Author Archives: Mike Gibson
Crashing and burning in State College
Rushing only three much of the game, the Owls made Christian Hackenberg a lot more comfortable than he should have been.
Plenty of lesser talented Temple teams have walked into Beaver Stadium against infinitely more talented Penn State teams and walked away with better results than this once-winning Owl team did on Saturday.
What happened was a complete and utter disgrace. Quite frankly, with Penn State at an ebb in its program and Temple coming in with more scholarship depth due to sanctions, this was Temple’s only chance to beat Penn State, maybe for the next 73 years as well.
Name Change:
Nate should go down to City Hall
tomorrow and legally change his name
to Anyone L. Else. That way, the next
time Rhule says, “I don’t have anyone else”
the Stepfords can ask him if Else was injured
Temple simply doesn’t recruit on that level and, at least with this staff, certainly are not going to out-coach James Franklin. We can only hope he moves onto the Potato Skins, or whatever the Washington NFL team is called in a few seasons.
With talent removed from the equation, there can only be one logical conclusion to make: those other Temple teams were simply better-coached than this one is, for just a few reasons we’ll list here:
The Mr. Haney Offense
When you go on the cheap to hire a hick offensive coordinator from Hooterville, like this one is, you get what you pay for. Temple rolls out the 3- and 4- wide receiver formations Marcus Satterfield won all those national championships at Tennessee-Chattanooga with (oh wait, he didn’t win any; never mind) every week and wonders why it struggles to move the ball every week. On offense, what the Owls have are a lot of really good players with unique skills who are not being put in the best position to win. Temple should not be struggling to score points in the AAC. The Owls have two potentially great blocking fullbacks in Kenny Harper and Marc Tyson, but they rarely use them that way. Temple has a potentially great tailback in Jahad Thomas, but they rarely use a fullback block at the point of attack to spring him for big gains. Temple has a potentially great tight end in Colin Thompson (a five-star transfer from Florida) and rarely throws him the ball. Temple has at least two offensive linemen who will be playing in the NFL on Sundays — tackle Dion Dawkins and center Kyle Friend — and rarely use those two with Thompson and Tyson running interference on toss sweeps to Thomas that could open up that entire offensive arsenal.
Speaking of that arsenal, Temple has a change-of-pace tailback who runs the ball well in space in Jamie Gilmore, but — you guessed it — they rarely use him that way. Hawaii transfer Keith Kirkwood (his OC called him Kirkland on a radio interview), John Christopher and Romond Deloatch — guys with magnets for hands — are rarely thrown to but instead target too many guys who do drop balls. The Owls have an extremely talented rollout quarterback, P.J. Walker, who they try to make a dropback passer far too much.
This offense is a cluster-bleep of trying to fit perfectly good square pegs into imperfect round holes.
With this talent and more traditional two-back and I-formations with plenty of play-action, Temple is as formidable on offense as it has been on defense this year.
Maybe more.
What Have You Done With All That Practice Money?
Last year, Temple built a $10 million addition to Edberg-Olson Hall, which cost $7 million to build in the first place. Yet the team jumps so much on offense (and three offsides on defense) that you’ve got to assume that happens in practice, too. If so, should not practice be stopped and have the team do the play right 15 straight times before they move on, like Mike Pettine Sr. used to do with CB West? You’d be amazed how much peer pressure causes mistakes like that cease and it does carry over into games. Do we practice the throat slash? If so, why don’t we practice doing it behind our own bench instead of in front of the officials?
