Author Archives: Mike Gibson
5 Possible Upsets This Week
Click on the photo for this week’s college football upset specials.
Throwback Thursday: Temple 28, Virginia Tech 24
Click on headline for complete story
In an effort to lift myself out of a deep depression caused by losing two winnable games in consecutive weeks, this week’s Throwback Thursday is an effort to recall that all things are possible.
Interesting that there is no video of this game anywhere on the internet, but you can get a lot of video on Virginia Tech 62, Temple 7 and Virginia Tech 35, Temple 13 and Virginia Tech 20, Temple 10. Frank Beamer must have confiscated all film and had it destroyed.
Hopefully, the Owls can get their act together by Idaho and put a good season together. Gosh, I’d just like to see one DB step in FRONT of a pass and intercept it, rather than let the receiver catch it. That’s a concept I haven’t seen (seemingly) since the days of Anthony Young, Bob Mizia, Marc Baxter, Todd Bowles, Eddie Parker, Terry Wright and Kevin Ross. I think all but one of those guys was coached by Nick Rapone.
Einstein’s theory of Owl-tivity
Albert Einstein talks Temple football.
Got to wonder what the smartest man in the history of the world would be thinking right now about Temple football.
Since the 30-minute conversation I had with Wayne Hardin on Saturday was pre-game and not post-game and I lost coach Hardin’s number, I can only move on to the second-smartest man, Albert Einstein.
I think our conversation would have gone something like this:
TFF: Mr. Einstein, you saw the Fordham game, how would you fix this Temple team?
AE: Simple mathematics, my friend. Ten plus 5+5+5 + 20/12 and 20/23=6, maybe 7.
TFF: Huh?
AE: Look, your No. 10 can catch, throw and run, right? You only have him catching once or twice now. That’s just not maximizing his output. Have him come around — what do you call it?
TFF: The end?
AE: Yes, the end, and have your No. 12 pitch the ball backward to No. 10 five times and then have No. 10 throw the ball. That’s the first part of the five equation.
I guess only Einstein knows Coyer can run, catch and throw.
TFF: What’s the second?
AE: Keep him at, what do you call it, tight end and throw him the ball five times.
TFF: What’s the third?
AE: Have him come around the end and toss it to him like he’s going to throw the ball, but make it a running play behind that big guy who blocks well — what do you call it?
TFF: A pulling guard?
AE: Yes, a pulling guard. That No. 63, what’s his name?
TFF: Pete White.
AE: Yes, have No. 10 follow Pete White and take off through the secondary. There you have it: Five throws, five catches and five runs. The defense won’t know what No. 10 is going to do when he’s got the ball in his hands. It’s called deception. Works a lot in all kinds of endeavors. Mix it up. Run these 15 plays alternately with your normal regular plays. What do you call them?
TFF: The Tennessee-Chattanooga plays.
AE: Yes, the Tennessee-Chattanooga plays.
TFF: What’s the 20/12 mean?
AE: Twelve, the man who throws the ball, is your what?
This could be Khalif Herbin meeting the media on Tuesday and talking about his time in witness protection. It’s been so long since we’ve seen his dynamic skills on the field we forget what he looks like. He’s 100 percent healthy, thank God.
TFF: Quarterback.
AE: Yes, quarterback. He throws the ball 20 times. He’s pretty good at it. Have him do that about 20 times a game.
TFF: What does the 20/23 mean?
AE: That number 23 is fast and he’s got some nifty moves. When 12 isn’t throwing the ball, give it to him about the same number of times 12 passes it. Also might help to have 12 drop back, draw the rush to him and then dump it off to 23. What do you call that?
TFF: A screen pass.
AE: Yes, a screen pass. Get No. 23 in space … and I don’t mean intergalactic space — just in the space behind the defenders and watch him go.
TFF: What’s the six, maybe seven, part mean?
AE: Six wins, maybe seven. But listen. It all starts with getting No. 10 five carries, five passes, five catches. Nothing else works without that baseline formula. That way, you control the ball, create deception, score a lot of points. Let me ask you a question.
TFF: Shoot.
AE: You know about E=MC2, right?
TFF: Yes. It’s your Theory of Relativity.
AE: Yes. Do you have anyone on your team who matches the C part of the equation, someone with the speed of light?
TFF: Nobody that fast, but Khalif Herbin is the closest thing we have and he’s been on the bench.
AE: Well, get him on the field then and isolate him in situations where he can best use that speed, like quick passes and reverse. If he’s having trouble catching the ball, hand it off to him as a change-up running back.
