Special teams are like umpires. If you don’t notice them, they are great. If you do, they are like Angel Hernandez.

Terrible.

If you don’t notice them, they are John Libka–generally considered the best balls and strikes umpire in the game today.

Last year, Temple football’s special teams were closer to Hernandez than Libka.

For about a decade before that, nobody really noticed Temple’s special teams. Maybe not coincidentally, that started in 2009 when head coach Al Golden also assumed the head coach of the special teams’ role.

When Steve Addazio took over for Golden, he promoted tight ends coach Ed Foley who made Temple’s special teams legendary for excellence. Foley was a guy who rose to his level of competence. He’s a very competent special teams’ coach, one of the best, but as an interim head coach he proved to be a bridge too far. There can be little doubt if Foley, say, won either the Wake Forest game or the Duke game as an interim, his chances of being Temple head coach today would have been far greater than they are now.

Last year, in an administrative move, Rod Carey took Foley from the field to an off-the-field role and that caused Foley to go to Baylor and now the Carolina Panthers.

The Owls were the Keystone Cops of AAC special teams and that stung Temple fans were used to Owls making big plays in that third of the game.

“If we’re great on defense and special teams, we’re going to be in every game,” Golden said in 2009. “That’s two-thirds of the team. I really felt that special teams was an area I had to take charge of myself.”

Maybe it was Carey’s fault for letting Foley go. All we know is that, under Foley, the kicking and return coverage games were great. With pretty much the same personnel last year, they were terrible. In order to gain trust of Owls fans, it’s going to have to improve this year.

Last year, the Owls couldn’t make a routine extra point at Cincinnati and that might have cost them the East title. A block was missed. Was that the fault of the new special teams “coaches” (Carey has a couple of coaches in charge)? Maybe not. But it didn’t happen on the regular under Foley.

Under Foley, Isaiah Wright was a dynamic punt and kickoff returner in 2018. Under Carey’s coach by committee in 2019, he was just another guy. Temple always flipped the field on kickoffs. Too often last year, the Owls started drives deep in their own territory. Maybe Foley would have been able to communicate how important it was for Wright to eschew the fair catches for the reward of a big play.

The Owls were aggressive on special teams for a decade, going after blocked punts and field goals. High risk, high reward. The philosophy changed to no risk no reward last year. Disappointing. If you’ve got no athletes, that’s probably the way to go but Temple has always had athletes out the wazoo, notably but not limited to 6-5 wide receivers like Branden Mack with a 91-inch wingspan who liked to block punts. They played scared on special teams. That might be the NIU way but that’s the opposite of Temple TUFF.

Now the rebuilding of the Owls’ special teams begins. The Owls recruited a couple of high-profile kickers and Will Mobley’s job appears to be in jeopardy. Rory Bell has a longer leg (Mobley a very reliable extra point kicker) and a pedigree for success at the high school level.

Looks like to me Bell is the guy for kicking. For punting, Adam Berry had his moments and most were not good. Did not like his body language after failing to field a snap or shanking a punt. Hopefully, he has matured but thanks to recruiting, the Owls now have some other options.

Golden was right. This is 1/3 of the team and deserves attention. It did not get that last year. If the Owls are going to be successful in this department, we will not notice this aspect of the team at all.

Monday: Did You Ever Get The Feeling?