The Passive Aggressive Defense
If Temple should have learned anything from Northwestern’s 29-6 win over Penn State, it was that head coach Pat Fitzgerald made Christian Hackenberg very uncomfortable by going out of his base 4-3 defense into a 5-2 for that game. Fitzgerald had the Wildcats hit Hackenberg so much, that he would throw the ball up just by hearing footsteps. Temple outsmarted itself by “mixing it up” and that only mixed up its own defense. The Owls often rushed only three and made Hackenberg way more comfortable than he should have been. Put three-time Pennsylvania large school state wrestling champion Averee Robinson over the center as a 5-2 nose guard and make Matt Iaonnidis and Hershey Walton the right- and left tackles with Sharif Finch and Praise Martin-Oguike at the ends (on running downs sub in Brandon Chudoff). Watch Robinson blow up the center and free those other guys to get in Hackenberg’s face. When you have two LBs like Nate D. Smith and Tyler Matakevich, you can play the 5-2. Temple’s strength on defense is its deep, physical and athletic defensive line. By rushing three, Temple was doing Penn State a favor and not playing to Temple’s own strength. It should not be surprising for someone who allowed 44 points a game and 38 points a game in two of his last three seasons before being hired at Temple. If you are going to be flexible on defense, be flexible to be aggressive, not flexible to be passive. That’s Temple weak, not Temple TUFF.
Not-So-Special Teams
Should officially change his name to “Anyone L. Else.”
When asked if John Christopher was returning punts against PSU in the pre-game presser, Rhule said: “I don’t have anyone else, to be quite honest with you.” Of course, the group of reporters who meet the coach every Tuesday–Matt Rhule Pravda, I’ll call them–never thought to follow up on the question. Hmm. Nate L. Smith, who led the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in punt return yardage and touchdowns via punt return in 2011, returned Temple’s last punt against Memphis for 30 yards. Since Nate L. Smith played against PSU, we can assume he wasn’t injured. Nate should go down to City Hall tomorrow and legally change his name to Anyone L. Else. That way, the next time Rhule says, “I don’t have anyone else” the Stepfords can ask him if Else was injured. Putting Smith back there gives Temple a chance to score or at least significantly change field position on every punt. When you are struggling on offense, you need to maximize opportunities to move the ball any way you can. Matt Rhule does have someone else, to be quite honest with you. Temple has given up on the punt return as an offensive weapon. That’s Temple weak, not Temple TUFF.
Par for the course and a just a few reasons why a season that started so promising is now headed for what could be a Hindenburg-like crash and burn.
Hell, Might as Well Use Him at WR, Too:
Today IS The Day
The key to the game, simply.
Friday: Transitive Property Says PSU, Matchups Say Temple
Pretty pedestrian stuff this week, except Matt’s answer when someone asked him if John Christopher was returning punts (16:05 time stamp): “I really have nobody else right now, to be honest with you.” I guess he forgot Nate L. Smith’s terrific return on the last punt of the Memphis game.
Years of watching and trying to predict outcomes of Temple football (and other NCAA) games have taught me two things:
Stay away from Transitive Property as the sole tool. TP is the theory that if Team A beat Team B and Team C beat Team A than Team C Will Beat Team B as well.
Look at matchups first.
We’ve detailed a couple of reasons why we’re picking Temple to beat Penn State all this week and none reference Transitive Property. I think Temple will win because Temple’s defensive line should disrupt Christian Hackenberg enough to cause at least one game-changing sack and fumble and at least one game-changing pick. Two of each or more would be nice, but I’m not greedy.
On Our Way: OC Marcus Satterfield looks down after Matt Rhule gives him the offensive game plan (fullback, tailback, plenty of play-action, no 3 wides) that he got from the Bernard Pierce and Al Golden days at TU. Rhule looks upbeat.
That’s a matchup working in Temple’s favor.
Another is that Penn State’s extremely disciplined defense runs into trouble against dual threat quarterbacks like P.J. Walker and I think Walker is a gamer and a winner who will turn enough third and eights into first and 10s with his feet. Hackenberg, on the other hand, is not capable of that. P.J. is also capable of scrambling around and finding sure-handed guys like Romond Deloatch and Keith Kirkwood on busted plays, assuming the Temple coaches are sure-headed enough to have those two targets in the game. If Hackenberg ran around on similar-type plays, chances are better than even Sharif Finch or Praise Martin-Oguike would have caught up to him.
That’s another matchup working in Temple’s favor.
Good thing because Transitive Property, at least in head-to-head matchups, does not favor the Owls. UCF beat Temple, 34-14, and Penn State beat UCF, 26-24.
