Best news out of first scrimmage is ….

Matt Rhule talks to the Inquirer’s John Mitchell (left) and assorted media types.

Those of you who’ve read this site for the last eight years know I’m not a big guy on practice.
The one “practice” I pay a lot of attention to every year is the Cherry and White game and since that’s always the good guys against the good guys, I don’t get much satisfaction out of that either.
Wake me up when the real games begin.

To me, any good story has to have a protagonist and an antagonist.
The story of Temple football so far has been a protagonist and a protagonist.
The antagonist shows up in this story on Aug. 31, not before.
Still, I recognize that practice is a necessary forward in this great football book.
So the good news for me out of Saturday’s first scrimmage was that the pass rush is back and disrupting things.
Let’s hope that’s because of the pass rush and not the offensive line, but that’s a different chapter for another day.
To me, the key to winning in football is ball security.
You take care of your responsibility and hold onto the ball and then force the bad guy, the antagonist, to give it up.
The best way to force the other guy to give it up is a good blindside pass rush that forces fumbles in the backfield or a quicker-than-timed release that results in interceptions.
Temple had that pass rush yesterday. Let’s hope the Owls keep it up for the next six months or so.

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