National Football League

NFL Draft: Tanzel Smart Sets Career-Highs, Leads Tulane to Huge Win

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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Tanzel Smart continued his strong senior season with a big performance against UMass. Still, Smart and Tulane are looking to prove the doubters wrong.

Before the start of the 2016 season, Tanzel Smart and the Tulane Green Wave preached that they were not interested in a long-term rebuild, but rather a motivated season that would start the progress of the program.

Through five games, the Green Wave are off to a 3-2 start—already matching their 2015 output. Led by Tanzel Smart and the 16th-ranked defense, Tulane is riding high off a come from behind 31-24 win over non-conference opponent UMass.

“It was just an overall team victory,” Tulane head coach Willie Fritz said following the win. “We did enough to win and that’s what we are trying to do every single week.”

As a team, Tulane fought back after spotting UMass a 14-0 lead in the opening 3:56 of the game. After allowing 72 yards on those opening two drives, Tulane held UMass to just 240 yards of total offense for the remainder of the game. This defensive effort was led by Smart. 

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The Smart-led defense allowed just 131 yards rushing and sacked UMass quarterbacks twice. One of those sacks came from Smart, giving him a new single-season career-high with three. Additionally, Smart knocked the ball loose on the sack, giving him a new single-season career-high for forced fumbles on the strip-sack as well.

“It’s a blessing, man,” Smart said when asked about the new career marks following the game. “I’ve still got a lot to work on, though. I feel like I might’ve screwed up a couple of times, but I’ll have to go back and watch the film to see where it’s at. Overall it just felt good to get a team win.”

Not only did Smart show off some of his pass rushing prowess, he reaffirmed his position as a run-stuffing presence on the interior. Smart spent a vast majority of the game facing and defeating double teams and working as the anchor point of line stunts.

Using his strong lower body and quick feet, Smart positioned himself in between double teams before planting himself and extending his arms to keep opposing linemen from driving him down the field. This allowed Zachery Harris, Nico Marley, and others to fill for tackles.

“Any game when we play a good team like [UMass] we like to try and work some games up front,” Smart said when asked about his play on the interior. “Some of these games didn’t work tonight because they ran a tackle-over set, but once we got everybody to calm down we just created a ‘new center’ and played off of that. Those minor changes helped us get our game right and get into attack mode.”

With the relative success that Tulane is having comes higher expectations. The Green Wave will enter the meat of their conference schedule in coming weeks—even with their game against UCF being postponed due to Hurricane Matthew. Each of their final seven games come in the American Athletic Conference, but only three of those game at home.

This schedule will test Tanzel Smart and his teammates to rise above any expectations that pundits had for them this season and take road victories in conference. If they play to do this, Smart and his fellow upper-classmen will need to excel both on and off the field. The group will have to keep a level head as they try to crack the .500 mark and become bowl-eligible for the first time since Smart’s freshman year in 2013.

As the pressure mounts, Tanzel Smart and the Green Wave will show their true character and leadership—both key factors in evaluating Smart’s future.

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