TFF: Got it. Gee, thanks, Mr. Einstein. I’ll get this off to Matt Rhule and Marcus Satterfield as fast as I can. One more question.
AE: Anything.
TFF: What do you do to fix the other side of the ball, what we call the defense?
AE: Tough question. Who do you think I am, Einstein? That’s a joke.
TFF: Yeah, I figured that.
Thursday: Throwback Thursday
The Blackest of Black Saturdays
Don’t look, OK look. This should have been more than one guy putting pressure on QB.
Many of you are too young to remember Black Friday.
Phillies fans of a certain age remember it too well.
Phillies up, 5-3, two outs, two strikes on Davey Lopes in a key NLCS game on a Friday. Larry Bowa picks up a ball and throws out Lopes. Game over.
No, the Lopes is called safe (he was out), Phils lose game and series and the day will forever be known as Black Friday in Phillies history.
For a Temple football program that has had a lot of Black Saturdays, this was unquestionably the worst.
Call it the Blackest of Black Saturdays.
You can’t lose to Fordham after coming back from a 19-7 deficit to take a 29-24 lead.
You just can’t.
Walking out of the stadium –heck, even at halftime – I told my friend, Matt, “This is what happens when you let the players and parents hire the coach.”
Those kids and parents will be gone soon, but I and the thousands of long-suffering Temple fans will remain and have to, as Emperor Hirohito put it post two nukes, endure the unendurable.
I think I’d rather be nuked than go through another Bobby Wallace/Ron Dickerson/Jerry Berndt Error.
I was for Matt Rhule to get the NEXT head coaching job at Temple, not this one. My reasoning was simple as well as brutally logical. Have him go somewhere like Kent State and prove he can win (like Darrell Hazel did) and THEN he could come to Temple. Why did no other school consider Matt Rhule? I wanted Mike MacIntrye (now at Colorado) to be head coach or Dave Clawson (now at Bowling Green). The Owls could not have outbid Colorado for MacIntyre, a former Temple assistant, but they sure as hell could have gotten Clawson.
Helluva nice guy, Matt Rhule, but you know what Leo Durocher said about nice guys.
Jensen was right … both times. …
The coaching these first three games has been beyond underwhelming:
- How come Chris Coyer has yet to throw a pass off a fake?
- How come Coyer, who has Bernard Pierce-like instincts running the ball in the open field, has yet to get a carry? Mystifying.
- Why hasn’t Nick Visco kicked earlier, when the kid never missed an extra point in high school? A strong argument can be made that had Visco kicked from the jump, Temple would be 2-1 now instead of 0-3.
- How come 6-foot-6 Deon Miller doesn’t get a fade EVERY time the Owls get into the red zone (he got his first fade Saturday and it resulted in a pass interference).
- How come only one screen pass ALL YEAR to Zaire Williams, when it’s obvious no one can stop that play?
Crazy, stupid, stuff.
Memo to Marcus Satterfield: If you want to have a winning season, mix 20 Zaire Williams runs and 20 Connor Reilly passes with these six plays on a continuous loop. If you want to go 0-12, keep running your Tennessee-Chattanooga bullbleep plays.
TFF, Jan. 18, 2013
When the Owls got a first down deep in the Fordham red zone late in the game, I was screaming at the TV in the concourse (I couldn’t bear to watch it live), “GIVE THE BALL TO KENNY HARPER FOUR TIMES!” Instead, they throw it to Chris Coyer and get the touchdown right away.
The gentleman who was standing next to me will vouch for what I said.
Hey, I like Temple touchdowns as much as the next guy, but giving it to Harper to kill some more clock was the right call. There’s no doubt in my mind Harper would have scored, maybe a play or two later, but he would have scored. When it comes to keeping the ball away from a Phil Snow-coached defense, that’s the only call.
The day Rhule hired Snow to be his defensive coordinator, I noted the only reason I could think of was because he was Rhule’s old buddy at UCLA. This is what a I wrote that day: “I’m all for hiring old buddies, but not old buddies who give up 38 points a game.”
That was against FBS competition.
Now he’s given up 30 points against FCS competition.
That’s worse.
Heck, we all know Rhule is a nice guy but he may be too nice a guy and the hiring of Snow is a perfect example of that. Another example is sticking with Cooper after two missed FGs and an extra point against ND. Visco should have gotten the start against Houston, period, end of story.
