Who is Russ Callaway, Tulane's New Offensive Coordinator?

BY JAKE WEINSTOCK

Tulane has now officially announced what has been known for a little over a month; Russ Callaway has been hired as the Green Wave's new offensive coordinator under new head coach Will Hall.

Callaway spent 2022-2025 at the University of Florida in a variety of different roles under then-head coach Billy Napier. In 2022, he was a defensive intern, before being promoted to tight ends coach for the 2023 season. He was then again promoted for the 2024 season to co-offensive coordinator while retaining control of the tight end group. In his last and final season in Gainsville, being 2025, he was again promoted to offensive coordinator (the "co-" title was removed), again while maintaining his role as tight ends coach. He did not call plays in either 2024 or 2025, however, but Will Hall has stated publicly that the plan here is for Callaway to call plays in 2026, but the scheme will of course be Hall's.

Interestingly, while Jon Sumrall let a number of existing Florida staff members go upon his arrival in Gainesville, FTW sources confirm that Callaway was going to be kept on Sumrall's initial Florida staff, prior to getting the offensive coordinator job at Tulane. Callaway was not going to remain the offensive coordinator at Florida (the Gators hired 2025 Broyles Award finalist Buster Faulker away from Georgia Tech in December of 2025, who had been their offensive coordinator from 2023-2025), but instead was going to be reassigned to a different role.

In terms of other prior experience, Callaway has also worked for Nick Saban at Alabama from 2011-2012, Ed Orgeron at LSU in 2020, and the New York Giants under Joe Judge in 2021. In the intervening years between leaving Alabama in 2012 and arriving in Baton Rouge in 2020, Callaway was the wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator at Murray State from 2013-2014. He then spent 2015-2019 at Samford, and was the offensive coordinator there for the final four of those five seasons. Here's how many points per game the Bulldogs scored under Callaway:

2016: 35.0 points per game

2017: 28.0 points per game

2018: 38.5 points per game

2019: 32.3 points per game

As Hall has stated publicly, I would expect the offense to look somewhat similar to Tulane's 2019-2020 offenses, schematically, but with more tempo. There should be a fair amount of "11" personnel (meaning 1 running back, 1 tight end and 3 receivers) and "21" personnel (meaning 2 running backs, 1 tight end and 3 receivers). It's that second grouping that is of most interest to me, personally, with the ability to play a true halfback, like a Jamauri McClure together with someone playing the "speed back" role, like a Jaylin Lucas (the transfer from Florida State who was an All-American kick returner at Indiana in 2022). Lucas could play the Amare Jones role here at Tulane, as fans who remember the 2019 and 2020 seasons well will recall. In 2019 Jones averaged 6.4 yards per on 57 carries and then in 2020 he averaged 5.7 yards per on 69 carries.

Jimmy and I plan to dive into this more in the coming weeks, but given the additions of Chriss, Lucas, Daniels, Hill and the retentions of McClure, Lewis, and Brown-Stephens, it seems pretty clear that the goal and the operative word for what this offense is shooting for is a simple one: explosive.