what we're working on right now.

It seemed like a tale of two halves in that game. Charlotte scores the most points they've scored this year in the first half and then you just literally your team flipped it around and y'all y'all both on offense and defense. What was the difference there?

Really just a second quarter. You know, they scored 24 of their 31 in the second quarter. We scored in every period, all five of them. So, I loved our consistency all game offensively. 15-play drive on the opening drive with six first downs for a touchdown. Drive two, we get a stop on D. Drive two, we're driving it down the field and we have the bad interception. Then we didn't touch the ball again for a long time because we have the bad interception. They go on a long drive, they convert some really long yardage plays. Credit to their quarterback. Connor Herrell is a dynamic player. He's totally changed what they look like. They're a good football team right now. Then we fumble a kickoff return. Then we return the next kickoff return for a touchdown. So we sat there from the from the end of the second quarter on like we we didn't touch the ball for forever and it was just a weird game where we were dominating time of possession after that first 15 play drive and then after that it just flips and we kind of have to reset our bearings. Thought the two-minute drill drive to end the half was phenomenal by our offense and (Quarterback) Trace (Johnson). We didn't score. We missed a field goal, but man, it just created rhythm. Then in the second half, like I said, we were consistent all game. Then defensively, I thought they found some uh some things in the run game. And like all of our D staff does, we made another adjustment late like we've done so many times this year to get the stop at the end of the fourth quarter to give us the ball back. Phenomenal two-minute drill drive and then to get the stop in overtime to win the game.

Plays seem to flow really, really well offensively. Is that because your freshman quarterback has grown up, number one, and number two, are you now calling the plays?