Back to Snow:
TFF, Jan. 18, 2013
If you guessed I’m not a fan of Phil Snow, you’ve guessed right.
Heck, you look at the entire Rhule staff and the only qualifications they have are they are all Rhule’s buddies.
This is why businesses, when they are looking for professionals to fill a key management position, go through a grueling selection and interview process and pick the best guy for the job.
The new boss doesn’t say, “Gee, a guy who helped me when I was 21 needs this job, I’ll go hire him.”
That’s what happened at Temple.
We already had a guy who WAS a great defensive coordinator at Temple, Nick Rapone, who was interested in the job and had the best recommendations from the people who should matter most (former Temple players) and he was given a brush off. Now Rapone is the DBs coach of the Arizona Cardinals, but he would have stayed at Temple had he been offered the job by Rhule because his daughter is a Temple student. Arizona head coach Bruce Arians loves him and called him the best DC in the country when Rapone was a 30-year-old DC at TU. Arians put his money where his mouth was by hiring Rapone. Rhule could have handed over the keys to the Temple defense to Rapone and would not have had to worry one minute of one day. Now Rhule has to take the keys back from Snow and do something and fix a vehicle that has been totaled and can only be used for scrap metal now.
Ugh.
I guarantee you the Temple defense would be 10x better off with Rapone as DC than Snow. Guarantee. So do these guys:
Related:
http://articles.philly.com/1996-10-06/sports/25664940_1_owls-coach-ron-dickerson-football-coach
http://articles.philly.com/2012-12-06/sports/35650038_1_matt-rhule-steve-addazio-scot-loefler
http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/09/12/3495093/buffaloes-embrace-spartan-ethicex.html
Tailgate Checklist
Knock on every dorm door at about 7 a.m.
| Tailgate checklist | Only clear plastic bags allowedinside the stadium |
| Temple roster | http://espn.go.com/college-football/team/roster/_/id/218/temple-owls |
| Fordham roster | http://espn.go.com/college-football/team/roster/_/id/2230/fordham-rams |
| Radio | Brewskis |
| Sunscreen | Sunglasses |
| Tickets | Food |
| Binoculars | Weather: 69 and sunny by kickoff |
Respect everyone, fear nobody
“I think I might have been adopted.”
When it comes to Saturday afternoons, the mindset I’ve always hoped Temple football would adopt is this:
Respect everyone, fear no one.
I hope this team respects Fordham and plays up to their ability for once. Fordham has a very good team. Temple has very good players but has not played like a good team yet.
Click on the photo of Juice for a preview of the Fordham game.
I don’t think this team has played up to their ability in the first two weeks.
I thought there was a little too much “satisfaction” following the 28-6 opening-game loss to Notre Dame.
I was not happy or even encouraged by that performance.
A major college football team has got to make extra points and chip-shot field goals. A major college football defense should know to how to play a deep zone and keep everything in front of them with 1 minute, 14 seconds left in the first half. A major college football team should be able to complete touchdown passes.
I haven’t seen any of that in the first two weeks.
There should be no “coddling” of players who don’t perform. Next one in should be the standard.
There should be no “coddling”
of players who don’t perform.
Next one in should be the standard.
Did I expect Temple to win at Notre Dame? No, but I didn’t expect 28-6. Why do schools like Tulsa, UConn, Navy and USF go into Notre Dame SINCE 2009 and come away with wins and Temple gets blown out?
Not acceptable. It’s just not.
When does it get to be Temple’s turn to win one of these marquee games?
It all starts with playing well against some of the “lesser” opponents and building momentum from there. For Temple this year, it will all have to start on Saturday against Fordham and hopefully lead up to better things like an upset of Louisville on Oct. 5.
When Bruce Arians played defending national champion BYU at the Vet, his teams slugged it out toe-to-toe with the best in college football. Temple lost to BYU, but it was 26-24, not 28-6. The Arians’ teams played with a swagger. Did they care that was BYU? No.
Struggling to score against a Houston team that gave up 72 points to SMU last year and 30 points to Texas State (not Texas A&M, Texas Tech or even Texas-El Paso) is also unacceptable.
There are a lot of points left on the field because the players have not been put into a good position to score (see the six plays in the post immediately below that we have not seen this season for an example).
If there’s one thing Temple fans want to see this week, it’s getting the ball in the hands of the playmakers and those playmakers making plays.
Is it too much to ask? God, I hope not.
