Going into this season, we knew two things about the state of the Temple football program under second-year head coach K.C. Keeler.

One, the Owls’ first season under Keeler was a solid C (satisfactory), especially coming after five-straight 3-9 seasons.

Two, the Owls needed to go forward, not backward or sideways.

Since the best the 2026 Owls can do is finish 5-7, an early baseline grade can be handed out: D.

Not last year’s C (improvement needed) but D (close fail) because close losses shouldn’t be acceptable anymore. Temple brought in objectively the No. 1 transfer portal and No. 1 high school recruiting class, so the expectations around here were a lot higher than a repeat of last year’s 5-7.

We tempered those expectations a bit in our March evaluation of the team.

Nobody expected 2-10, 3-9, 4-8 or 5-7 again.

We said in our March 5th evaluation of the team that they would finish 6-6 and that should have been realistic, achievable goal.

Keeler was able to keep pretty much the entire roster together as the Owls were the only G5 team to keep every eligible starter. That should have accounted for a lot. In retrospect, it accounted for nearly nothing as UConn was able to bring in 87 new players and a new coach and beat a Temple program already in Year Two of a rebuild.

Maybe that’s what Temple needs to do to move that next year’s Grade to a B or an A.

That grade could fall to an F if the Owls fail to win two out of three.

That begs the question: “What happened?”

Temple is 2-7, like the other home tenant at Lincoln Financial Field, the Philadelphia Eagles. While the Eagles have been blindsided by basically the entire offense being injured, the Owls have no such excuse.

Sure, top running back Sam Brown V has been hindered all season and the offensive line is patchwork but the Owls have a deep roster of 105 and not the 53 the NFL limits teams to so that can’t be a reason. Really, offensively, the team has done enough to win most games–scoring 48 at Toledo, 17 against Army, 31 against Charlotte and 20 against UConn so the defense has to bear much of the responsibility.

Gap integrity has been a problem all year and Keeler addressed that by demoting DC Brian L. Smith and promoting Henry Baker, and the Owls took a step forward by holding ECU to 17 and then a step back by “holding” Navy to 42.

That’s been the story of the season.

It’s become painfully apparent that the Owls should have gotten a big-time QB with big-time experience at a lower level but they rolled the dice and they didn’t. However, that was just one big problem. There are plenty of FCS and DII quarterbacks who started and had good touchdown to interception ratios still playing in DII and FCS who would have killed for a Temple opportunity. They can’t all go to Miami, Notre Dame, Alabama and Georgia.

The defensive line–which Keeler said would be one of the “stories of the year in our conference”– turned out to be a non-factor so maybe the talent evaluation fell short in that area, too.

Temple’s D-line has the worst havoc rate in the country and for a school used to creating its own “defensive mayhem” as recently as a decade ago, that’s unacceptable. Next year’s defense must get more TFLs, interceptions and fumble recoveries.

Keeler will have some hard decisions to make in the offseason.

On defense, it would be nice to coax an experienced DC out of retirement (like Nick Rapone or Dave Cohen) who can both steady that ship and create havoc.

Two, the Owls must get an experienced, proven quarterback. The Owls targeted one last year and when he said no, they should have moved onto the next experienced QB instead of settling for backups.

Getting the DC should be the easier of the two but for the team to move forward instead of sideways both have to be priorities.

Friday: UAB Preview