Some depth chart thoughts

Morkeith Brown’s leadership skills are on display from this video taken last year at this time. Go to the 4:01 mark on the time display.

My movie viewing habits can be best described as spotty.
I haven’t seen a movie in an actual theater in about 22 years.
I usually write down a list of movies in the back of my black book (the one I used to use for dates when I was young and handsome … well, young) and eventually get around to them in the summertime when they come on my Blue Ridge Cable under the $2.95 movies.
One of them was Invincible and I finally got around to it tonight.
It was a real tear-jerker, probably moreso because they used Temple play-by-play man Harry Donahue instead of the Hall of Famer Merrill Reese (a real Temple grad, who probably would have done the part). After nearly 20 long years of listing to Harry the D do Temple games, I kept thinking he would blurt out: “Papale makes the tackle. There’s a fumble. Eagles recover! No check that, the Giants recovered.”  Or: “Morton throws the ball and it’s INTERCEPTED! No, dropped.”
Then I realized that the movie was scripted and therefore Harry couldn’t make the kind of mistakes we’re all too familiar with and ones that Merrill just doesn’t make.
There was a scene in the movie where Dick Vermeil is down to cutting “either Papale or Sampson” and passes it around the table to his assistant coaches.
They all say keep Sampson and Vermeil takes that under advisement and keeps Papale.
I thought a lot about that while pouring over the Temple football depth chart tonight.



Morkeith Brown attracts a crowd at the bowl party.

  Having seen a lot of these guys in “real games” and not on the practice field, I don’t get a couple of things on that depth chart so Steve Addazio doesn’t have to take my thoughts under advisement but I’ll offer them anyway.
To me, he nailed the offensive line. Left tackle Pat Boyle (6-5, 320), left guard Derek Dennis (6-5, 328), center John Palumbo (6-3, 206), right guard Wayne Tribue (6-4, 324) and right tackle Martin Wallace (6-6, 340) have talent and more importantly nastiness to match their sizes.
What has me scratching my head is the “XWR” position that has Deon Miller starting and C.J. Hammond backing up.
To me, if you want explosive plays downfield, like Addazio promised, simply move James Nixon or Joey Jones over to that side to complement Rod Streater, the “ZWR” starter on the other side.
I didn’t see a whole lot of explosiveness in Miller or Hammond last year.
Nixon, Jones and Streater have enough explosiveness to blow up the Lincoln Financial Field scoreboard. Add a healthy RB like Bernard Pierce into the mix and they have enough C4 to bring down the place.
At quarterback, Chester Stewart “or” Mike Gerardi are listed as the co-starters, but that whole position is a work in progress.
I’m not concerned.
If there wasn’t talent in those first five guys, I’d be concerned.
I’ll take the five Temple QBs over the Villanova starter any day of the week.
Practice starts Friday.
My guess is that some positions will be tweaked by Sept. 1.
We’ll get to the defense soon enough, but suffice it to say that I’m happy to see Morkeith Brown as the starter at LE.
To me, he’s a born leader and, as such, he needs to be out there motivating the troops.

8 thoughts on “Some depth chart thoughts

  1. you are warming to the pending reality of CS starting the season behind center

  2. yeah, for the Akron game since he is PROBABLY expended for the Nova tilt…..If Gerardi or Coyer gets me to 88-6 or 100-6 for 9/1 Chester is toast for the rest of the season.I WANT 100-6 AGAINST VILLANOVA! HEAR THAT, DAZ?

  3. I'm really hoping for anybody but stewart to start at qb! Also what happened to granger the juco recruit? And I'm traveling from quakertown to the nova game with about 15pple all true temple football fans need to spread the word we better get at least 40,000 in those seats everygame there's a buzz about the new staff esp. Wit the florida n sec ties n there a champion caliber staff the only thing they need to help recruit top level athletes is a descent fan base nobody wants to play in a dead stadium so let's get the word out n help take our team to the nxt level! Let's go OWLS a ten win season n nothing less will be this years goal!!!

  4. Stewart was great in practices, not so great in games last year. If he's great in practices this year, he has a chance to start. There's no room, though, for another three INT game against Penn State or a gosh-awful pass in the flat against Bowling Green that kept a vastly inferior team in the game against the Owls until the final play. This staff will have a much shorter leash than Al Golden did. They need to find a playmaker in GAMES.

  5. received my season tickets via FEDEX today…I'm stoked! three take-a ways:(1) the TEMPLE on the helmet stands out in all seven photos; (2) how many top 20 programs in America feature seven of their top players in photos and the QB is not one of the seven?(3) we really do have seven home games this year. when was the last time that happened, or is this a Temple first?

  6. me too (stoked and received tickets) …. off the top of my head, I remember two times we were scheduled for seven home games and we sold the Navy game (Kee-Ayre fumble, OT loss) to Navy because they were too scared to play here and a few years earlier sold a big payday game to Virginia Tech (played at RFK) for money … I'm glad we didn't become football prostitutes this year and now it's up to our fans to tell the admin it made the right decision by showing up in BIG numbers.This is what I expect:40K for Nova (it will have to be 35k Temple fans, though)70K for Penn State (duh)40K for Army (hard, but doable)25k apiece for the rest of the MAC games (hey, if we can get 23K for Bowling Green last year and 21K for Kent State two years ago these can be reachable numbers)

  7. TFF,are we drinking our own bathwater? According to Rivals.com, TU will be the most disappointing team this year. We must find a way to beat either PSU, Maryland, or Toledo and be at least 3-2 after the first five games. Can't imagine us filling seats for the remainder of the season if we don't. C'mon DAZ!

  8. I asked someone in school admin (not football-related) and it looks like James could not get qualified in order to play this year. I hope he wasn't taking advanced calculus.

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