Ghosts on Fire: A Scandurro Story

BY TIM SCANDURRO

The arrival of mid-October in New Orleans is always a special time.  It’s when our six months of summer start to fade, our fall festival and holiday season start to get going, our hurricane season is (mostly) over, and you can safely eat oysters without worrying about flesh eating bacteria.

But you’ll have to forgive Tulane coach Will Hall (and his professional football counterpart in New Orleans) for not feeling very festive last week. Both were coming off disappointing games and disappointing starts in general, and both had been written off by many of their own teams’ fans.  On two Tulane fan sites I looked at, 18 of 20 score predictions favored the Memphis Tigers, and by an average margin of over 24 points.  48-7, 48-10, 44-10 and 42-9 were among the prognostications.  Two brave souls picked us to win by 3, although one admitted his prediction was “a little crazy.”

But never underestimate the power of a team with its collective back against the wall.  And never underestimate, in Tulane’s case, the ‘championship DNA’ that Memphis’s coach mentioned during the week.  When a wild Friday night at Yulman Stadium was finally decided with Kevin Adams’ third takeaway of the evening in the Tulane end zone, Coach Hall let it all out.  Both arms went in the air as he shouted “Victory” over and over and exhorted the home crowd. On the field afterwards he gave big bear hugs to multiple players, the school president and members of his team, several coaches, and last but not least his wife Rebecca. 

I have heard marriage described as “each for the other, and both against the world.”  A football team in its own locker room is much the same.  As long as they believe in themselves and each other, they can move mountains no matter what anyone outside  thinks.   I’ve been critical of our start this year myself, but couldn’t be prouder of Coach Hall and his football team for doing something that nobody expected them to do Friday night.  That kind of performance against that kind of backdrop is why we all fell in love with this beautiful game.

Let’s be fair here to the “pump the brakes” crowd, who started putting their feet through the floorboards even before the band had finished playing the alma mater in the south end zone. 

We still haven’t played our best football, not even close.  We can’t count on a six turnover performance in any other game this season, we still have to get a lot better in the run game, we have to clean up all these offensive line penalties that re-emerged, and this win means very little if we don’t back it up at home again next Saturday night.  But next Saturday night wouldn’t matter nearly as much as it does now, if Friday night’s big win hadn’t happened. And it happened against that team, so enjoy it.   We have a great shot at winning this league now, if we keep getting better.  Let’s play some more meaningful football games, shall we?  Now on to some notes and quotes.

Football is a game of inches…and feet. With 1:50 left, Memphis had cut our lead to six points and we faced a third and eleven. We ran a weak side tunnel screen to Destyn Hill.  All year we have tried to establish that horizontal game, trying to get the ball to our playmakers on the edge.  It worked once at Army, when the defense missed tackles at the catch point.  Most of the time the play has been blown up because we haven’t been able to get our tight ends and linemen out in front fast enough to square anybody up.  Our most athletic lineman is probably left tackle Dominic Steward.  He’s had injury issues this season and did not start the game, but he came in when another lineman was replaced after struggling.  On this play he got out fast enough to kick out the Memphis cornerback in the nick of time, turning what would have been a two yard loss into a ten yard gain.  Credit also to tight end Gabe Lovorn who came all the way across the formation from the strong side and blasted a Memphis safety who was in position to tackle Hill after a short gain and force a punt.  The play design with the strong side rollout action was good too, preventing the interior defenders from getting out to Hill.  Without all of those pieces and a strong effort by Hill, the last touchdown never happens and we’re punting the ball.

Johnnie Daniels:  Speaking of that last touchdown, most will remember Johnnie Daniels’ night for that game-sealing 48 yarder.  But I thought his best play was the tackle he made on the Memphis DB who intercepted Trace Johnson and was headed down the sideline for what would have been a back-breaking  go-ahead touchdown with ten seconds left in the first half.  Daniels released into the right flat on the play,  and had to get on his horse and race diagonally to the opposite sideline at a dead sprint to make the tackle.  Two plays later we intercepted Memphis and ran it back all the way.  It was a fourteen point swing that was made possible by the extraordinary effort of one player.

Garrett Mmahat:  Three plays stood out.  One was the huge third down catch on our last drive to keep the chains and thus the clock moving.  Remember he dropped a ball in a similar third down situation against USM.  Not this time.  He also had a nice seal block from his wing position on our final touchdown.  But I thought the best play he made came on a different third down throw where Trace Johnson scrambled to his left and Mmahat broke off his route to go help his quarterback and made a diving reception of a pass intended for Hill. Hill was interfered with but we declined the penalty because Mmahat’s reception gave us more yards.  Terrific effort and instinct play. 

