After Tulane suffered their worst loss since 2015, Head Coach Will Hall met with the media following a closed practice on Tuesday.

Hall was immediately met with questions regarding Tulane's athletic director David Harris, and his statement following the ruthless beatdown on Saturday, as well as what he'll have to fix before Tulane's next opponent, Rice.

The following is the transcript taken from today's conference.

Stating the Obvious

Obviously, really bad performances past week. Uh, you know, should never happen. We got to coach better, we got to play better, that starts with me. You know, so how do you do that? all right? As coaches, we got to simplify. We've got to make sure we're giving the young men the looks in order to execute better in the game. As players, we got to take those looks, and we've got to play better. So we’re very urgent in the building. What happened this past week should never happen, and that's nothing to take away from Coach Lamb and his staff. He had a phenomenal job, they played awesome. They played great. Their quarterback played great. We had some chances early. We had a great opening drive and moved it. Didn't convert on the field goal from there, Snowball. We didn't play well. I take full responsibility for it. You will see a much better outfit this weekend at Rice, and we're excited to get back on the field and play and show who we really are. With that, I'll open it up.

David Harris' Statement

David Harris releases a statement after the game. Did you read it? Do you agree with it?

Statement from David Harris, Tulane’s Ben Weiner of Athletics Chair

🔗 https://t.co/9K3w8Yc7mP pic.twitter.com/m7hZt1cIgU

— Tulane Green Wave (@TulaneAthletics) November 8, 2026

Didn't read it. Knew it was coming, and, uh, you know, obviously everybody's upset. Nobody's more upset with me. Nobody's more upset than me. You know, I'm in charge of this. It's my responsibility. I accept that, you know? Very urgently. Everybody knows that, and we did not play well. We play very poorly, and ultimately that falls on me. We've got to fix it and we got to play better and we're going to.

Just a follow up to that: Have you had any conversations with him at all throughout this past week?

Uh, we communicate all the time, you know? And, you know, we'll continue to communicate.

Coach Hall, you said you got a heads up that David Harris was gonna send out something, but do you think it was needed that he sent that out to say that it was an embarrassing performance and it was unacceptable?

It’s not for me to say, but it was embarrassing. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, it is what it is. It was embarrassing.

To the point of what you said as far as things being unacceptable with Saturday, how uncomfortable have some of the conversations that you've had to have with players, with coaches, and like trying to fix it and get it right in a week?

Yeah, we're not trying to fix it. We're gonna fix it. Uh, you know, conversations have been honest, whether that's been uncomfortable for people, that's up to them. I don't know. Honesty is honesty. We did not play well. We did not coach well. We have to be better. We will be better. So I don't worry about comfortability on that. I worry about performance, and I worry about the result, and I worry about the process it takes to get to the result. We know we can play better. We have shown that this year. You know, and we will play better this weekend.

Looking to Rice

When looking at the film (on Saturday), what was most shocking?

All of it. All of it. We played bad. We played really bad on offense and really bad on defense. We played pretty good in the kicking game outside of dropping the 1st hold, you know, but, you know, all of it was bad and it all falls on me and it's my fault.

Rice has the, I believe it's the 3rd ranked rushing offense in the conference, what's allowed them to have success (there).

Well, they run it a lot, and their two quarterbacks or the 2 fastest players on the field. They play both of them. Uh, you know, their coach has been an option guy in the gun for a long time. So, you know, they're completely optioned. but they're mostly out of the gun, almost exclusively out of the gun. And, uh, you know, their quarterbacks are extremely fast. They're physical, they're downhill. They played a lot of close games this year. They haven't won a conference game, but they've been in them. You know, the UTSA game was a one score game the whole way through. North Texas was a one score game through 3 quarters. Tulsa was a one score game for a long time. And then Florida Atlantic was a one score game all the way to the end. So they've been in games, really good teams. They're a good team, like everybody is in this league, and it's gonna be a tremendous challenge for us to go over there and win. We got to play better.

Coach, can you speak to the confidence level of your defense taking on these quarterbacks and the run fits and everything, can you just explain with them?

