Tyler Walker’s Best-Case QB room scenario: Be Best

We really don’t get into politics in this blog, but one recent “political” phrase sums up my assessment of the current quarterback room after spring practice.

Be Best.

Secretly, it also could be offensive coordinator Tyler Walker’s best-case scenario. Walker was brought into Temple to duplicate the dynamic offense he had at Montana State, which featured a quarterback who could do an equal amount of damage with his feet as he could with his arm.

Hard to believe Temple is going to get this kind of production from its next QB. However, if it’s a dual running and passing threat like Lamar Best, that opens up what Tyler Walker was brought here for and that’s a dynamic explosive offense with a dual-threat QB.

Nothing puts the fear of God into a defensive coordinator than that type of guy.

That’s where the “Be Best” motto comes into play.

Now I know that Lamar Best has an outside chance of winning the starting quarterback job, but here’s hoping he matures quickly between June 1-September 1 because that is Temple’s best chance of duplicating what Walker did at Montana State in 2024.

Winning that job would pretty much be up to Lamar once he gets here. That’s the hard part. The easier part is for Lamar to keep doing what he’s been doing all his life: Moving up to better competition and proving he belongs.

Right now, after Smolik’s spring, he’s a little behind.

If, as expected, Jaxon Smolik wins the job he will be a carbon copy of Evan Simon.

According to Chat GPT, Simon has a chance to get drafted in the middle rounds and that was because of his accuracy in throwing the football. Smolik seems to have the same accuracy but his history of being oft-injured raises questions.

Like, what if he goes down?

Probably the least surprised person if Lamar Best won the job would be Augie Hoffmann, the legendary HC at St. Joseph’s.

Does Temple have a guy who can win? It certainly purchased a $100,000 insurance policy in Oregon State starting quarterback Gevani McCoy and, had Simon gone down, chances were pretty good the Owls could win the same number of games (five) they did with Simon.

After watching the Cherry and White game, not so sure current backup Ajani Sheppard has the same kind of chops McCoy had. Maybe that was just a bad day.

The last true freshman QB starter TU had (E.J. Warner) put up these numbers in 2022.

Let’s hope so.

If, though, Walker can bring Best up to speed, it gives him the kind of quarterback who can open up the Walker playbook in a way that both Simon and Smolik couldn’t. Put it this way: Simon still ran Walker’s read/option offense last year and did the best he could with it when he saw an opening to run. Usually, an optimal outcome on those types of plays were 4–6-yard runs. A guy like Best can take a play like that to the house. Maybe several plays like that. Defending against that type of guy makes other areas more explosive as well.

There are examples all over college football of a true freshman coming in and not only starting right away, but leading his team to breakout seasons. Bear Bachmeier of BYU is the latest example.

If Best becomes the next one, Temple could be, err, the best team in the American Conference.

Friday: The Ultimate Survivor

Monday: The Most Crowded Room

4 thoughts on “Tyler Walker’s Best-Case QB room scenario: Be Best

  1. IMHO Temple might change financial strategy wrt the QB position after this season.

    Go all in and spend what you can muster on the best available? No, Temple split the pot and got two to compete for the starting job. We’ll shall soon see how it pans out.

    Temple won’t start a freshman QB. Best will sit a year, learn, and completely heal his torn labrum.

    Smolik has all Summer and Fall camp to grow and surprise. Fingers crossed on Temple’s big gamble on the most important position in college football.

    Yes, it is a big gamble. We have two inexperienced injury prone kids vying to lead a good football team.

  2. This is the precise reason why the portal should have helped Temple and not hurt it. After McKenzie Mason turned down the Owls for BC, surely there were other Division II or FCS quarterbacks of similar skill sets and, more importantly, experience playing college football. Instead, we got a third-string quarterback and a second-string quarterback with very little on-field experience. Ironically, in Lamar Best, he’s had the most experience in RECENT games, even though they were high school ones.

  3. Speaking of a possible OCS again, I just watched Temple’s lacrosse game at Charlotte (a nice blowout win for Temple) and they combined their football , lacrosse, field hockey and soccer field into one stadium. Holds 30,000 and is pretty nice. Couldn’t Temple do that at Howarth?

    • There’s a training building adjacent to Howarth that would need to be knocked down. That was Temple’s promise to (here’s that word again) the “community” in order to get Howarth approved.

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