Begging to differ: This is not fixable

This was 10-on-11 blocking but looked like 42-on-11. Things like illegal shifts, too many men in the backfield, offsides, illegal formations are fixable but how is this fixable?

For three of the last four games, really three of the last dozen, Temple head coach Stan Drayton looked the assembled media in the eye and said what ailed his team in losses was “fixable.”

We beg to differ.

Maybe the penalties are fixable but what we have seen too much this season doesn’t appear to be.

Army pushed the Owls’ defense aside like they were bowling pins. At times, it looked like Army had 42 guys blocking 11 guys and not 11-on-11.

How is that fixable?

It would be one thing if that was the only time the Owls looked like that, but they also looked that way against Navy and also looked that way against Oklahoma. Yes, they stopped Oklahoma on 11 of 12 third-down opportunities but whenever the Sooners needed a first down on fourth down, they got it.

Oklahoma is a Power 4 team and that can be excused.

Looking the same way against two Group of Five teams is inexcusable.

Next up is at UConn on Saturday (3:30 p.m., CBS Sports).

UConn just finished beating Buffalo, 47-3, in the same stadium and an argument can be made that Buffalo, not just UConn, is clearly a better team than Temple.

Buffalo beat NIU, which beat Notre Dame. That was not just a one-off as NIU lost by only a touchdown at North Carolina State on Saturday. Buffalo played Missouri, another SEC team, a lot more competitively than the Owls did Oklahoma.

Has Temple done anything as impressive as Buffalo, which came into Storrs with a 3-1 record?

No.

Other than all of the above, everything is just peachy at 10th and Diamond.

For its part, UConn hung with Duke in a 26-21 loss. (It also lost to Maryland, 50-7.) UConn also beat FAU, 48-14. (For comparison, Army “only” beat FAU, 24-7.)

It has a professional head coach in Jim Mora, Jr. who was a winner as a head coach before coming to UConn.

Temple cannot make the same claim.

That’s not to say that UConn is going to ramrod Temple, 47-3, but the general public is not believing in the Owls right now. At noon on Sunday, the line opened with the Huskies favored by 11 and jumped up to 13.5 just two hours.

That’s a lot of money riding on the Huskies.

Can you blame the betting public?

Army outgained the Owls, 417 to minus -5.

Temple is a team that cannot run the football, cannot stop the run and can’t protect the quarterback. In the rare cases they have protected the quarterback, he can do damage but those cases and too few and far between.

None of those things appear fixable now, no matter what Drayton says in post-game press conferences.

He has one chance to prove himself right and the public wrong and it’s coming up on Saturday.

Friday: UConn Preview

18 thoughts on “Begging to differ: This is not fixable

  1. Run the ball, stop the run, protect the QB, AND pressure/sack the opposing QB = Football 101.

    Aside from FGs, what does this current edition of TUFB do well?

    They will enter every remaining game this season as the well deserved underdog. Imagine that…, anything other than 1-11 will be an overachievement. It has come to this, rock bottom.

    Scour the FCS level HCs to find the next Curt Cignetti and build something/anything on campus. Keep hope alive. Anything else will be more good money after bad.

    No parent in their right mind would allow their kid to matriculate at TUFB under Drayton. Enough is enough.

    • Most that is wrong with Temple could have been fixed in the offseason. Start with bringing in Power 4 backups on both lines (they brought in JUCOs) hungry to prove themselves as G5 starters. Get the best weight room coach in the FCS to build the team’s overall strength. (We used to have the current Duke strength coach, David Feeley, as our strength coach and nobody pushed us around.) Get a big-time quarterback like Sluka in here. (Hell, pay him the same $3k UNLV did.) Even with all that, Drayton, Langsdorf and Withers are still here and because they didn’t put a priority on any of that, they must go elsewhere.

      • The word is out. TUFB under Drayton can’t protect the QB. EJ hasn’t been the same kid post concussed. Brock got hit so hard he almost left Earth.

        Army treated Simon like a crash dummy. So it’s back the Brock? IMHO he won’t be there by game’s end.

        Hello Mr. Douglas, how will you do?

      • Go to Douglas now. Team needs to rally behind new blood. I like Simon but if you can’t raise your arm on Monday, not going to be able to get full extension by Saturday.

  2. Mike – will you be doing a recap of the UConn/Temple games from the 2007s – 2010s era? Lot’s of fun matchups and questionable endings. I’m sure you’ll recall Temple beating UConn the year they won the Big East. I am a (now long suffering) UConn football fan and used to read and enjoy your blog back then and glad to see you’re still at it.

    • Thanks, Dan. Probably no recap. What Mora has done with no conference is pretty remarkable. He fit the profile of a head coach I think Temple should have hired. His dad was the coach of the Philadelphia Stars and he grew up in and around the city and knows the Northeast. Unlike Drayton, he doesn’t have to learn how to be a head coach while on the job. Real head-scratcher for Temple to give $2.5 million to a guy like that.

  3. We complain about the lousy Withers D but even the O couldn’t move the ball against Army. And kj, building “anything” on campus could be stands around the EO field – why not? at least to get started. So many obvious, plausible and practical solutions to the TUFB dilemma, but why the higher ups ignore them consistently is a head scratcher – and frustrating to watch repeatedly.

    • Offense at least scored 20 against Coastal and 45 against Utah State. Withers has been completely inept his two years here after Eliot had the Owls in the top 10 in sacks in the nation in 2022.

    • agree, just about anything is better than busting the budget every year at the Linc. Plus the empty stadium optics are wretched.

      When I was a freshman in 1975/76, I lived in the dorms at Ambler. The baseball team also lived at Ambler, where they practiced.

      Why not build a stadium there? Half of the Temple sports teams could live, practice, and play at Ambler.

      The University needs to just do something smart vice the inertia of the status quo. The attitude appears to be, “if we don’t do anything maybe TUFB will just wither into obsolescence”.

  4. Why someone thought that a running backs coach with no demonstrable leadership on his resume would succeed at Temple is beyond my comprehension. In any field, you hire the ‘star’ up and comer from a lower level. They already know how to execute on a lower level. Drayton is in over his head and is stealing money.

  5. Opening an old wound and off-topic: from a Tide site, note comment on DeBoer’s staff nucleus coming from IU to UW, then to Tuscaloosa. Notable for who was not brought along:

    “I really do find it amazing how this entire staff really came from Indiana from back in 2019, and was 5 years in the making.”

  6. Time line off on previous post. Mike: Can you remove?

  7. Looks like the timeline is correct in that the Bama staff is essentially the Indiana staff of 2019. That was the essentially point.

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