We Been Cougared Bad!

Sigh. Well, that was ugly.

I suppose I am a little more sanguine than I anticipated. Last week, I wrote that Tulane probably gets handled here even if they play well- and that Houston -14 was almost a lay-up. The defense is horrid. The quarterback iffy at best- blah, blah, blah

Then, the Wave didn’t play well (I imagine- did not see the game frankly) so Tulane moved easily past getting handled to getting absolutely smoked.

But relax a little. Let’s see at least the Mississippi State game before drawing hard program-level conclusions, let alone season-level ones. And I will hazard one prediction: while I have been screaming that Tulane is bad- and yes, Tulane is in fact bad- they are absolutely not “lose by five touchdowns to mid-level C-USA competition bad”.

Look- for whatever reason, since Kolb took over, this Houston team is almost perfectly designed to torment the Wave. They have three years in a row.

Candidly, Tulane always struggles to contain teams, that can run and pass, to reasonable numbers. They play in a League that rewards good quarterback play with not just “good” numbers- but “cartoon-level” good numbers. How many times did we see Losman and Ramsey absolutely torch bad-to-adequate C-USA defenses for 35, 40, 50 points? It happens routinely. This is not the SEC- but C-USA. Here, teams don't go for 28 points on a good day; they go for 40+. If you have a pro-level qb in our League, you make defenses look not bad- but real, real bad.

Last year, Kolb and crew hurt the Wave “D” over and over- but Tulane still had played fairly credibly against Mississippi State’s infinitely more one-dimensional approach. The exact same thing will happen this year.

The offense will have had a game under its belt to digest, they’ll play angrier and more focused after being embarrassed. I’m not saying they’ll beat State- it is still and SEC team on the road- a categorical bad scene for Tulane- but they’ll be a whole lot better.

I promise!