It has been an offseason marked by change Uptown. To name a few, Tulane will have a new Head Coach, Starting QB, and of course a new Offensive Coordinator.
A big point of frustration for Wave fans last season was the offensive play-calling, particularly in the red zone. Fair or not, OC Slade Nagle came under a lot of fire due to his offense putting up a middle of the road 26.4 PPG and a measly red zone TD percentage of 54.1%. This was down from 36.0 PPG and 70.6%, respectively during the fabled 2022 season.
Naturally, Wave fans expected more. Nagle packed his bags and headed west on I-10. There will be a new offensive direction in 2024.
Enter Joe Craddock.
Sumrall brought the man who engineered the Troy offense for the last two years with him to Nola. The Trojan offense was one of the most explosive in the country in Craddock’s first season, ranking fourth with nine passes of 50-plus yards and five passes of 60-plus yards. Additionally, Troy was 24th in passes of 20-plus yards (54) and 16th in passes of 30-plus yards (24). Not only can Craddock dial up some shot plays, he could sling it himself.
Craddock was a college QB at Middle Tennessee State as well as an infielder for the Blue Raider baseball team.
He finished his collegiate career and went on to win the 2010 IFL championship with the Parma Panthers of the Italian Football League before entering the coaching ranks. 28/41, 348 yards and 6 TD passes in the championship game and no MVP?? You were robbed Coach!
He owns a decorated coaching resume despite being only 38. Tulane will be his fourth OC job. He served as the offensive coordinator at Southern Methodist University (SMU) from 2015 to 2017. He was the youngest offensive coordinator in the country at the age of 29 when he started in Dallas. His time there was punctuated by the 2017 season that included 492 points from the Pony Express.
He then followed his friend and head coach Chad Morris to the University of Arkansas and served as the Razorbacks OC from 2018 to 2019. Following his time in Fayetteville, he spent two years as a tight end coach at UAB before Jon Sumrall gave him his third OC gig at Troy in 2021.
Offense stats for Craddock’s offenses
2015 SMU 27.8 PPG 382.8 YPG
2016 SMU 27.8 PPG 427.3 YPG
2017 SMU 37.9 PPG 478.5 YPG
2018 ARK 23.6 PPG 335.7 YPG
2019 ARK 21.4 PPG 340.1 YPG
2022 Troy 25.6 PPG 359.1 YPG
2023 Troy 29.6 PPG 419.4 YPG
7-Year Average. 27.7 PPG 391.8 YPG
Even with a tough 2 year stretch in the vaunted SEC West, those 7-year averages both exceed Tulane’s 2022 output. You strip out the Arkansas years, you’re talking 30 points and over 400 yards a game across 5 seasons. These are the numbers we want to see.
Most Tulane fans felt that it was the offense that kept the 2023 team from repeating as an AAC champion and an NY6 bowl participant. If Tulane is going to reach its lofty expectations this year, the offense will have to improve markedly.
Anything short of an AAC title this year will be viewed as a disappointment. With arguably the most offensive talent Tulane has had in the last 80 years coming into 2024, the pressure has never been greater on the OC to deliver a maiden playoff berth.
I wanted to learn more about our future play caller, and so I did what any reasonable person would do, I DM’d Coach Craddock on Twitter. I would have been thrilled to get a singular quote from Coach or even a response at all. Instead, he gave me a full interview. No matter how the season goes, he has a fan in this blogger for life.
It will take you two seconds of talking to Coach Craddock to realize all he wants to talk about is football. He’s a no nonsense guy who will skip the pleasantries and get straight to the meat and potatoes of the conversation. It took me all of 30 seconds to get excited about next year’s offense, bet it takes you guys reading even less.
My questions are in bold and Coach Craddock’s responses are below.
How would you define your offensive philosophy?
JC: You can say a bunch of hooplah, but I think above all else we will be a hard nosed physical team. We are going to run the football. You have to establish the run. Can’t throw it all the time, but you can pick your spots and take play action shots. Expect some no huddle and some speed huddle with a fast break out. We will change up the cadence and employ a lot of motion and shifts.
What base set can we expect to see the most of?
