TU-Charlotte: Psychological thriller

From a football standpoint, Charlotte at Temple doesn’t figure to be a thriller.

One team is 2-4 and the other team is 0-6 and the 2-4 team won, 49-14, on the road last year against this year’s 0-6 team. The 2-4 team is Temple and supposedly a better version of the 49-14 winning team and the 0-6 team is supposedly a worse version of the Charlotte team a year ago.

That’s the physical part.

Not thrilling.

The guy who bitches and moans about Temple attendance watches on TV from his home in Coral Gables, Fla. Bitch and moan now because the crowd on Saturday is going to be half of this thanks to that disappointing loss to UConn.

The psychological part is more interesting.

The team with the presumed better talent, Temple, has to be questioning itself after a 34-20 loss to a team, UConn, it was favored against. That came on the heels of losing a 42-28 lead at Toledo with less than two minutes left and losing, 49-48, in overtime. Then the Owls had to be thinking “how are we going to lose now?” after getting a 17-14 lead against Army.

Instead of the defensive brain trust attacking on run blitzes to get Army off schedule with TFLs, it sat back passively and watched Army march downfield and win, 21-17.

If this gets close, the Owls have to have that question in the back of their minds.

The UConn loss and the impending bad weather means that the crowd of 21,112 last week will be closer to 11,112 this week. I saw a lot of Temple fans I see only once a year last week say “same old Temple” and “I won’t be back” due to that disappointing loss.

So the guy who complains about attendance every week on Owlsdaily.com should get that kind of bitching and moaning out of his system now. We’ve had super nice weather for every Temple home game and the bill has come due now because the high temperature will be in the low 50s with a wind of 20mph. It’s a two-glove and one coat game after being a season of shorts and T-shirts so far at Lincoln Financial Field.

Our picks this week. We got off to a good start with not only UAB covering but winning outright.

That’s why it’s imperative for this Owls team do what last year’s Owls team did: Put it away early and get some of those “Prodigal Son” fans back for the rest of the season.

Easy?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

This is the same Charlotte team that lost to Ole Miss, 41-9, and lost to a then unbeaten Appalachian State team, 26-21. App State beat ECU and lost by 10 at North Carolina State.

Charlotte is capable of hanging around and Temple must take that capability away from it.

There is also a psychological element on the other side of the field, too.

In this day and age of the transfer portal and NIL, how many 49ers have checked out on the season and are looking to get out of there and are not totally committed to the cause? Got to think at least a few. Or, the other way to look at it, is that these guys have practiced together for nine months and are as committed to their brothers as the Temple guys are committed to their brothers.

Because there is no Evan Simon brother, doubt it will be the same 49-14 it was a year ago. One of the themes of this site has been it never replaced Simon with a Simon or Gevani McCoy with a Gevani McCoy so the expectations have to be adjusted.

For now, I will take 30-14.

Saturday Night: Charlotte Game Analysis

Monday: How Good is Temple?

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