11.18.23
by

Kill Switch: Oh, what might have been for Temple

Less than a month apart, two of the most underperforming college football programs in the country made major football hires late in 2021.

On Nov. 29, New Mexico State hired Jerry Kill.

If Arthur Johnson was director of football operations at TCU instead of Texas, Jerry Kill probably would have been hired and Temple might be sitting on a 9-3 season at this point.

Exactly two weeks to the day later Temple hired Stan Drayton.

Temple was bad in 2021 but New Mexico State was much worse.

The Owls finished 3-9 but the Aggies were 2-10. In that 3-9 season, the Owls beat a ranked team, Memphis, while the Aggies best win was over a FCS team, South Carolina State.

Both needed a new coach and the New Mexico State brass thought hiring a proven program-builder was a better way to go than hiring an unproven running backs’ coach.

What happened since?

Temple went 3-9 in Drayton’s first season and, after a 34-24 loss to a bad UAB team on Saturday, will undoubtedly go 3-9 for the third-straight season. Kill had the Aggies 7-6 his first year and, since an August loss this year, New Mexico State is 9-2 including a 31-10 win over SEC power Auburn on Saturday night.

Did Kill say before the game with Auburn that “they recruit better than us and someday we hope to recruit like them” like Drayton did after the Miami loss? No. He hired a 33-year-old wunderkind DC who actually had a history of stopping modern offenses instead of a 60-year-old “close friend” retread who couldn’t stop a nosebleed. He devised a game plan to have his lesser talent beat Auburn’s better talent.

No thanks. I’ve seen enough heartbreak for one year.

That’s what great coaches do.

Oh what might have been for Temple if only Arthur Johnson was “director of football operations” at the last school Kill was at (TCU) instead of another Texas school.

Worse, Temple could have had the Kill switch to turn off the losing easily. Kill signed for $550,000 at New Mexico State. Drayton signed for nearly four times as much at Temple. You don’t think he would have taken the Temple job in a heartbeat over New Mexico State?

Hell, he still probably would.

Money talks, bullshit walks.

Kill was familiar with Temple and the recruiting area from the time he was an assistant at Rutgers while Temple was winning an AAC championship.

In an unremarkable opening press conference, the best promise Drayton made Temple fans was that he would “chase greatness.”

Kill said this at his introductory press conference: “I just like taking on challenges. It’s like building a house, and I like to do things. I like that. I like being the underdog. I like having a chip on my shoulder, and you get in with the players that have the same thing. …I like the process. I love the process.”

For Kill, the “process” hasn’t included the NIL but has included the transfer portal: “We just don’t have the big donors or the big money (for the NIL) but we do offer kids an opportunity for guys stuck behind P5 starters on those teams and FCS guys who have performed at a high level but want a bigger stage. That’s all we can offer at this point and it’s a formula that works for us.”

Temple fans when they hear Drayton is still bringing in high school recruits.

Meanwhile, Temple’s recruiting philosophy is stuck back in 1987 when you could build a team of high school recruits, redshirt them for a year, have them back up for another and then have them ready to play by the third.

Guess what? Nobody has the time for that anymore because if you don’t win by Year Three, you are out on your ass.

Two teams that reached a fork in the road a week apart in December of 2021: Temple and New Mexico State.

Make that two years in a row.

The Aggies could have picked an unproven running backs coach and probably would be looking at a third-straight 2-10 season.

Temple did and is staring at a third-straight 3-9 season. Kill was and is a proven program-builder. The best you could say about Drayton back then was that he was a huge roll of the dice at a time Temple couldn’t afford to gamble.

New Mexico State made a solid investment at a time when the Owls were spending their last chip at the crap table.

The Aggies made the correct call. One school’s blessing is another school’s curse.

Monday: Memphis Preview

Late Friday Night: TU-Memphis Analysis

15 thoughts on “Kill Switch: Oh, what might have been for Temple”

  1. Well New Mexico State another example that it doesn’t take 4 to 5 years to turn things around as some folks are saying we need to give Drayton. Can’t imagine that New Mexico State was in better shape than TU at the time Drayton and Kill took their respective HC jobs. I really believe that Carey didn’t leave the cupboard as bare as some make out.

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    • New Mexico State is one of the few teams that has fewer season-ticket holders than Temple and has for nine of the last 10 seasons. There is NO MONEY at New Mexico State and Kill has proven at more than one place he can make chicken salad out of chicken shit. Drayton is a nice guy but he’s put together a terrible staff and does not know how to procure players.

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    • They’re done. I’m done. I’m not wasting my time going Friday. I’ll watch on TV and go for a bike ride until dark. I might not come back next year unless I see a significant upgrade in the roster from the portal. I don’t think Stan wants to go that route and even if he does, I don’t think he knows how. Pick up the phone and call Jerry Kill and ask him how he did it. The worst that can happen is Jerry hangs up, then dials Arthur Johnson and asks for a $2 million pay raise to guarantee Temple winning a championship.

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  3. Mike, I only once ever posted a comment to your site back in 2011-2012, when I was still a Temple undergraduate student, and it was to express my support for Temple accepting the all-sports invite to rejoin the Big East Conference. It has been almost twelve years since I last posted a comment here but I never stopped reading this blog or the comments.

