Tulane @ North Texas Preview

BY JAKE WEINSTOCK

Tomorrow morning, the Tulane Green Wave (5-2, 3-0) will face off with the North Texas Mean Green (5-2, 2-1) in Denton, Texas, for just the third-meeting all-time between these two-time conference mates. Tulane enters fresh off a 24-10 victory over the Rice Owls that was significantly closer than the scoreboard indicates. Despite being +5 in turnovers (Rice finished the game with 5 giveaways, while Tulane was clean, in that category) the Owls trailed by just 7 with less than three minutes to play, with the ball. In fairness, Tulane led the turnover battle 4-0, at that time, before slot corner Javion White forced a fumble that was then scooped up and scored on by linebacker Sam Howard.

After what can only be categorized as a sloppy performance, the Green Wave hit the road for a nationally televised game (11:00 am CST, ESPN2) against a Mean Green team that has obliterated all preseason expectations. North Texas was projected to finish just 9th in the 14-team American Athletic Conference, and had an over/under regular season win-total of 5.5. How have they done it? Offense, offense, and some more offense. The Mean Green, under head coach Eric Morris, are ranked 2nd in the FBS (134 qualifying schools) in total offense, with an average of 532 yards per game. Further, they are 6th in scoring, with an average of 42.3 points per game, 15th in punts per offensive score (0.5 punts per offensive score), 20th in yards per pass attempt (8.5 yards per), 19th in yards per rush attempt (5.4 yards per), 7th in yards per play (7.1 yards per), and 11th in points per play, one of my absolute favorite measures of scoring efficiency for an offense. Additionally, they only allow an average of 21.9 seconds to elapse between plays, meaning that they are the 5th fastest-paced offense in the entire FBS. Oh and did I mention that tomorrow is their homecoming game? Because they’ve scheduled the Tulane Green Wave as their homecoming game opponent.

Leading the way is transfer quarterback Chandler Morris, son of Chad Morris, who Tulane fans may remember as the SMU head coach from 2015-2017. As an aside, Morris was 3-0 against Tulane, and his last ever game at SMU was indeed the “Banks Was In” regular season finale, in 2017. Morris then left SMU for Arkansas, taking with him his offensive coordinator in Dallas, one Joe Craddock, who is of course now Tulane’s offensive coordinator, having been with Coach Sumrall at Troy from 2022-2023 before coming on down to New Orleans. Chandler Morris was the starter at TCU entering the 2022 season, the very same year they went to the National Championship Game and lost 65-7 to Georgia. Morris, who was hurt early in that season, was replaced for the remainder, before beginning the 2023 season as the starter in Fort Worth. Halfway through the season, however, he was benched, entered the portal thereafter, and found a new home in Denton.

Morris has been incredibly efficient in both getting the ball out on time and avoiding sacks; from a clean pocket, he’s still getting the ball out in 2.20 seconds, and when pressured, he’s just being sacked 9.5% of the time, and elite such level (I consider anything to be under 10% to be elite, and anything from 10%-15% to be very good. When a quarterback is being taken down on 20% of his pressures, that has a tendency to stall quite a few drives, in a world where even the fastest offenses only get 12-15 possessions per game. Now, part of the 2.20 second statistic is that North Texas relies quite a bit on flanker, bubble, and tunnel screens. Indeed, a full 19.8% of the Mean Green’s pass attempts have been screens of some kind, and a staggering 33.5% have been either play action or a post-snap RPO. Clearly the North Texas coaching staff is aware of and leans into the cheat codes for increasing efficiency or production in the quarterback play they receive.

Interestingly, Morris’ average depth of target has skyrocketed above his previous season average, over the last two games, with an ADOT of 9.5 against FAU and then an ADOT of 11.0, last week. On the season, Morris holds an adjusted completion percentage of 72.9%, has been poor under pressure (who isn’t?), but has interestingly struggled mightily against the blitz. The name to know among the North Texas pass-catchers is slot receiver DT Sheffield, who has already scored 9 touchdowns through 7 games, but it’s so much more than that; he has commanded a 20.3% target share, has almost twice as many targets as the next highest Mean Green pass-catcher and does have more than twice as many receptions and yards as the next highest such name on the list. This will be quite a challenge for, albeit excellent, slot corner Caleb Ransaw, returning from a one-game absence after testing his injury in pregame warmups against Rice, before the decision was ultimately made to rule him out, for that one.

While the North Texas offense has been unquestionably elite through seven games, their defense has been anything but. Out of those same 134 FBS qualifying schools, the Mean Green are just 125th in points per game allowed (38.3), 127th in yards per game allowed (478 yards per), and 107th in yards per play allowed (6.3 yards per). As pointed out by Jimmy Ordeneaux on this morning’s FTW Cast, North Texas plays a ton of quarters coverage, something Tulane has not seen much of from their first six opponents. That being said, they’ve done a solid job of pressuring opposing passers, having accumulated 118 pressures, to date. Edge rusher Terrell Dawkins is certainly the best of the bunch, and he paces the team with 21 pressures, and pass rush win rate of just over 12%.

PREDICTION: All eyes will be on Tulane quarterback Darian Mensah, after an uneven performance last week, following two clean games against USF and UAB, but my personal focus will be elsewhere; can Ransaw and this secondary slow Sheffield and the North Texas explosive passing game? And which team will better convert trips inside the opponent’s 30 into touchdowns, and not field goals, because make no mistake; both teams are going to have success moving the football. Tulane 42-31