On the other hand, Penn State “only” beat Akron, 21-3, and I’ve got to believe Temple is at least 19 points better than a team that has lost four-straight MAC games, including a 55-24 loss at old rival Buffalo. Penn State lost to a Maryland team that struggled to a 24-17 win at South Florida, which “only” beat Uconn, 17-14. (Temple beat Uconn, 36-10.) Penn State lost to Northwestern, 29-6, a week after Northwestern lost to old Temple rival NIU, 23-15.
Of course, that’s why the game is played on the field and not on paper and that, thankfully, is only a few hours away.
Throwback Thursday: Rivalry Once
Bruce Arians with one of the greatest free safeties (and punt returners) in Temple history, Anthony Young. Remember when Temple used to return punts?
When Bruce Arians was at Temple and not Tempe like he is now, he used to tell a story about how Mississippi State and Mississippi—even though they were the two large in-state schools–were never rivals. Mississippi State got close a lot of times, but never could get quite over that elusive hump.
“Then one year when I was there (at Mississippi State) we beat them and it became a rivalry,” Arians said.
Proof in black and white that the teams were rivals once.
Arians’ point was made. To forge a rivalry, you’ve got to win once in awhile.
Penn State vs. Temple is not a rivalry anymore, but it once was as shown in this headline (inset) after the win in 1941. Both schools are large state-related schools, one in the middle of the state, one in the state’s largest city. The only reason why the rivalry did not continue is that Temple went on the cheap in trying to hire head coaches after Pop Warner. Only when it hired a big-name coach (Wayne Hardin) did the Owls have a sustained 13-year period of success.
Arians was on his way at Temple until the school fired him and he got close to beating Penn State but, like Mississippi State before Arians became an assistant there, could never quite get over the hump.
In his first press conference, some wiseguy reporter asked him, “Why does Temple even play football?” Arians shot back, “to beat Penn State.” It was a great answer and Mitten Hall, the site of that first presser, erupted into loud applause.
“Why does Temple
even play football?
To beat Penn State.”
_ Bruce Arians
That was one of the goals Bruce set forth when he took the job at Temple. He felt the fastest way to put Temple on the map was to beat Penn State, become rivals, then have a sales pitch for recruits. With under-recruited players, Arians almost did that a couple of times. His first game against Penn State was a 23-18 loss. In another, Paul Palmer rushed for 206 yards in a 25-22 loss.
He never quite got there, but no doubt Arians—still a Temple fan to this day and friends with many of his ex-Temple players, like Palmer, Kevin Jones and Sheldon Morris—will be sending congratulatory texts their way if Temple is able to pull off the upset on Saturday.
Hmm. Daz checking in?
Last year, in a press conference after the win over the Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks, a reporter asked Arians if that was his biggest win ever as a head coach. Arians paused and said, “No when I was at Temple, the win over Pitt, which was the first time the school had beaten Pitt in 39 years, that was the my biggest one.”
There is only one bigger one to get at the school and Arians left that for Matt Rhule to grab in a few hours and restart a rivalry that should have never ended.
Temple-Penn State: When A Game is More Than a Game
We often hear, especially in times like last week after a tough loss, that “it is, after all, only a game.”
That’s easy to say for every week other than Penn State Week for Temple people. For people who say “it’s only a game; it’s’ not life-and-death” … it is life and death for us who have waited for a win over Penn State all of our lives and desperately want to see one before we go to the other side.
Mr. Katz
Thinking about all of the great Temple fans that I had the pleasure of talking to in the concourses at the Vet, Franklin Field, Temple Stadium and Lincoln Financial Field, like Steve Bumm (see No. 4 in this story), NJ Schmitty, Shane Artim and Dan Glammer, among others, who never got to see this and, of course, Mr. Katz. They are all gone and none forgotten and never had a chance to see Temple beat Penn State before going to the other side. How many more of us will pass this year with no chance to see a win next year?
This win is much more than for a chance to participate in a bowl game. It is for the respect of an entire city and state. Philadelphia has been force-fed PSU football coverage for 50-plus years when they already had a hometown team. The day Temple beats Penn State will be the day you stop seeing Temple students wearing PSU sweatshirts on campus. It is the day you will finally hear Temple football talked about on the radio and television stations.
