Northwestern @ Tulane Preview

BY JAKE WEINSTOCK

We made it, everyone. Finally, the season opener is (almost) here. It's been 252 days since the Green Wave last took the field in Gasparilla Bowl, and now we are just 1 more away from the 2025 season getting started. Unlike last season, Tulane opens not with an FCS opponent, but rather Northwestern, from the B1G. Saturday will mark the first time that a B1G team has made an appearance at Yulman Stadium (11:00 am CT, ESPNU, 106.7 The Ticket) in the stadium’s young history, and the first time Tulane will host a B1G opponent since 1955, apparently.

Third-year head coach David Braun has had an up-and-down tenure in Evanston, after finishing 8-5 (5-4) in 2023, the Wildcats fell back to 4-8 (2-7), last season, with wins over Miami (OH), Eastern Illinois, Maryland, and Purdue. The market has not been overly optimistic on their prospects for this 2025 season, as BetMGM has set their over/under regular season win total at just 3.5. However, like it or not, this will be one of the better half of teams that the Green Wave are set to play, this season. Braun will be breaking in Preston Stone at quarterback. Stone, of course, was the starter throughout the entire 2023 season for the SMU Mustangs before suffering a season-ending injury in the regular season finale, the very week before SMU (with then-backup quarterback Kevin Jennings) pounded a potentially-distracted Tulane team as rumors swirled about Willie Fritz’s impending departure to a school named after a city.

Stone was fantastic during that 2023 run, finishing with a ProFootballFocus grade of 91.3 (out of 100), an adjusted completion percentage of 69.1%, a yards-per-attempt average of 9.3, an average depth of target mark of 13.6, while a staggering 8.2% of his throws we charted as “big-time throws” by PFF, and only 3.2% were marked as “turnover-worthy plays.” Said a Tulane staff member this week, “he can make any throw,” and that’s certainly reflected in those 2023 numbers. By PFF, he received a 93.0 grade on throws 20+ yards down the field and a correspondingly superb grade of 92.6 on throws 10-19 yards down the field. Stone spent last season as a good soldier and backup to Jennings, before moving on during the winter transfer portal.

One of his primary targets on Saturday will surely be South Dakota State (FCS) transfer receiver Griffin Wilde, who checks in at 6’2”, 200 pound. Wilde hauled in 71 receptions over 103 targets for 1,154 yards and 12 touchdowns, last season. He demonstrated excellent body control and route-running, and can play anywhere, having spent 36.9% of his snaps in the slot with another 61.7% outside, and even a few in the backfield. I’d expect him to line up primarily on the boundary, and he'll be a tremendous test for Joker Johnson. That’s the matchup I will be personally watching most closely, when Northwestern has the ball. Said a college football industry source, “I scouted and watched tape on probably 600 receivers who were in one of the post-2024 season portal windows, and if you asked me to rank a top 5, there’s no way Wilde wouldn’t have been in there.”  

The question, though, is how much can Stone and Wilde (in particular) elevate a Northwestern offense that was downright dreadful, last season? Out of 134 FBS schools, the Wildcats ranked 128^th in points per play, 129^th in points per game, 130^th in yards per play, and 122^nd in punts per offensive score. On the analytics side, they had the B1G’s 3^rd worst offense by EPA per pass and 4^th worst EPA per rush. Now, while Northwestern has size on both lines of scrimmage, if your causal impression of them is that they want to run the ball 50 times a game, I think you may end up being surprised on Saturday. Only 22 of those 134 FBS schools had a lower percentage of designed rushing attempts, last year. Certainly they were not very good and game script plays a factor, but consider that their now-second year offensive coordinator Zach Lujan arrived from the same South Dakota State in January of 2024. In 2023, the Jackrabbits had the FCS’ 6^th best scoring offense, out of 128 qualifying schools, and made their money throwing the ball around the yard.

Senior running back Cam Porter’s statistics are pretty underwhelming (501 yards on 126 attempts, good for a paltry 4.0 yards per attempt), but when you look a little deeper, you can see that he was propping up their zone scheme as much as could be expected; he averaged 3.01 yards per carry after contact, which is impressive for any level of college football, and serves as quite the incrimination of his offensive line and blocking eligible receivers, given the overall average of just 4.0.

While no one on the Wildcats was named to the Preseason All-B1G team, there are a few names to know and players to be aware of on the defensive side of the ball. Safety Damon Waters should be in for a larger role this season, after being a part-time player as a redshirt freshman in 2024. Fred Davis, a cornerback who transferred in from Jacksonville State, was one of the better cover men in Conference USA, earning a 76.9 grade by PFF. The Wildcats’ front is big and physical, and it could be a challenge for Tulane to get the running game going, early. Northwestern returns three starters on the defensive line, including Carmine Bastone and Aidan Hubbard, the latter of which was named to the Senior Bowl watch list and was included in Athlon’s Preseason All-Big Ten Third Team.

Veteran linebackers Mac Uihlein (also a member Athlon’s Preseason All-Big Ten Third Team) and Yanni Karlaftis (a graduate transfer from Purdue) are very good downhill players, but could get exposed in the right matchup, in the passing phase. I’d expect Joe Craddock to try and isolate Maurice Turner and or Zuberi Mobley on those Wildcat backers, and take his chances.  Karlaftis, in particular, has a career coverage grade below 40, per PFF, over a large sample size of 415 coverage snaps.

So where does that leave us? Tulane’s staff feels great about the overall talent level of its roster, and how the team has gelled and come together as a group, but again, this is an opponent from a Power Four conference. It’s an opponent that knows a tough road lies ahead in the B1G conference slate, and for them to get to bowl-eligibility, they may not be able to afford a loss to a Group of Six school, albeit one as strong as ours. Could the Wildcats be a little more desperate than one would expect, this year? Conversely, it would be hard to imagine Tulane representing the Group of Six in the College Football Playoff with a loss on Saturday. A factor we’ve mentioned on the FTW Cast is that of the weather. It’s just hard for me to envision a team from Evanston, Illinois coming down to New Orleans and beating this version of the Wave, on turf, at 11:00 am, in August. I think we have a nailbiter at halftime, before Tulane starts to pull away.

31-20, Tulane