Duke QB Darian Mensah returns to New Orleans after ‘hard goodbye’ at Tulane
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Quarterback Darian Mensah returns to Tulane as Duke's starter after transfer.
- Mensah led Tulane to 2,723 yards, 22 TDs and AAC title game before departure.
- Duke staff prepared Mensah emotionally for high-stakes reunion at Yulman Stadium.
Darian Mensah first went to Tulane to play football knowing little about the school, the conference, the coaching staff or, for that matter, New Orleans.
He’ll go back to New Orleans this week to play Tulane as Duke’s starting quarterback, this time not knowing if he’ll be greeted at Yulman Stadium simply as a player who departed, or a defector.
“I’ll try to go into it just like any other game,” Mensah said. “It is going to feel a little bit weird. But football is football. Once the ball is snapped, I’ll just be playing. I’ll try not to make it any bigger than it is.”
How Mensah first landed at Tulane, then became the Green Wave starter, is intriguing and so much a product of modern-day recruiting.
Social media recruit
Wes Fritz was Tulane’s Director of Player Personnel a few years ago, looking for a quarterback. He first spotted a few short video clips of Mensah, he’s pretty sure, on an X post — Fritz, like Mensah, still refers to it as Twitter.
“We didn’t have a quarterback committed, so I was looking nationally,” Wes Fritz, now football general manager at the University of Houston, said in an interview. ”It was one of those things where I was going through all kinds of people from all over and he stuck out to me on film.”
On one clip that Mensah posted in November 2022, and copied to Fritz, he’s seen eluding multiple defenders to get off touchdown throws, running out of the pocket and through traffic for TDs. He looked every bit a dual threat at QB for Saint Joseph High near his hometown of San Luis Obispo, California.
Not that Mensah was drawing much recruiting interest. He led Saint Joseph to a 10-2 record in 2022, threw for 25 TDs and …
“No one wanted me,” Mensah said.
‘Like a point guard’
Not at first. But Fritz had taken a look and soon was interested.
“The more we dug into it, and found out about him, how he used to play wide receiver before quarterback, his basketball background, how he had a sister who plays soccer and was player of the year … everything just began to check out,” Fritz said.
As Fritz watched more film, what really checked out with Mensah, he said, was that he was like a “point guard out there at quarterback.”
“That’s the best way I can describe him,” Fritz said. “It was his play-making ability. He has a real good feel for defenders and can create off-script. He’s really accurate. He sees stuff, he picks up stuff, he processes stuff quickly.
“Like I said, he was like a point guard with the ball.”
Tulane was the first school to offer Mensah, whose sister, Grace, was a soccer midfielder at Oregon — “And the super competitive one in the family,” Mensah said.
After Tulane came offers from Idaho State and Lindenwood University, a Missouri school that transitioned up to the FCS level in 2022.
Fritz chuckled, noting, “I’m pretty sure they offered him because they said, ‘No way that Tulane offer is for real.’”
But it was and it all came together quickly, Fritz said. Mensah was soon on a plane.
“He came for his official visit, his first visit, and committed,” Fritz said. “It was the first time we had met him or anything. We were fortunate to get him. He’s a stud.”
Welcome to New Orleans
A self-professed “Momma’s boy,” Mensah was suddenly on his own. It was hard, he said. He missed his friends, his old coaches, his old haunts back home.
“Some hard times. but I’m super grateful because it made me who I am today,” Mensah said. ”And the coaches at Tulane prepared me for any style of offense.”
Mensah was redshirted as a freshman as Green Wave quarterback Michael Pratt was named 2023 American Athletic Conference offensive player of the year. Pratt was drafted by the Green Bay Packers — the first Tulane QB to go in the draft since J.P. Losman in 2004.
But Mensah caught the eye of head coach Jon Sumrall with his work on the scout team that season, with his accurate throws and how he handled himself. With Pratt gone, he soon took over as QB1, and made the most of it.
A year ago, Mensah threw for 2,723 yards and 22 touchdowns as the Green Wave went 9-5 and advanced to the AAC championship game, losing to Army. Tulane ranked seventh nationally in passing efficiency and sixth in yards per catch (14.3).
Then, Mensah said, came a “hard goodbye.” He called Sumrall to tell him he would be entering the transfer portal, leaving the Tulane program..
“I said, ‘This is my decision and I hope you respect it’ and he did,” Mensah said. “It was definitely hard. They have a great staff. It was hard, but they understood.”
Mensah said he saw Sumrall at a wedding this past summer and that Sumrall was “super cool” about it and that he “said some love to me.”
Welcome to Duke
Mensah came to Duke aware the Blue Devils are facing Tulane in their third game, that it’s at Yulman Stadium, which seats 30,000 and should be filled Saturday night.
The Green Wave, with BYU transfer Jake Retzlaff running the offense, is off to a 2-0 start after wins over Northwestern and South Alabama. The Blue Devils opened with a big win over Elon — Mensah passing for 389 yards and three scores in his Duke debut — but were knocked back this past Saturday by No. 9 Illinois in a 45-19 loss.
Mensah twice lost fumbles and had a pass picked off in the red zone early in the fourth quarter with the Devils trailing by 12 points, offsetting a 334-yard passing game with another two TD throws.
Duke offensive coordinator Jonathan Brewer said Monday that he had chatted with Mensah about what’s to come Saturday in New Orleans.
“We talked about the emotions,” Brewer said. “You’d be lying to say you won’t be more emotional in that game, just what it is and human nature. And how to control your emotions, how to control adversity and when things happen bad, that you don’t overreact.
“Yeah, we’ve talked about it. It’s something we’ve been talking about, really, since he’s been here.”
Duke coach Manny Diaz said Monday that it’s hard to say how Mensah will react against his former team, although adding in the portal age such things have become more common with so much player movement. There could be some boos for Mensah at Yulman from Tulane fans. Maybe some cheers, too.
“I always say it’s awkward, especially before the game,” Diaz said. “But normally after that first play it just becomes ball and everyone is trying to do their job. I expect that might be the way it goes on Saturday.”
This story was originally published September 9, 2025 at 11:39 AM.
