04.06.25
by

A return to some coaching competency this spring

Take this from a guy who has been all but two of the last 40 or so Cherry and White games: This one as all the makings for being one of the best.

Trust me, the 2 p.m. kickoff for the Cherry and White should be one of the best. If not best, certainly among the most interesting.

I’ve been to the worst.

The worst was the “game” at Lincoln Financial Field in 2017 when 1,000 fans rattling around in a 70K stadium looked like a couple hundred.

A few years before that almost to the day I stood on the top bleacher at the Diamond Street end zone with an umbrella over my head and ducking behind the 6-foot-4 guy standing on the bleacher below me to get a view of Logan Marchi throwing two interceptions off his back foot. He was BY FAR … FAR … the worst of the four quarterbacks playing that day but somehow he started the opener at Notre Dame and was only able to put up 16 points in the next game against a team Rhode Island scorched for 20 points.

Weather forecast says “rain likely” but we are still six days away.

It sucked big time.

Anything will be better than those two games because for the first time since maybe Steve Addazio was here, there will be a lot of coaches who know what they were doing. (Not that Daz did but he brought with him the core staff of the 2010 Florida Gator squad and it was neat to see the professionalism with which they operated.)

Here are the five things I’m looking for:

Hope

You might say I’m a dreamer but, as the Beatles would say, I’m not the only one. New head coach K.C. Keeler did a lot with little at Rowan, Delaware and Sam Houston and his charge is to do the same at Temple.

Weather

Mid-April is always a crapshoot in Philadelphia. The forecast calls for rain but we are six days away and that can change.

Coaching

Last year, it was a clusterbleep because then head coach Stan Drayton stuck with a guy who gave up 38 ppg in his two prior stints as DC. Not surprising Everett Withers went out at Temple doing the same thing and cost his buddy a fourth season. Now there is a new defensive philosophy. Don’t sell that short because D.J. Eliot proved you could do more with the same players if they were coached differently. Brian Smith probably will prove the same thing. In the spring, they’ve been showing 5-2-4, 3-3-5 and 4-3-4 looks, which shows Smith is flexible.

Evan Simon is sacked by Temple in the 2022 Rutgers’ game

Position Battles

This might be the most important. We all know that Evan Simon No. 1 and Tyler Douglas is No. 2 at quarterback. Is the separation so wide at quarterback that Keeler brings a No. 2 from the portal or is Keeler so wedded to a running quarterback that he jumps over both and brings in a No. 1? Another battle to watch is the one between newcomer Jay Ducker (who started at both Memphis and Sam Houston) and Torrez Worthy, who might have been a 1,000-yard rusher at Temple last year if so-called “running back guru” Drayton didn’t dick around and start E.J. Wilson the first few games.

Special Teams

Both last year’s staff and this year’s staff say the second-best kicker in the AAC was Carl Hardin, who happened to be behind Maddox Trujillo. Yet Hardin MISSED two field goals in the last scrimmage (while also making two) and it’s hard to make a case he’s as reliable as Maddox was now. If he finishes up with a couple of makes and no misses, that’s going to put a lot of minds at ease. Also, does Temple continue with the rugby style punts?

Friday: Farewell to a Tradition

Monday: Takeaways from Cherry and White

Leave a comment