03.12.26
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If K.C.’s history is a guide, TU is in for a good season

They say the best predictor of future success is past success and, if that’s true, Temple football is in for a very good 2026 season.

Head coach K.C. Keeler has had a very good history in all of the jobs he had previously of assessing the situation, adapting to the environment in the first season and improving it the next.

Look at it this way.

Spring ball in Philadelphia: 80 degrees on Wednesday, snowing and 34 on Thursday. Owls are getting prepared for games in early September and late November on consecutive days.

In his second year at Rowan College, Keeler went 6-3.

In his second year at Delaware, he went 15-1 and won the FCS national championship.

In his second year at Sam Houston State, he went 11-4 and made the FCS quarterfinals.

All but the Rowan job–his first–represented a significant improvement on the first season. That may have been in part to Keeler learning how to be a head coach on the job after replacing former Philadelphia Eagles linebacker John Bunting.

Keeler proved he was a fast learner.

Temple finished 5-7 in Keeler’s first season at Temple which was particularly impressive in that the program was coming off four-consecutive 3-9 seasons.

When you look at it, though, it should have been 7-5 because normally reliable place-kicker Carl Hardin missed 38- and 45-yard field goals in 32-31 and 14-13 losses. Take the Navy game, for instance. If Hardin had made that first-half 38-yarder, the Owls would have had a 27-24 lead with 1:16 left on the Navy 1 and that touchdown Jay Ducker scored would have made it 34-24 and rendered Blake Horvath’s heroics meaningless.

Ironically, those were two of the only three misses Hardin had in an 11-for-14 season that included a game-winning extra point and a late 51-yard FG at Tulsa.

So there. Maybe Hardin hits all 14 FGs this season.

The goal this year is not to take games down to field goals and instead score enough early touchdowns for those 34-24 leads. To that end, Keeler has not only recruited the No. 1 incoming freshman class in the American Conference but also brought in the No. 1 transfer portal class in that league. On top of that, he retained all of the starters who did not graduate.

That’s not an accident. That is the product of someone who knows what he’s doing.

Monday: Under Attack

7 thoughts on “If K.C.’s history is a guide, TU is in for a good season”

  1. Proofs in the pudding, but as I said all last season, “6-6 and a bowl” will be ok. That Navy game was deflating for us fans, but there’s always “next year.”

    Reply

  2. Stop the run. Temple plays the top four rushing teams in the conference from last year, Army, Navy, USF, and Rice. Temple was 11th in the conference in stopping the run. The DL must stop the run. Get those teams behind the chains.

    Run the football. The OL was the biggest improvement group last year. But they struggled late in the season. The defenses knew Simon was one dimensional, and the offense became too predictable. Added depth will help, and hopefully the next starting QB will have the ability to extend plays.

    Stop the run, run the football and Temple goes bowling.

    Last year, Temple was 11th in the conference in both stopping the run and running the football. Improvement needed in 2026.

      Reply

      • super analysis simply because of the way the academies are set up they will always be at the top of this league. We had 3 crucial 4th and 1 measurements that went against us in the Army game and two were bad spots by the officials. Got to have the athletes to make those 2-yard losses.

        Reply

      • I agree. That would address one of the problems of college sports. To me, the same problem still remains: How to even the playing field so that the larger schools can’t buy players that smaller schools have no shot to do.

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