The last great D.J. I saw at a Temple football game was a guy named Jerry Blavat, who connected with the boomers by spinning the hits of the 1950s and 60s.

RIP, Geator with The Heater.

The next D.J. was pretty good, a guy named D.J. Eliot, who turned chicken bleep into chicken salad by taking a questionably talented Temple defense in 2022 and doing some good things.

Would have rather had another Heater (Chuck) but Stan Drayton’s hire of Eliot turned out to be a solid one.

When Eliot left to be linebackers’ coach with the Philadelphia Eagles this time a year ago, Drayton rushed into getting his replacement before spring ball and hired Everett Withers on St. Patrick’s Day 2023. That day we wrote this about that.

It probably wasn’t the worst decision made on St. Patty’s Day in Philadelphia history–thinking about bar-hopping in Center City and driving home to the suburbs might be worse (not me)–but Drayton at least made the second-worst SPD decision in Philly history.

His DC hire, old friend Everett Withers, came off a recent DC job (FIU, 2021), where he averaged giving up 40 points-per-game (OK, 39.7 but we’re rounding it off).

Withers piggybacked that with giving up almost the same amount of ppgs for Temple in 2023.

In the 140-year-old history of Temple football, there was only one worse defense (2005, Bobby Wallace).

Two historically bad defenses, one in Miami, one in Philadelphia. Presided over by the same guy, Everett Withers.

There’s a clue somewhere in there.

After the season was over, Drayton promised the assembled press that he would re-evaluate everything (“including the coaches”) and, for some unknown reason, he gave a pass to a DC who allowed an obscene 40 ppg but fired some lower-level staffers.

That was essentially telling Temple football fans, “yeah, we couldn’t stop anybody but we evaluated ourselves and we did nothing wrong.”

Now that the Eagles have hired another LB coach and Eliot is out of a job, the logical thing to do is for Drayton to offer Eliot is old job back. Drayton doesn’t even have to fire Withers to do it. He can shuffle the staff and move Withers to another spot.

Like everything Drayton and Withers’ related, though, all we have is radio silence from Temple out of the Edberg-Olson Complex.

Looks like Drayton is sticking with his buddy and, in essence, going down with the ship when he could have objectively thrown himself a life raft.

Not subjectively, objectively.

Comparing the Temple defense of 2022 and 2023, Eliot did a significantly better job in 2022 than Withers did in 2023.

If Drayton doesn’t rehire him, Arthur Johnson will have to ask why in his Stan Drayton Exit interview of 2024 because I can’t see this defense surviving another Everett Withers’ experience.

“Because we’re buddies” won’t be a good-enough answer.

Monday: A Deep Dive