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Tulane has been to three straight bowl games under head coach Willie Fritz, and the Green Wave get marquee games early in the year with a season opener against Oklahoma in New Orleans and a week three trip to Oxford.

The Wave have a new coordinator on both sides of the ball but return quarterback Michael Pratt and have high expectations for transfers on defense.

Here are five questions about Tulane with The Wave Report publisher Guerry Smith.

Long and Hall were college roommates and very close friends, so I'm not sure how different the offense will be. I did not get a good handle on what this unit will look like in the spring because most of the receivers were out with injuries, a new offensive line coach bolted less than a week into drills and the entire group struggled handling all the information Long threw at them.

Historically, Long has relied more heavily on tight ends, the position he coached everywhere he had been a full-time assistant (Illinois, Arizona State, Memphis, Notre Dame) even after becoming an offensive coordinator (Memphis, Notre Dame).

While Hall used positive reinforcement as his M.O. Long is much more negative, but it is clear his charges believe he is making them better based on his track record as a finalist for the Broyles Award as the top assistant in the nation in 2018.

Although Pratt struggled a bit in the spring, he excelled after taking over as the starting quarterback three games into 2020, leading all true freshmen nationally with 20 touchdown passes.

He had a couple of clunkers against Houston and Nevada (in a bowl game Johnson and Sample skipped), but both came as a result of multiple offensive line injuries that turned him into a punching bag.

He is an intense competitor with a knack for making the right play at the right time (with his legs and his arm) and has accepted Long's tougher coaching style. Iffy QB play against top-notch competition has hampered the Wave over the past several years, but Pratt appears to be Tulane's best quarterback in a long time.

Despite not having strong offensive lines, Tulane has rushed for five of the top seven total in school history in Willie Fritz's first five years as coach and led the American Athletic Conference in rushing last season despite averaging the fewest rushing yards (217.1) in his tenure.

Even though the offense has evolved from option heavy (though always out of a spread formation) to option light under Hall and Long, the numbers on the ground figure to be just as good this year. Fritz says Spears is 100-percent back, and if he is right, that will be a huge deal because the guy is a true difference maker. Even if he is not back to top form, the backfield is deep. Cam Carroll rushed for 741 yards and 12 touchdowns last year, averaging 6.1 yards per carry.

Utah transfer Devin Brumfield looked good in the spring. Ygenio Booker, though used sparingly in his first two years, can be a dual threat as a runner and receiver. The line should be the best in Fritz's tenure, with three experienced starters on the left side (tackle Joey Claybrook, fifth-year starting guard Corey Dublin, All-AAC candiate center Sincere Haynesworth), four candidates on the right side who started at least twice last season and two more promising prospects from a good 2020 class.

The blockers still have to prove they can put it all together, though. Despite the rushing numbers, the line by no means has been dominant at any point of the Fritz era.

Although there is no sugercoating the loss of highly productive three-year starters Johnson and Sample, the latter of whom Pro Football Focus labeled the most valuable lineman in college football, Tulane could be better defensively this year than last.

The Green Wave was pathetic in third-and-long and fourth-and-long situations, giving up huge play after huge play. The situational horror show contributed to epic collapses in losses to Navy and Tulsa that had to be seen to be believed (and even then, I'm not sure it was believable) and an overtime defeat in a crucial game against SMU (Fritz is 0-5 against the Mustangs, with four of those defeats coming in excruciating fashion).

Something had to change, so Fritz canned long-time defensive coordinator Jack Curtis (who landed as position coach at Liberty with Huge Freeze) and brought back Hampton, a player favorite who coached DBs for the Wave from 2016-19 before a one-year stint at Duke. The problem was more an issue of a lack of belief than personnel, but Tulane improved its back end with key transfers (see question 4).

The linebackers are the best in the AAC. Leading tackler Dorian Williams is garnering league preseason player of the year consideration, and Nick Anderson, who finished right behind him, is a potential all-league guy. Yet, neither of them started in 2020, with the players in front of them, Oklahoma State grad transfer Kevin Henry and senior Marvin Moody, also returning.

The interior line should be stout with Jeffery Johnson, Eric Hicks and Adonis Friloux rotating. But to get back to the original question, the play on the edge without Johnson and Sample will be pivotal. Sophomore Angelo Anderson was one of Tulane's most touted recruits in years and showed promise as a freshman. Darius Hodges and Carlos Hatcher (one sack apiece in 2020) are unproven as key contributors, which leads directly to question 4.

Derrion Rakestraw, a graduate transfer safety who started the final nine games last year at Colorado, and cornerback Lance Robinson, a New Orleans product who started three times at cornerback for Kansas State in 2019, definitely should help shore up the leaky secondary.

They worked with the first team in spring drills. But Dorceus, who was not around for the spring, could have the biggest impact if he regains his 2018 and 2019 form from Memphis on the defensive line. He had 50 tackles and six sacks in 2018 and 45 tackles and 14.5 stops for loss and five sacks in 2019, before dropping to 30 tackles and three sacks as the Tigers' entire defense struggled under new coaches in 2020.

The Wave will need him to get back to his disruptive ways from the past to make up for the absence of Johnson and Sample. Before preseason practice starts, there is no way to know whether he will.

The program is much stronger than it has been at any time since going 19-4 in the Tommy Bowden era (1997-98), but the conventional wisdom is Tulane could be better than the previous three years and still struggle to improve on its six regular-season wins from the past three years.

I tend to agree with that assessment, although a huge leap from Pratt and his receivers, who were all very inexperienced last year, is conceivable under Long and could alter the perspective. Tulane not only has Oklahoma and Ole Miss--Fritz is winless against P5 schools in his coaching career--but faces AAC kingpin Cincinnati and perennial contender UCF while projected doormat Temple and struggling Navy drop off the schedule.

The Oklahoma game is causing plenty of excitement and likely will produce the first sellout at Yulman Stadium since the very first game against Georgia Tech in 2014 (which was an announced sellout rather than a real one), but the key is how the Wave fares in the AAC.

Fritz has been below .500 in four of his first five years, with the exception being a 5-3 finish in 2018 he has been unable to build on to this point. The odds are it will take at least a 5-3 conference record to get past the six-win barrier in the regular season.