Yeah, we’re four weeks removed from going to Army and playing really good on defense, you know, and holding them to 10 points until the very end of the game when Army was able to bleed it out and win. We held him to 17 points. So, not that long ago, we played great defense here. So we know we can play great defense. We have not, the last 2 weeks, we know that and understand that. There's a lot of reasons for it. We are going to fix it. We're gonna be much more simple. We're gonna be much more fundamentally sound. We're gonna put our young men in situations where they can be successful, and you'll see a better team on Saturday.

And aside from the urgency aspect, what is the statement that you want to make, not just within this team, but, of course, to the Tulane community?

Yeah, I want people that compete and have joy in doing that. You know what I mean? Like, times are tough right now. That's when real men come alive, all right? Tough times, develop tough men, okay? This season has not been easy on anybody. But I know our young men are gonna bounce back, and they're gonna play extremely hard this weekend, and we're gonna play a whole lot better.

Did you see at any point (where you saw) any quit in the team because that game got really out of control quickly?

No, I didn't. I saw a lot of lack of execution, mostly because there, you know, there was extreme effort to the point of trying to do too much, and instead of just doing your job, people trying to do more than their job, to make up for it, after it snowballed. So really, it was the opposite of that. There was too much going on, which causes us to do too much, to get out of gaps defensively, to not be where we're supposed to be, and then offensively try to overcome, for previous mistakes, when we just needed 11 people doing their job in order to execute.

Coach, Rice is on an eight game losing streak. They're one and eight. I don't know if you're aware of this. You are an underdog this week. Is that something that you talk to your team about? Because obviously, most of the country is down on Tulane right now, especially when your underdogs to a one and eight team.

Yeah, I mean, that is what it is. You know, we've got to play better this weekend. We probably earned that with the way we played this past weekend. You know, we're going to play much better this weekend, though. I can assure you that.

So what are the players' responses after this week? That was pretty tough. A lot of the players said the same thing. So what kind of response have you seen from them in practices this week?

Yeah, we had great practice today. You saw it. Our players are hurt. They want to play better. And they know they've got to compete, and they've got to do it with joy, and we got to go over there and show who we really are. Nobody is proud of what just happened. Everybody is hurt, everybody wants to show everybody who we really are. And again, we're not that far removed from doing some really good things. We're one week removed from playing exceptional on offense. We're three weeks removed from beating a really good Memphis team. You know what I mean? We are four weeks removed from playing phenomenal defense, and Army, we can play better. We have played better. We played really bad last week. They played great. We will play better this week.

You said you felt like the team played hard, did it look like legs were not as fresh for this game as other games?

Yeah, we looked a little slow. There's two reasons you can look slow as a football team. One, you can be tired. Me and Colin Kenyon, accept that responsibility. Uh, you know, we've looked, we've gone through all the data, uh, the numbers from practices, you know, compared to what we've done in the past here, not just over the last two years, but even further than that, uh, are very comparable. But, you know, we did look tight, so we did look slow, so there's two reasons why, one, you can't actually be tired. Our bye week was a long time ago. Theirs was last week, so they looked fresher than us, but then two, you can look slow because you're thinking. I think we were thinking a lot. I think we were a little too complex in our plans on both sides of the ball. I think I, as the leader of this program, overvalued them having a bye week and having so much respect for their staff and thinking that they would have us schemed up, you know, we had to do some different things to offset that. Uh, we did not execute well and take responsibility for that. We'll be much more fundamentally sound. We're gonna be simpler, and our young men are gonna play fast, and they're gonna execute this weekend.

 You've been encouraged with the progress of the offensive line. They had a tough game in that, where do they go from here? What did you identify their biggest problems?

Yeah, number one, you know, it was a total lack of execution across the board, so it's my fault. It wasn't the line's fault. It was Will Hall's fault. We'll do what they can do this week and they're going to play much, much better. And I got a challenge too, because the D line at Rice is the strength of their defense. They're a good group. All good? Good. Appreciate it.