Tulane's Cinderella season ended with Jon Sumrall bolting for Florida, and the opener that followed was ugly. South Alabama looked like the more finished product in Week 1, and now it gets to find out on the road.
+Reigning American Conference champion, made first CFP
+Staff continuity — Hall promoted from within
−Lost 4 starters off the offensive line
−No settled starting quarterback after Duke
Will Hall inherited the keys to a program that just made its first College Football Playoff appearance, and his debut as the guy in charge was rocky. Zeon Chriss-Gremillion started at quarterback against Duke and was pulled after going 6-for-9 for just 64 yards; Kadin Semonza, the transfer who was MAC Freshman of the Year, came off the bench and looked like the better passer at 11-of-21 for 140 yards. Nobody's named a starter for Saturday, so this is either the week Semonza takes the job outright or the week Chriss-Gremillion gets a second look.
The bigger issue at Duke wasn't the arm, though — it was the five guys in front of it. Tulane lost 4 starters off a line that anchored an 11-3 team, and the rebuilt group got manhandled badly enough that the Green Wave punted 7 times on their first 10 possessions and never found the end zone. South Alabama's own state of health is far less dramatic: Bishop Davenport is back for a second year as the guy, and the only real question is how fast a retooled receiving corps catches up to him. That gap in certainty is part of why there's room for this number to move.
Strip away the name on the front of the jersey and Week 1 told two very different stories. South Alabama beat Southeastern Louisiana 39-14 without much sweat, with Davenport accounting for a passing score and a rushing score. Tulane lost 17-3 at Duke and finished with 258 total yards — its first game without an offensive touchdown since 2019. One team took a step forward. The other is still trying to figure out who plays quarterback.
None of that erases what Tulane built last year. This is still the program that won the American Conference and made the first CFP appearance in school history, and Sumrall's replacement is a staff that was already in the building rather than an outside hire starting from zero. But that pedigree bought Tulane a shrinking home line, not a finished product, and South Alabama gets to be the team that stress-tests how real the O-line problem is.
Major Applewhite's Jaguars have made a habit of hanging around in one-score Sun Belt football, and a clean, mistake-free operation like the one they showed in the opener travels well against a team still sorting out its identity. South Alabama isn't walking into this one as the flashier program, but Week 1 says it might be the more finished one right now.