Dan
So, for all those reasons, it is life and death. The Penn State game is much more than a game for Temple people and it has been for 73 years and it will be until the day Temple beats Penn State and hopefully that day is just a few hours away.
I think it is and I don’t think I’m looking through Cherry-and-White-colored glasses this time.
For all of the mismanagement on offense, Temple’s defense—particularly its defensive line—will win this game. Temple has an athletic and quick defensive line and Penn State has largely an inexperienced group of offensive linemen (and thanks to the Penn State fan who sent us that information). These guys are not walk-ons, but they’ve struggled. If Temple’s defensive line does what it did against Vanderbilt—with four SEC starters returning from a team that went 9-4 in the best conference in America—the Owls should win this game. We are not asking the Temple defensive line to do something it is not capable of doing or has not done before.
Shane
On offense, what the Owls have is a lot of really good players with unique skills who are not being put in the best position to win. Temple should not be struggling to score 13 points against the likes of Houston, UCF and Memphis. Temple has two potentially great blocking fullbacks in Kenny Harper and Marc Tyson and it rarely uses them that way. Temple has a potentially great tailback in Jahad Thomas and it rarely uses a fullback block at the point of attack to spring him for big gains. Temple has a potentially great tight end in Colin Thompson and rarely throws him the ball. Temple has at least two offensive linemen who will be playing on Sundays—Dion Dawkins and Kyle Friend—and rarely use those two with Thompson and Tyson running interference on toss sweeps to Thomas that could open up that entire offensive arsenal.
Speaking of that arsenal, Temple has a change-of-pace tailback who runs the ball well in space—Jamie Gilmore—and rarely uses him that way but fans jump all over him when he drops a catchable bomb when they should be jumping all over the coaches instead. Keith Kirkwood (his OC called him Kirkland on a radio interview), John Christopher and Romond Deloatch—guys with magnets for hands and stick-em rubbed all over those magnets—are rarely thrown but instead target too many guys who do drop balls. The Owls have an extremely talented rollout quarterback, P.J. Walker, who they try to make a dropback passer far too much.
Owl Conundrum:
Temple gets no WR separation
or QB protection in those
formations but stubbornly
roll those formations out
week after week and wonder
why it struggles to score
This offense is a cluster-bleep of trying to fit good square pegs into horrible round holes.
What Temple has on offense is an OC from Tennessee-Chattanooga who is in love with a three- and four-wide formations that this personnel is not suited for and a head coach who is too nice a guy to over, err, rule his good friend. Temple gets no WR separation or QB protection in those formations but stubbornly roll those formations out week after week and wonder why it struggles to score. With this talent and a more traditional two-back and I-formations with plenty of play-action, Temple is as formidable on offense as it has been on defense this year.
Maybe moreso.
For all that messing around on that side of the ball, I think Temple still wins this one in a game closer than it should be, say 13-10.
One Last Kim Klement (USA Today Sports) Look at TU-UM
5 Things Temple Must Do To Beat Penn State
Click on the photo of Chester Stewart rolling out and completely one of many ridiculously easy 5-yard rollout passes to Evan Rodriguez and imagine P.J. opening things up at PSU with the same type of passes to Colin Thompson.
Running The Football Was a Forgotten Promise
Amnesia is a terrible thing to have once, let alone twice in the same week.
Evidently, though, that is just what happened to Temple head football coach Matt Rhule after the glorious 20-10 win over East Carolina, fueled by this promise:
“Last week, we were a little bit shell-shocked on the plane coming home from the loss to Central Florida. As a staff, we made a decision … so, this week we wanted to get back to who and what Temple is: play good defense and special teams and run the football.”
Rhule remembered the good defense part. He forgot the run-the-football part and the special teams part.
Since Matt cannot control what a punter does or does not do, let’s just concentrate on what he can control—the run-the-football part.
Just to be sure I wasn’t seeing things, I got up early this morning to chart all of the Temple offensive plays. Temple ran 71 offensive plays and lined up in three wide receivers on 68 of those. Temple ran the ball 32 times and passed it 39 times. By any definition, that doesn’t jive with “play good defense and special teams and run the football.”
