About a year ago at this time, I was absolutely convinced the 2021 Temple football Owls would finish 2-10 and you could not move me off that block.

As excited as I was about Stan Drayton replacing the old guy for this season, I looked at six wins as the absolute ceiling for the 2022 Temple football Owls.

Even looking at it eight optimistic ways, doubling last year’s win total seemed the best we could do.

With the news on Wednesday, the freaking sky is the limit.

We speculated in this space very recently that Drayton promised an upgrade at the quarterback position but did not see it. We said a week ago that Drayton was “bringing in a couple of guys” to compete for the starting quarterback job with D’Wan Mathis and I said that even given “one of those guys was Elijah Warner, who is the other guy?”

That “other guy” is Quincy Patterson with his recent signing at Temple.

This is a game-changer. Hell, it’s a season-changer. This has moved the needle from “ceiling of six wins” to a winning season.

A winning season needs to happen this year. I’ll take 7-5 but I’m much more into 8-5 and 9-3 or better.

Patterson now makes that possible.

Owls were “acceptable” on defense, offensive line, wide receiver and even running back but Mathis’ history of fragility and his underwhelming first year with the Owls made quarterback the No. 1 priority.

Prior to last week, Florida Gator transfer Emory Jones and Pitt Panther transfer Davis Beville were considered slight upgrades Temple could get over Mathis.

Patterson (who seemingly came out of nowhere because he entered the portal last week) is a huge upgrade and Drayton seeing the flaws in spring practice and getting upgrades since at running back and quarterback is the biggest indication that this guy is pushing all the right buttons.

Patterson is just what the doctor ordered for Temple football.

Consider this: This man singlehandedly led Virginia Tech to a 6OT win over a North Carolina team that beat Temple, 55-13. That was an 8-5 Temple team that beat No. 21 Maryland, 20-17. (That Maryland team hammered Rutgers, 48-7, four weeks later.)

This is no Re’Al Mitchell or even a Mathis.

I hope Mathis is Temple TUFF enough to accept the challenge and compete for a job I feel he will eventually lose but, if he wins it, Temple is better off with the competition.

The reality is that since both Mathis and Patterson have now entered the portal twice they are both committed to Temple for another year or will have to sit out before transferring to the next school.

For that reason, the Temple quarterback room has morphed from the thinnest to the deepest in the AAC and that’s a very good thing for all of us.

Monday: The Golden Voice