Jack Tchienchou:  After Memphis hit a 76 yard touchdown strike to go ahead be seven, the ensuing kickoff was held up by the wind and misplayed by our return team, giving Memphis the ball again deep in our territory.  They immediately went for the jugular, throwing an RPO pass in the middle of the field to an open receiver inside our ten yard line.  But the other guy in the middle of the field was wearing green jersey Number 1.  He separated the receiver from the football with a jarring and entirely legal strike to his ribcage.  The pass was incomplete, and the receiver did not get back up for a while.  On the next play, Ed Smith sacked Marcus Stokes and forced a fumble which we recovered.  The whole direction of the game changed after that.  Tchienchou is a team leader, a veteran, a tough guy who brings his best in the big moments.  He is what football coaches call a striker.  The hit seemed to galvanize us and seemed to be an “uh-oh” moment for Memphis.  When the Memphis coach talked about our team having “championship DNA,” he was validated on this play by a player who embodies all of that.  This is a player who had much bigger money options elsewhere and opted to come back to play with Coach Polk and his Tulane brothers. Glad he did.

Josh Moore:  He’s a backup safety but he had two huge fourth down plays near the goal line, staying home to tackle Tigers quarterback Marcus Stokes at the two yard line on the first one and breaking up what would have been a touchdown pass on the second.  As with Daniels, that’s fourteen points worth of effort.

Leg Men:   William Hudlow had a 72 yard punt downed near the Memphis goal line and followed it up with a 60 yarder.  Plus he dropped another one inside the five.  Cooper Helmke hit three field goals including a 56 yarder, with his only miss attributable to a bad snap. A lot of us were concerned about our kicking game when last year’s battery followed Coach Galante to Florida, but at the season midpoint these two local products have been the most pleasant surprises on the roster.

“I’ve been dreaming about this since I was a kid….this was one of the coolest moments of my life.”—Tulane freshman quarterback Trace Johnson.

No, he wasn’t perfect.  But he wasn’t afraid or overwhelmed either, and he ripped some beautiful throws in difficult, windy conditions.  But for three holding calls that wiped out completions, he’d have thrown for 200 yards.  He was sacked only once, while his counterpart went down seven times and fumbled on three of those.  The coaches gave Johnson several five-wide, full-field reads.  “After the first couple series when we were trying to protect him, I talked with Coach Calloway and we decided to just cut him loose and see what he had,” Coach Hall said afterwards.  Reportedly, when told he was getting the nod early in game week, the freshman said “Good, because we’re winning this &!*# game.”  There will be bumps in the road and lessons to learn but it’s the kid’s team now, and he knows it and they know it. 

“Coach Huff didn’t do a good enough job getting us ready to play in this kind of environment…the Yulman ghosts were on fire tonight.  That’s why this is such a tough place to play.”—Memphis Coach Charles Huff, postgame. 

If you can get past the fact that Coach Huff likes to talk about Coach Huff in the third person, Coach Huff had a point.  Tulane has now won TEN home games in a row.  Yulman Stadium hasn’t been in existence that long, but already we have the collective memory of so many memorable and magical games there.  The night games when the weather gets a little crispier—and we have another one next Saturday night—always seem especially energetic and feisty. The players feed off the home crowd, the momentum tends to build, and the opponent often breaks.  This one felt a little like North Texas last year, when another team with gaudy numbers and a heralded quarterback came into Yulman and got smacked.

I can remember one opposing coach during the Bob Toledo or Curtis Johnson years preparing to play us in the Superdome, and saying in a press conference that the hardest thing to get his team to understand was that they would have to manufacture their own energy because the game would be cavernous and quiet, kind of like playing football on the surface of the moon.  Now we have an opposing coach talking about a mystique we have at home that’s tough to prepare for.  Wow.

Another conference favorite visits Yulman this coming Saturday night.  I don’t need to remind any of you that UTSA embarrassed us last year in San Antonio.  But I will remind you that their Coach Jeff Traylor said afterwards that he and his team had felt “extremely disrespected” by Jon Sumrall and Jake Retzlaff’s comments about UTSA piping in artificial crowd noise when we had the ball.

UTSA won’t have to contend with artificial crowd noise next Saturday night.  But as Coach Huff found out, they will have to contend with a triple threat. There’s that proud group of defending champions waiting for them, there’s going to be a raucous crowd, and last but certainly not least, we have those Yulman ghosts on fire.

Good luck preparing for that.  Roll Wave.