My favorite media question of the week resulted in a reverse jam dunk by a Temple University product, Todd Bowles, that illustrated a couple of things:

One, the class act of a guy I knew and loved while covering the Temple football Owls for the Calkins Newspaper group back in the 1980s remained the class act of an NFL coach in the 2020s;

Two, the way he let her down gently;

Three, the current state of sports media where they let anyone without a football background ask a question;

I’m sure this person got up in the morning and jotted down her question for the presser thinking beforehand it was a brilliant question nobody else would ask the Tampa Bay head coach prior to a divisional round game at Detroit.

She was half right.

Yes, it was a question no one else would ask.

No, not a brilliant question. Actually, the opposite.

How the bleep would anyone who knew anything about football ask a weather question about the Detroit Lions without knowing as a base the Lions don’t play outside?

Ugh.

The question got me pondering the deeper meaning of Tampa Bay eliminating the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday night.

The Eagles were eliminated by a defensive guru who applied for the Temple head coaching job who learned his football at the feet of a former Temple coach, Bruce Arians.

What was Arians’ major defensive philosophy?

“The best pass defense is to put the other guy’s quarterback on his backside,” was Arians’ favorite quote.

What did Todd do against the Eagles?

Every time Jalen Hurts checked into an empty backfield Bowles checked into a blitz.

It’s Football 101.

With no blockers back there to protect the quarterback, the QB has to do one of two things: 1) throw the ball out of bounds or 2) take a sack.

Hurts did a lot of both and, as a result, the Eagles lost, 32-9.

(The adjustment to defeat that would have been for Hurts to check into max protect and get the ball out on swing routes but that never happened and you’ve got to wonder what Sirianni and Brian Johnson and Hurts were thinking.)

How does this affect Temple?

Bowles wasn’t the only Temple connection to look good.

Ever since Sean Desai was replaced as DC, the Eagles went from a decent defense to the worst in the league. Desai, like Bowles, was a former Temple person (professor in the classroom and special teams coordinator at 10th and Diamond) who shined in North Philadelphia. Desai also once applied for the Temple head coaching job.

Maybe replacing a DC who shut out Kansas City in the second half of a 21-17 win wasn’t the best idea.

Maybe the Eagles fire Nick Sirianni. Maybe they don’t.

But, if they do, the names of Desai (future head coach) or current Eagles’ LB coach D.J. Eliot should be on both a long and a short list to help Temple football get out of its current funk.

Eliot objectively took pretty much the same Temple football players current DC Everett Withers had and performed as the 74th-best defense in the country in the 2022 season.

Withers replaced him and had the Owls rated 129th in the next season, which was tied for fourth-worst in Temple football history (with Bobby Wallace’s 2005 squad) from a ppg standpoint. Withers was two points per game away from being the DC with dubious record of leading the worst Temple defense in all of a history that dates back to 1889.

If Sirianni is let go, Eliot becomes available to slot back into his former role and make the Owls’ defense twice as good in 2024 as it was in 2023.

Does Drayton, probably Withers’ best friend, have the organizational skills to fire the guy or does he say “bleep it, me and Everett are going down with the ship?”

If the Eagles fire Nick, we will find out in day or two. If they don’t, expect Oklahoma to put a a 70-spot on the Owls because we will be stuck with Withers.

The saddest part is all of this could have been fixed a long time ago had Temple hired Temple.

Monday: Ships sailing and learning curve Friday:

Friday: Temple’s No. 1 foe

Monday: If this is wrong, I don’t want to be right