JC: We will run a pro style offense with some college wrinkles. Always as a coach you have to understand, it’s about the players. Don’t force a square peg in a round hole, you have to adapt to the best players you have. I like to use a tight end, but we maybe have only one or two guys that can play the position the way I’d like. For that reason, you’ll see less 12 personnel than we have run in the past and likely more 11 and 10 in base sets. We will figure out who we got in the spring. Once we know who our best players are, we will adapt.
We will run down hill. Makhi Hughes will be a great down hill back. I want to be an outside zone type team. We have some lineman that are good enough to do that. I saw Makhi moving in offseason drills and it looks like he’s gained an extra step. He’s going to be faster than you saw last year and Coach Rusty will continue to make him even faster. We will run out of pistol to help get Makhi there another step faster. We have good guards who can pull and move.
How does Ty Thompson fit into your offense?
JC: I think Ty can fit what we’ve been doing a lot of in the past. I’m excited about Kai as well. Both can help with run actions and play actions. We can also use them on nakeds and keepers. Ty has great arm strength, he can really excel at that. There is more arm strength from Ty and Kai than we have had past years.
Our job is pretty easy as coaches, we don’t have to set the depth chart. The players set the depth chart with their performance on the field. If both of them can play, we’ll see 2 Qb packages. If one is the clear cut guy, we want to keep him in a rhythm and give him all the snaps.
The last few stops you’ve joined a school coming off a season with only a handful of wins, that’s not the case here. How does it change the mentality?
JC: It’s definitely different, the talent level here at Tulane is better than what we went into at SMU and Arkansas. We had the guys at Troy, but the guys here are longer and a step faster. In the past, they’ve only been able to workout 2 or 3 days and now we’re working out 4 times a week. Running the 5th day. Culture wasn’t necessarily bad but can be improved. I think an area of improvement will be toughness. Rusty being the guy developing the toughness will make a difference. We will get tougher and stronger. Coach Sumrall gonna do a hell of a job. They left us with some players and some holes at some positions that we have worked hard to fill.
What will drive explosive plays for us?
JC: Play action passing. Our first year at Troy when we had our receivers healthy the first 5 or 6 games. Troy and Tennessee led the league in explosive passing plays. We may have had a few more 40+ plays, they may have had a few more 30+ plays, but the track record is there. If you break down what we were doing in the pass game, it’s a bubble here and there but really we’re trying to be vertical. What intrigues me about Kai and Ty is they are more mobile than QBs we have had in the past. We can use them as a run threat on the perimeter as well.
Can we expect to see Shazz, Yulkeith and Mario all on field at the same time?
JC: Yes. A coach’s job is to put the best 11 on the field, we’re idiots if they’re sitting beside us on the sideline. If those names are part of our best 11, they will all be on the field together.
What are we still recruiting?
JC: We are still talking to high school guys. It’s hard to find a tackle. We think we can build one up, but we need to find that guy.
We are also looking at a slot receiver who is a big time recruit but falling through the cracks. In addition to that we are constantly scouring junior college possibly looking for a tight end. We will take a crack at it in the spring portal.
Are you excited about moving to New Orleans?
JC: Very excited about NOLA. I am a big family man. I have several cousins in Vacherie (50 mins outside NO), and I am really excited about being around them. They’ve talked about coming and getting the kids some nights. Troy, Alabama has a very special place in our heart, but there is definitely more to do in New Orleans. The food is a good and a bad thing. Culture is awesome. Watching the other coaches to get to participate in the beginning of Mardi Gras season for the first time the other night was incredible.
Last but not least, what was your best memory of playing in Italy?
JC: Winning the championship. Learning a new different culture. Learning to speak football in another language. I’m from small town Alabama, and I got to travel the world. It was a priceless experience. I can now say I have friends all over the world. Not a lot of folks get to live in Chelsea, Alabama and Parma, Italy.
Themes of toughness and pace dominated our conversation. Troy boasted the second-leading rusher in the country last year so it stands to reason Makhi Hughes will be utilized early and often. No one knows yet the offense will be in 2024, but if there’s one word to remember it’s explosive.
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