    As we know, Temple University ultimately did accept that invite and the rest has been history ever since. The football program has experienced so many highs and lows over the past decade and so many different coaching staffs as well – Steve Addazio, Matt Rhule, Geoff Collins, Manny Diaz (lol), Rod Carey, and this current football staff under Drayton.

    I still find myself agreeing with many of your takes about Temple Football. Quite frankly, and in my humble opinion, you simply know and understand what winning and losing Temple Football looks like as a longtime fan.

    With all of that said, I think it has become abundantly clear that Stan Drayton and this staff are in over their heads and that Temple needs to move on as quickly as possible from this situation as possible. Drayton has not won a single away game in over two seasons, has two conference wins to show over two seasons, has a defensive coordinator that allowed 40+ points to opposing offenses in five consecutive games, and the recruiting looks pedestrian.

    This is looking like one of the worst hires in Temple Football history. And that says quite a bit. Did they learn nothing from the three previous hires? Why on earth would you ever hire a first-time head coach with no prior coaching experience at Temple and somebody who has not coached in any capacity in the Northeast for over a decade? This is about as niche as a job in college football as there is.

    And to think this staff is one of the higher paid staffs in the AAC and they have simply have not gotten the job done. Meanwhile, as you note New Mexico State, other programs are getting far more done with far less even in this transfer portal and NIL driven landscape. This staff have given us fans absolutely no reason to believe based on the results we have seen thus far that anything is going to improve next season. They actually regressed from last season going by the results against some of the same teams!

    Respectfully,
    Frustrated Temple Football fan

    Reply

    • Yeah, this is my favorite sports team by far and I am sickened by what they have given me this year. My distant second favorite team is the Eagles, followed by the Phillies, then Temple basketball, then the Sixers. I couldn’t give a flying funga about the Flyers but when Temple loses I can’t even watch the Eagles games because I’m so pissed off that the Temple football team loses. Maybe with that extra day to blow off steam I will be able to enjoy the Eagles at Chiefs more. I doubt it. I don’t care about “lessons learned” or “becoming great young men in the community” or “incremental improvement” or “being tough and wanting to win.” All I care about is winning, period, end of story. You can learn lessons, graduate, be great young men and show incremental improvement just as much by winning as losing. Let’s try that. The other stuff is excuses made by losers. Here, Haason Reddick says “Temple Football Forever.” I want to see more of these celebrations:

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  4. Well, obviously Withers is still in charge of the D from the way UAB moved the ball – at least it wasn’t another 40+ points scored – big whoop! And at least Temple has had other worse consecutive losing season periods – Another big whoop! I still say something is going on we don’t know about – the losing in spite of big salaries, senseless guaranteed contracts, the buddy hires, no efforts from the higher ups to step in with demands to change, etc. The comparison to NMSU shows Temple’s idiotic approach – why is all this so acceptable by the school (and always has been proven by a review of Temple football history)? Why? I’m tired of seeing smaller schools/programs making winning decisions but Temple continues to wallow around in a losing tradition – most successful periods were lucky hires (Rhule) and the last intentional great hire was Wayne Harden – a long, long time ago. There’s no good excuse for it…. Ugh!!!! BTW, firing Johnson would be much less expensive then firing Drayton and then let the the new AD clean things up!

    Reply

    • If Drayton’s here, nothing gets cleaned up. Unfortunately, Jerry Kill is such a good man he probably won’t leave New Mexico State for 4x the money but they need a proven program-builder who turned losing situations around and a DC who actually shut out an opponent or two since 1995 (which, by the way, was the last year Withers shut anyone out as a sole DC).

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  5. I had to laugh when Drayton said “we let them score” on the last drive. How did that last touchdown look any different from the other 99 touchdowns Withers gave up this year? In the North Texas game, it looked like the Owls were literally letting the Mean Green score on every drive. Same for SMU and a few other unmitigated disasters on defense this year. If you have a good defense, you are in every game. That’s where the rebuild has to start.

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  6. Let’s look ahead. 2024 will be another bust with the same coaching staff and AD. TUFB has the least talented roster in the AAC. And, is at the bottom of the conference in NIL payouts, the AD in an NIL denier.

    Let’s pray TU can hire a new Uni President BEFORE the end of the 2024 season. If not, the same coaching staff and AD returns for 2025, more pain. The other possibility is the new Uni Pres comes in and let’s thing ride.., no changes.

    Bottom line, the process could start all over again in either 2025 or 2026. Seven, or more, straight years w/o a bowl invite in an empty Linc.

    2020: 1-6
    2021: 3-9
    2022: 3-9
    2023: 3-9
    2024: May be worse
    2025: Will be worse
    2026: Could be the end

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  7. I just saw the list of players taking part in Senior Day. They are the best 7-10 players on the team. Two have the option to come back and said no thanks. I suspect they like Drayton the person (as we all do) but aren’t sold on his ability to win football games (as most of us are).

    Reply

    • Courtesy of the great (and I don’t throw that word around much) Shawn Pastor, Editor of OwlsDaily.com. A subscription to his site is well worth the miniscule investment. Guys who we will be saying goodbye to: Jordan Magee (could have come back)

      Yvandy Rigby (could have come back)

      Richard Rodriguez

      Jerquavion Mahone

      Tywan Francis

      Jacob Hollins

      Layton Jordan

      David Martin-Robinson

      Jordan Smith

      Elijah Clark

      Quincy Patterson

      Amad Anderson

      Lancine Turay

      Camden Price

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  8. NMSU: How the program changed:

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