TU-PSU: You play to win the game

Down three offensive linemen, their best running back, and one defensive lineman, Temple head coach K.C. Keeler was faced with a dilemma.

Play to win, or play to keep it close.

From this seat way up there in 215, it was pretty apparent what he did.

Play to keep it close.

I’m from the Herman Edwards School of Thought: You play to win the game.

I’d rather lose 37-10 playing to win than 27-9 playing to keep it close.

After the game, Keeler said “there are no moral victories” but this really seemed like it to me after losing 27-9 to Penn State on Saturday at Lincoln Financial Field.

Temple fans left the 2015 game happy partly because John Cristopher threw a “Philly Special” throwback pass to P.J. Walker and we didn’t see anything like that today.

What would playing to win look like? A double reverse here, a jet sweep to JoJo Bermudez there, the same kind of pass Ajani Sheppard threw on the first play of the game last week there. A few more blitzes on defense. There is value in creativity.

We never saw any of that on Saturday.

What we did see was the kids play hard enough to earn a victory but never got close enough to pull it off.

To me, that was a missed opportunity. For Temple, the opportunity was right there for not only a win over a ranked team, but that win fueling an attendance boost for the rest of the year.

Beat Penn State in front of 61,355 fans and that translates into 30,000 Temple fans for the rest of the season. Right now, we’ll be lucky to hit 20,000 in any of the remaining games.

I’m not from the school where I will ever be happy to lose by less than 20 points. Sorry.

It’s not like Temple doesn’t have talent to score more than nine points against anybody. The Owls have plenty of explosive players in space. They just have to devise ways to deliver them the ball.

This team–other than quarterback–has enough weapons to turn the scoreboard into an adding machine. Keveun Mason is a proven halfback and most Temple insiders say Sam Brown is better than him. Colin Chase is probably the best possession receiver in the league. JoJo Bermudez is not only the best punt returner in the country but a guy who can take any jet sweep to the house.

Other than Mason’s 76 yards, we saw none of that talent utilized against a team that many feel will be in the national championship picture.

What we did see was a defensive line that fought hard enough to win, but didn’t get it because there was no imagination on the offensive side of the ball.

Maybe Keeler was saving that for later but beating Penn State would have been a gamechanger for the program and the gamechanger was sacrificed for whatever is left in the season.

Did you see anything like this on Saturday? I certainly did not.

To me, the biggest problem ahead is that no one grabbed the quarterback position. Jaxon Smolik did some nice things in the first half but the bottom line is that Jaxon Smolik put only three points on the board. The other guy, Ajani Sheppard, is a bigger running threat and, in this era of college football, that’s the kind of a guy you win with.

Still, neither is Evan Simon and I think, with Evan Simon, Temple puts way more than nine points on the board. Simon had a knack, a sixth-sense if you will, to duct out of a rush and find a receiver downfield.

I don’t see that in either Temple quarterback after two games. Simon had an “it” factor. One of the two quarterbacks better show it or develop it and, after watching P.J. Walker, Steve Joachim, Marty Ginestra, Anthony Russo, E.J. Walker and Simon they all had it right away in the first game.

These guys either don’t have it or have not shown it. That’s a problem.

What happened instead is a lot of Penn State fans left pissed off that they didn’t win 52-0. If that was Temple’s goal, congratulations.

My goal is to win.

Others are to cover.

I stopped by the concourse and saw a Penn State fan pleading for Matt Campbell to go for two after the Nittany Lions’ last touchdown and thought to myself it was nice he lost a lot of money on the game, but I wish Temple had rolled the dice just a little more. If having him win a bundle, meant my team was closer than a 27-9 score was a tradeoff I was willing to make.

It might not have been a moral victory to Keeler but it seemed like that way to me.

Monday: The Good

Friday: Toledo Preview

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