Kenny Harper scores
Against East Carolina, Temple ran 56 offensive plays, lined up in three wides 22 times and ran the ball on 37 of those offensive plays. Of the 37 running plays, Temple lined up with a fullback, Marc Tyson, 20 times. Both Temple offensive touchdowns were a result of a Marc Tyson block off a two-back formation. Tyson, like so many uniquely talented Temple players the last two seasons, joined federal witness protection last night.
You can blame the loss on the drops all you want, but that’s something the coaching staff cannot control. The coaching staff CAN control the commitment to the running game. Not only did the Owls coaching staff forget about it in game-planning this week, it forgot to stick to the running game after Kenny Harper ripped off a 75-yard touchdown run.
Amnesia twice in one week.
Before the game, we wrote this:
“If you decide to pray for anything, please pray that the Owls don’t fall back into their three-wides, no-blocking-back for P.J. Walker approach they had against Houston and UCF. In that scheme, Walker had no time–none–to throw and receivers could get zero separation. So happy to see the Owls get away from that last Saturday.”
Well, with the help of some selective amnesia, they got back to it Friday night and, not surprisingly, they lost. Hopefully, on the bus ride home from LFF, Matt Rhule remembers what he said on the plane ride home from UCF–and, this time, never forgets.
Jeez(y), This Temple Team Deserves a Big Crowd Friday Night
Another slick, short and sweet video by Temple Athletics pumping up the fans for Temple’s Friday Night Lights’ game and there’s plenty to like about it.
The audio part, though, could use a little work. Imagine Dragons?
You’ve got to be kidding me … Young Jeezy must have some more appropriate lyrics for Temple’s epic showdown with visiting Memphis on Friday night. After all, YJ pumped up the team with a pre-game talk that helped the Owls double up East Carolina, 20-10, last week. Jeez is more than an honorary Temple football fan. He’s a real one. A Jeez phone call might close the deal on a five-star someday. Let that thought marinate for a minute. I prefer Mumford and Sons and the Foo Fighters, but I’m not a five-star so I yield to Jeez. Chances are Jeez’s playlist is on most five-star’s headphones.
Looks like Matt Ioannidis has his game-face on, but Tavon Young and Kenny Harper were politely asking for the students to get on the 4:30 buses that leave the main campus for the “free tailgate.” Having been a Temple student once, I was so broke I knew the word “free” back then evoked a Pavlovian response, like “I’m there.” If some on the main campus cannot make the 4:30 buses, there’s a dedicated subway line right in front of the Liacouras Center that takes all of 10 minutes to get to the game.
Time for the alumni to put away the remote, get off the couch, put on a coat, get in a car, bus or train to the Linc and wear out the vocal chords. I will be there. Will you?
For all of the bitching and moaning of not having an on-campus stadium, it’s hard to imagine a following without an on-campus stadium having easier transportation options than Temple fans have. Heck, Uconn has its own stadium but it’s 27 miles from the main campus.
More importantly, there’s an epic game to be played and how can a student or alumnus miss it? National TV, winner-take-all for a bowl game and the winner gets a bowl, loser gets to bite their fingernails for one or two more weeks or maybe even the rest of the season.
If those stakes don’t cause the fans to stay standing in their seats and yell “Let’s Go Temple” and “DEE-fense, DEE-fense” (both while the Owls are on defense, of course), nothing will. Make no mistake about it. This will be a tough game. Memphis went toe-to-toe with UCLA and destroyed a good Cincinnati team. For Temple, a win here could be just the momentum-generator the Owls need to make a program-changing win over Penn State next week.
There are 12,500 students who live on campus now and 27,000 additional full-time students who commute home. There are 291,000 living alumni, about 180,000 of them live within an hour’s drive of the stadium. There are 6,000 full-time Temple employees. Even if you get half of the 12.5K and 6K and one-quarter of the 180,000, you have pretty close to a full stadium.
A lot of yelling and cheering for these guys could not hurt and no doubt would help. You can just tell by looking at their faces they would appreciate it. They deserve your support and, for the students especially, it costs nothing more than putting one foot in front of the other and walking two more feet to a bus or a subway. They are, after all, representing you and the Linc is our “Hood.”
Temple Football Forever 