09.07.24
by

The Stan Drayton farewell tour has begun

As far as Group of Five days go in this new configuration of college football, it was a pretty good day for a few schools.

Northern Illinois went into Notre Dame and upset the Irish, its second win over a Power 4 team in as many years.

Drayton after Mathis’ fumbles. He apparently isn’t as upset over Brock’s fumbles.

Bowling Green, a 35.5-point underdog, hung with Penn State and lost by a touchdown, 34-27.

USF, a team Temple beat 54-28 two years ago, hung with Alabama for the second-straight year.

As good as those days were for those schools, that’s how bad Saturday was for Temple in a 38-11 loss at Navy.

The thing all of the above schools have in common with Temple is similar resources. BG, USF and NIU have pretty much the same challenges with the transfer portal and NIL money as Temple does.

The difference is that they don’t cry about it, they turn what meager bread they have into loaves and fishes by mastering the transfer portal the way Howie Roseman has mastered the NFL draft. Simply put, what Scot Loeffler has done at Bowling Green is to scour the Power 4 guys in the transfer portal who were on the cusp of starting at that level but stuck behind all conference players. Thomas Hammock has done the same at NIU. They can’t offer NIL money but can offer those guys starting spots. So could Temple if the CEO in charge was willing to take the same approach.

Stan Drayton?

He’s stuck back in a football mindset of the 1980s, when he was an assistant coach and Penn and Villanova. Back then, the way to fill areas of need was get a guy or two at the JUCO level. Now, faced with significant portal losses, JUCO was and is a crutch for old-school coaches like Drayton and DC Everett Withers.

That was last century. This is this one.

New school guys like Loeffler, Hammock and USF’s Alex Golesh think outside the box.

Bowling Green, NIU and USF have improvised and adjusted.

Temple’s 1980s mindset will at best cost Drayton his job and at worst cost the school its football program.

Temple has 10 games left and there doesn’t appear to be any hope for Drayton to keep his job so these 10 games will be the beginning of a farewell tour that was entirely of his own making.

Take his handling of the quarterback situation as Exhibit A. Only two weeks ago, Drayton was saying that his three quarterbacks were locked in a competition so close that he couldn’t name the starter and then on the Monday before the Oklahoma game said there was a definite “1-2-3” hierarchy but that was for him to know and the press to find out. Before that, he said it was a three-horse race that was pretty much a dead heat.

The best comment I saw on the Temple fan message boards came a couple of days ago when someone posted: “If this was a three-horse race, all three horses need to be put down.”

Now starter Forrest Brock has gotten the most rope of any human being since Thomas Knight, who was executed in 2014 after spending 40 years on death row.

You’ve got to wonder what it will take for Drayton to pull the plug on a guy who had three turnovers in his first game and four more in his second game.

Twenty turnovers?

Thirty?

Eighty-seven?

Have to wonder how Dwan Mathis is feeling after seeing one of his successors has seven turnovers after two games while he was pulled after only two. That was Drayton’s first year and he was full of vim and vigor. Now he appears to be a beaten man.

Competent coaches don’t wait that long to make a change but someone who is resigned to his eventual fate might.

A new anti-football President comes on board on Nov. 1.

For Temple fans, all that is left is to hope a coaching change in a couple of months isn’t the worst thing that could happen to their beloved program.

Monday: Some possible solutions

Friday: Coastal Carolina Preview

18 thoughts on “The Stan Drayton farewell tour has begun”

  1. As a Temple alum, I have been following the football and basketball programs for a long time. Although basketball is not what it once was during the John Chaney years, it will survive. Not so sure about football. This has to be the worst ever condition of the program. It is a poorly coached bunch of misfits. Responsibility rests with the coaching staff. Unless some miracle turnaround happens, Drayton and company must go.

    Reply

    • Kyle Hunter of Kyle Hunter’s picks said it best: “Temple beat Navy last year because E.J. Warner threw for over 400 yards. E.J. Warner ain’t walking through that door any time soon.” It was on Drayton to get a BETTER option than E.J. Warner in the offseason and he sat on his hands after Clifton McDowell left. Temple lost E.J. in December and one by one each quarterback left in the portal was picked up by another school. The backup for Miami is holding a clipboard for Cam Ward. He would have made us all forget E.J. Warner. Think he’d rather start at Temple or hold at clipboard at Miami? Most competitors want to compete.

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      • Owls (the Temple ones) sorely miss E.J. Warner – he threw for 189 yards, two touchdowns and had an interception for Rice on Saturday. The (Rice) Owls outgained Texas Southern 533-87 in total yardage and scored a pair of touchdowns in the first, third and fourth quarters, and three in the second. Rice won 69-7. Although Rice likely has a much better team than Temple, EJ would have made a big difference in the outcome of our game against Navy.

  2. Why wait? Let Drayton go before Fry gets onboard. Drayton’s head football coach IQ does not meet the FBS minimum standards.

