North Texas: The Eclipse Game

Sometime in the middle of the second quarter of Temple’s game at North Texas, a solar eclipse will darken at least 80 percent of the sun for maybe 17-29 minutes of the game.

It will be the first eclipse game in Temple football history. Maybe the eclipse changes the Owls’ fortunes. Maybe not. Think the Eagles at Chicago Bears’ “fog bowl” for a historical perspective.

Of all the games in the country, Temple will be the darkest game in the middle of the second quarter. I’m guessing they have science at North Texas and know this.

Gotta hope the folks at North Texas are aware of that and keep the lights on for the short time day becomes night in Denton.

Around that time, though, the light has to turn on for Temple football or this season is over.

Some people who do not wear Cherry and White glasses (see above video) believe in Temple here. The line has dropped from North Texas being an 8.5-point favorite (Monday) to a five-point favorite (today) and that means the “wise guys” are backing Temple.

The hard reality is that Temple will not be favored in another game this season unless the Owls are able to string two or three wins together.

Our picks this week.Logic is SDSU has much better coaches than Hawaii. Troy is a sneaky good team, the Charlotte kids play incredibly hard and the Iowa State loss at a good Ohio team was as fluky as it comes. For the season we are 8-8 against the spread and 16-8 overall.

This might have been what the “general public” expected but not what I expected listening to the glowing reports coming out of camp from March spring practice until the kickoff of the first game against Akron. We were told this was the best offensive line at Temple in years and all we’ve seen is that Isaac Moore’s blocking has been missed more than we thought and nobody can keep the bad guys away from E.J. Warner on any consistent basis. On top of that, we haven’t seen anything like Edward Saydee’s 254-yard game against USF last year and that’s a big indictment on the offensive line.

Worse, the defense had nine returning starters and a “normal” defensive coordinator replacement for the departed D.J. Eliot (Eagles) should have been able to post a shutout or two.

Instead, we got a friend of the boss (Stan Drayton) with a dismal record of stopping modern offenses coming into the season and he proved that old saying from Bill Parcells “you are what your record says you are.”

Everett Withers’ record screams “I suck” and has since 1985. (When he posted his last shutout as a DC.) Withers strikes me as a guy who punches the clock at 9 a.m. and punches out at 5 p.m. and if additional film study is needed at midnight to help his kids stop any future foes he just says “fuck it. I’m outta here.”

That, apparently, never bothered Drayton and he has reaped what he has sowed. He loves the guy evidently more than he loves Temple because it has not bothered him sufficiently enough to fire him after he gave up 48 points against Tulsa and 49 against UTSA. Blind spots will get you fired as a head coach and Drayton has a blind spot with Everett Withers.

I love Temple and if I was the Temple head coach, I would not have tolerated 48 and 49 point games from any defensive coach. Even given the hiring freeze by Temple, I would have told Withers he was free to go elsewhere and promoted a professional defensive coordinator (Chris Woods, USFL) to the top job.

A North Texas offense that has had success against any defense other than Navy last week figures to feast on Temple tomorrow (noon, ESPNU).

The only hope the Owls have is to outscore the Mean Green.

That is possible only if E.J. Warner’s replicates his five-touchdown, 472-yard performance against UTSA a week ago.

It figures to be a shootout. I’m guessing E.J. Warner has studied more North Texas defensive film than Withers has Mean Green offensive film.

Knowing E.J., I think that is a better bet and that’s sad because he’s not pulling down the half million Withers is stealing from Temple.

Temple 39, North Texas 35.

Let’s hope this is the start of something big. Failing that, something bigger than we’ve seen so far. In a 2-4 season, we’ve had enough of watching the Owls come up small.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis

15 thoughts on “North Texas: The Eclipse Game

  1. Hi Mike, Love your optimism. I think you are correct about the Defensive Situation. If the Offense can “RUN”, we have a chance! Lets GO Phillies!

    • Phillies are an example of what a Temple TUFF mindset used to be a long time ago. It’s almost a mockery of Temple TUFF to be playing this Matador defense and be making excuses for it like the current braintrust seems to be making.

  2. Remember this name: Colin Hitschler.

    From Roxborough, Penn grad. Now at Wisconsin, co-DC and safeties coach.

    If somehow current staff is jettisoned, he’d be a good hire for the HC post. You know going in he’s a rental, but enjoy him while you have him.

    Has coached in different areas, so he’s got recruiting chops to find the historical prototype Temple player who makes the program work.

  3. Unfortunately, this is simply not a good team. I was praying for them but watching them realistically there is a serious issue in finding the right receruits.

  4. 2-10, now what? New Uni Pres has two options:
    1. Fire both AJ and Drayton
    2. Cut sling load

    • I pick No. 1. I dropped sling for Youtube TV seven months ago.

    • I opt for number 1 but can the university afford to eat a couple of more contracts? At a minimum need to get a real DC, not a buddy of Drayton. Don’t know how much this program can pull from the portal with the NIL $$ that seems to be thrown around by some many other programs, but this off season needs to hit the portal and JUCOs hard for offensive, defensive lineman and running backs.

  5. Mike, you were 110% correct about Withers from the get go. Is the a remaining team on the schedule who this team can hold under 40+ points scored.

    • Talent-wise, yes (most of these same defensive players were on the field last year); coaching-wise, no.

      • Ok, I get that, go for players looking to move up. At this point this team can’t leave any stone unturned to find more talent to help right away

    • Beyond Withers, Mike also was right about hiring Stan Drayton, who had no prior experience as a Head Coach. Drayton is just as responsible and owns as much blame (if not more) for this disastrous season. Looking like this could turn out to be another in a long line of Temple Football bad coaching hires.

      • I can’t name a single buddy hire of an athletic director that ever worked out in a major sport at Temple. Major fails with Bradshaw/Dunphy, Kraft/Carey, Johnson/Drayton. Worse might be the non-AD buddy hire of Everett Withers who everybody in college football knew was a lousy DC but Drayton hired him anyway.

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