Anyone who has read this website over the years knows we call balls and strikes as we see it.

After the first two years of the Matt Ruhle Regime, we said that if he kept the spread offense that he was so set on that Temple football would be doomed.

Fortunately, Rhule saw the light and demoted Marcus Satterfield from OC and hired Glenn Thomas, went to a fullback-oriented, ball-control running game and turned the Lincoln Financial Field scoreboard into an adding machine.

The ancillary benefit of that was eight-minute drives that kept the ball out of the hands of the bad guys and gave the defense enough rest to cause havoc on their end. Two 10-win seasons followed and by then Rhule found the strike zone to the effect of earning a $7.4 million contract at Baylor.

In the Stan Drayton Era, it’s been high and outside in the sense that recruiting hasn’t been as good as advertised and the game-day coaching was a little suspect.

With the exception of one foe: USF.

Now USF is being touted as the “next great” Group of Five team but Drayton beat that team, 54-28, one year (getting head coach Jeff Scott fired), and the next year gave USF all it could handle on the road in a 27-23 loss.

If you are grasping at straws for a reason why the 2024 Owls can be significantly better than the 2023 Owls, that game is a pretty impressive straw.

It is the only one.

Think of it this way. The USF team that Temple SHOULD HAVE beaten that day (and if not for an ill-advised late hit would have beaten) went on to beat Syracuse, 45-0, in the Boca Raton Bowl.

Syracuse entered that game with a 6-6 record in a Power 5 conference, beating Purdue (35-20), Western Michigan (48-7), Army (29-16), Pitt (28-13) and Wake Forest (35-31).

Yet Temple … TEMPLE! … gave USF a much-better game than Cuse and that was a game where bowl eligibility was on the line for USF.

And many of the best Temple players from that game are still getting ready for the season at 10th and Diamond. They need quarterback help and it’s up to Drayton to get his players that help.

E.J. Warner had a nice game for Temple there but he still had a Pick 6 that turned the game around so an argument can be made that the Owls aren’t that far away from competing. We mentioned in this space that General Booty was available on May 4 and Temple should have grabbed him by May 5 but Drayton twiddled his thumbs until May 25 and UL Monroe got him. You think Booty would have picked Temple over UL Monroe (with a chance to get back at Oklahoma in the opener)? I do.

Drayton knows what he has to do but has let other programs get the best available quarterbacks.

Just get a taller quarterback who can see over the line and still make the throws E.J. made. Better said than done but the remaining kids on the team deserve their coaching staff to make every effort to find one. I guarantee you this: Booty will start and have better stats at UL-Monroe than any current Temple player in the QB room.

Drayton has sat on this QB situation since the day E.J. left in December. He needs to get moving.

If he sits on the ball and is satisfied with his quarterback room as is, he is dooming Temple just like Rhule would have if he was stubborn enough to stick with the spread after Year Two.

Stubbornness can get you fired. Rhule figured that out in time to make a fortune. Let’s hope Drayton can do the same.