After seeing the above video, Temple football players could be excused for feeling like Mike Schmidt, who once said:

“Philadelphia is the only city where you can experience the thrill of victory and the agony of reading about it the next day.”

Plenty of bulletin board material is one way to look at it. The Owls were somewhat impressive in a loss to Coastal Carolina, an elite Group of Five team, and even more impressive against Utah State but most of the prediction sites–like the above one–aren’t buying the Owls on being for real.

At least not yet. They will if Temple beats Army.

Watching the celebration in the Owls’ locker room on Saturday, I got the distinct impression that the team is buying into what Stan Drayton and staff are selling but we won’t be sure until about 10:30 p.m. tomorrow night (Lincoln Financial Field, 7:30 p.m., ESPN).

Are they fired up enough to show the doubters they are wrong or were the prognosticators right to call the Owls a bad football team?

“Is Temple actually like normal bad on offense compared to like atrocious with (Evan) Simon instead of (Forrest) Brock?” Kyle Hunter said here.

“Temple, to me, is still a bad football team,” Gary Segars said.

“I do think there’s a potential letdown effect for Temple coming off a win,” Parker Fleming said.

Them’s fighting words to a team that has pride and hopefully Temple will have it. Letdown? How is a team that finally got a taste of winning going to have a letdown over a team that is favored and going on the road?

Make no mistake it going to be a daunting task, but an argument can be made that Army is not as good as Coastal Carolina and maybe even less explosive than Utah State. Really, who did Army beat? They beat FAU, which got blown out by UCONN. (It’s worth nothing that UCONN lost to Utah State at home last year.) Army also beat Rice (which got blown out by Sam Houston) and FCS Lehigh.

Coastal and Utah State would have probably beaten all three Army foes.

It all comes down to Everett Withers, though, and his film study on how to plug the gaps against a triple option that were all too apparent in the 38-11 loss to Navy. There is a way to stop the triple option and that’s to put a nose tackle over the center, take away the fullback dive, and force the pitch outside where Temple’s superior athletes can string the play from sideline to sideline. Eight men in the box and trust your corners to single the wide receivers and break up a rare pass or two. Sell out to stop the run at the point of attack.

Does Withers have the courage or sense to tweak the defensive scheme to stop what the opponent does best or does he stick with the Temple base defense?

Temple’s most athletic defensive player, end Diwan Black, is back for this game and, like Jordan Magee in the Navy game last year, has a chance to make a difference chasing those ballcarriers.

Black will have plenty of help, though, in that Pro Football Focus rates safety Andreas Keaton as the best tackler in all of college football. In corners Torrey Richardson and Jaylen Lewis, they can gamble singling the wide receivers and play eight in the box to not only stop the run but disrupt things in the Army backfield.

Not many teams are disrespected after hanging a 45-burger on another squad but Temple has been and maybe the Owls use it to their advantage.

Nobody will doubt Temple again if it beats Army and that has to be a powerful motivator.

Friday: Temple-Army Analysis