In a bizarre turning of the tables, head football coach Willie Fritz came to rely on the coaching of one of his own players for survival.

This past weekend, while on a walk through the Alaskan wilderness with redshirt and red-blooded junior running back Sherman Badie, Fritz encountered a lone North American gray wolf hunting for food. Hunting for an egg Fritztata, if you will.

Why the two of them went all the way to Alaska for a walk remains unclear to The Fullabaloo. Luckily for Fritz, Badie, a longtime disciple of master wolf-fighter and former NFL running back Arian Foster, was there to guide his coach through the ensuing battle: the Mr. Miyagi to Fritz’s Daniel-San.

“It’s like [Foster] always told me,” Badie said. “Wolves have no thumbs, so if you can control his neck, you control the fight. I had to make sure Coach Fritz utilized his thumbs.”

Unfortunately, Foster’s wolf combat training ignores the fact that humans are not built for fighting in the snow.

“I’m not going to lie. I was pretty winded from the get-go,” Fritz said in a post-fight interview. “I had never fought a wolf before, and there wasn’t much game tape on this guy, but I honestly prefer not to get bogged down with preparation. Also, we had already been walking for a while, and the snow was pretty deep, so it definitely was not my best performance.”

The Tulane football team’s 4-8 performance in the 2016 season is another testament to Fritz’s unwillingness to prepare before a big matchup.

Despite what he considered to be a poor performance, Fritz walked away with both a victory and his survival due to Badie.

“Initially, I was pretty upset when [Badie] said he wanted to miss summer workouts last year to train in wolf-fighting with Arian Foster,” Fritz said as he nursed his wounds. “It turns out that his training saved my life.”

In his battle with the wolf, relying on the assistance of one of his players, Fritz learned a valuable lesson.

“[Badie] told me that most people would lose to a wolf just because they believe that they’re supposed to lose,” Fritz said, with his feet propped up on his desk while watching the “Planet Earth” segment on wolves hunting caribou. “With the right attitude and proper coaching, anyone can succeed. That’s why we’re working on bringing on Arian Foster full time.”

Foster could not be reached for comment.