Zeon Chriss-Gremillion won Tulane's quarterback battle in camp on the strength of his legs and his fit with a run-first scheme, but he couldn't get anything downfield against a Duke defense that had his number from the jump. Backup Kadin Semonza came on in the second half and actually moved the ball better, mixing in no-huddle looks that got Tulane's only points of the day, but by then the deficit and the mistakes had piled up too high to matter.
Duke leaned on the exact opposite formula. Walker Eget, the transfer QB who beat out Dan Mahan for the job after Darian Mensah left for Miami in the spring, didn't have to be spectacular — he had Nate Sheppard, who ran through, around and over Tulane's front for 223 yards and 2 touchdowns on 32 carries. That's the kind of workload that takes the game out of a shaky new quarterback's hands entirely, and it did.
The conditions didn't help Tulane's cause either — a thunderstorm rolled through Durham and delayed the start, the kind of afternoon that rewards the team that can run the ball and control the clock. Duke did exactly that, riding Sheppard to a 10-0 halftime lead and never letting the Green Wave's offense find any rhythm once it resumed.
Tulane's issues went beyond the quarterback spot. The offensive line that graded out as one of the best pass-protecting units in the country a year ago lost most of its starters this offseason, and it showed — holding calls, false starts, and blown assignments piled up into 15 penalties for 104 yards. A fumbled catch-and-run by Destyn Hill and a missed field goal summed up an afternoon where nothing came easy, and Tulane failed to score a touchdown for the first time since 2019.