    Blaming the players you brought into the program never works well. Those kids with eyes he didn’t like will still be on scholarship for the rest of the year. So will Drayton start wearing sunglasses on the sidelines?

    “That’s on the coaches. That’s on the players” smh.., What about you HC? How about, “I must do a better job”

    IMHO I don’t think he knows what to do to right the ship.

    0-12 is real. In this day/age of social media it will be more embarrassing than getting kicked out of the Big East. It can get worse, a self-imposed Death Penalty.

    Questionable logic behind giving guys like Drayton five year contracts. Give the next HC a three year deal with two one year options. You can always give him a new deal before the option periods if he does well.

    Go to the Douglas kid now. The OL won’t get any better until they get bigger at the tackle positions. TU is basically playing with five guards, so change the offense now and go with the dual threat. They must trap and pull to run the ball effectively.

    Where is the light?

    Reply

    • I mentioned on this blog a long time ago that the deals they’ve been giving out are ridiculous, flat out ridiculous. Not just 5 years but GUARANTEED and at 2.5 mil? Totally ridiculous. And I said back then why not 2-3 years and see how they do – so I’m glad to see you agree kj. But you know, it’s almost like they planned this whole scenario to offer such deals and then allow failure at such a high rate. I mean what the heck is going on?

      Reply

  3. These five-year contracts are for the birds and I don’t mean the Owl variety. Beyond my meager comprehension as to why Temple felt the need to give Drayton a five-year contract. Was he going to go to Memphis or USF or another conference rival? No. It was either Temple or going back to teaching the proper method to hold the ball high and tight at Texas.

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  4. Mike, based on the topic looking forward to Mondays post. At this point I have some questions regarding TUFB:

    1. First and foremost after 6 years of Carey/Drayton is this program salvageable?
    2. Can TU afford another buy out?
    3. Can we get the type of coach who could turn things around for say $1.5M. I fully expect anyone who can do that will most likely be gone in 2-3 years so the admin needs to develop the mindset to have a “pipeline” of replacement prospects mapped out. Is there anyone on this staff who could move into the HC position with any level of success?
    4. How much of this roster can play at the AAC level?
    5. What is the plan for a long term home for TUFB. The whole question of an OCS seems dead and to be honest at the numbers that were thrown out in the last go round on this topic I wonder how serious the university really was. How feasible is negotiating a better deal for the Linc?

    Bottom line will the incoming president have any inclination to take on this challenge?

    Reply
      1. Yes. Thomas Hammock proved NIU was salvageable.
      2. No
      3. Yes (but has to have Philly recruiting connections and be a proven HC at some level)
      4. The two interior defensive tackles, all the tight ends and wide receivers and half the running backs
      5. Uni was serious. They didn’t expect the blowback from the community. They retreated to the end zone and fumbled the stadium ball like Brock did on that safety.
      Reply

  5. The cupboard is bare and will continue to be with this regime. There aren’t any more Matt Rhule’s out there. Changing coaches the only hope-albeit slim hope. Let’s admit- the Patriot League might be the best fit.

    Reply

    • Plenty of great coaches out there. Why are they at places like Nevada, Troy, UTSA, UNLV, Texas State, NIU and USF and not here? Because Temple hires ADs who say, “Geez, the guy I worked with at Texas is a nice guy and my friend so I’d like to bring him here with me.” Any good AD says, “Geez, let’s conduct a national search and get the best guy available.” That’s how real schools operate.

      Reply

    • Where would TUFB play home games in the Patriot League? Seems like a talent fit if TU had a field to play on.

      Step down to FCS level and put a shovel in the ground on campus get my vote.

      Fry would feel more comfortable in the Patriot League.

      Reply

      • Fry’s responses to questions about Temple football doesn’t give me the warm and fuzzies. Gave lip service it “a great tradition” (it was only great under Pop, Wayne, Al, and Matt). His Wall Street Journal piece not all that long ago said schools were foolish to chase football money when only 10 or 15 made real money in the sport. Then he praised his own school (Drexel) for dropping football. Don’t need to be able to read tea leaves to see where this is headed. The only chance Temple had was to follow a loss to Oklahoma with a win over Navy and get a great opening day crowd. Now there will be more pigeons at the 20 then there will be humans in the stands. Hopefully, Fry isn’t watching the game from his Drexel office that day.

  6. Meanwhile, FRAN BROWN, is 2-0’up

    at Syracuse after upsetting Georgia Tech this weekend. Quarterback, Kyle McCord has almost 700 yards passing and 8 touchdowns already. Imagine that 8 TD’s or 8 turnovers, what would you rather have?

    never thought we’d see the day that Ron Dickerson looked good…..

    Reply

    • Can you remember a coaching era when TU QBs got hit this hard? EJ got knocked silly, concussed, and left the program.

      Brock got hit so hard his mouth piece went flying five yards, and he almost left earth.

      The worst team in all of FBS football has the worst coach. The correlation coefficient is 1, and irrefutable.

      Reply

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