Tomorrow: Tailgate checklist (early) and game analysis (late)
Six Plays That Will Work (Guaranteed)
The road to seven wins
Matt Rhule’s teleconference on Monday.
Before the season started, even Stevie Wonder could see how the 2013 season broke down for the Temple Owls.
There were five “probable” wins on the schedule in Fordham, Idaho, Army, Memphis and UConn and three “probable” losses on the schedule in Louisville, Cincinnati and Notre Dame.
Click on photo of George O’Leary for five possible college football upsets this week.
The key to a winning season, then, comes down to holding serve in those five games and splitting two of the four remaining games: UCF, Rutgers, Houston and SMU.
Well, since Houston was a winnable game left on the table, the Owls have to win two of three. I think Rutgers is a very gettable game and maybe SMU. I don’t think the Owls beat UCF, even at home.
If they don’t utilize their offensive weapons better or fix the kicking game, it’s just not going to happen for Temple this season. I don’t see how when you have a Chris Coyer, a Zaire Williams, a Khalif Herbin and a Jalen Fitzpatrick, you can’t put those players in a better position to score than you have the first two games. (Although Herbin did not play the first two games.)
That has got to be fixed.
I haven’t seen very many good
offensive plays in the first two games.
Coyer running the ball off a pitchout
would be a good play.
Another is getting Coyer
a simple pitch out to throw
the ball downfield.
Heck, pitching the ball out
to Coyer 10 times a game
(five throws, five runs)
is a better play than any
10 I’ve seen so far this season.
Heck, even the probable wins might be in jeopardy if the Owls don’t start lighting up the scoreboard the way they are capable of going forward. This is a very good offensive line but some solid skill position people have been under-utilized so far.
The defense, which held Notre Dame to one touchdown in the second half, looks like it’s good enough to keep the Owls in the games against just about everyone left else on the schedule. Phil Snow has been a better defensive coordinator than I thought he would be.
So it’s mostly about fixing the offense now.
John Chaney became a Hall of Fame coach by consistently getting the ball in the hands of his scorers. Matt Rhule is going to have to do a better job of getting the ball in the hands of his scorers.
You can talk all you want about the offensive coordinator, Marcus Satterfield, doing this but only Rhule knows what many of those guys have done in the past and he’s got to dictate the flow of the ball. When you have John Christopher throwing the ball, that’s a bad play and not just because it didn’t work but because Fitzpatrick and Coyer are better passers than Christopher is.
Islamabad checking in; uh-oh.
Satterfield might not know that, but Rhule certainly does.
I haven’t seen very many good offensive plays in the first two games. Coyer running the ball off a pitchout would be a good play. Another is getting Coyer a simple pitch out to throw the ball downfield. Heck, pitching the ball out to Coyer 10 times a game (five throws, five runs) is a better play than any 10 I’ve seen so far this season. A reverse to Khalif Herbin probably will work, as well as a bubble screen with him behind a couple of blockers. A fade pass in the end zone to 6-6 wide receiver Deon Miller would be hard to stop. Getting the ball 20 times to a weapon like Zaire Williams behind this offensive line would also help put points on the board. None of those approaches have been used yet. Maybe they are saving all of that for the bowl game.
If so, there won’t be one.
Keep Calm and Hoot On
Nick Visco kicking for Archbishop Wood.
One of the parents gave me this great T-Shirt (or is that ‘][‘-Shirt) I wore yesterday while jogging:
“Keep Calm and Hoot On.”
Once I saw that in the bag, I had to wear it. I haven’t been too calm since Saturday.
The recipe for a productive Coyer is simple:
Five passes, five runs, five catches.
He also carried the ball for 184 yards
in a game at Ohio once. How do you not
get someone with those kind of instincts
involved in the running game?
To under-utilize a talent
like this is cheating the team.
It’s one thing to lose a game to a team slightly favored, but a whole other story to lose it the way Temple did. So I have a hard time letting go, but let go I must and so must Temple.
In my mind, if you are going to pull a kicker, you use the backup kicker, not the punter. I don’t know if Nick Visco makes that 25-yard field goal (essentially an extra-point), but I do know this: Nick Visco made the highest percentage of extra points of any kicker who ever kicked on the soil of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. That field goal was an extra point.
I’d say his making it would have been a good bet since I’ve always believed the best predictor of future success is past success and that’s some damn good past success.
That whole game changes at 16-15.
Now it looks as though Visco will play (Matt Rhule: “I think we’ll give Nick a shot”), so things are looking up in the kicking game.
For things to look up for the rest of the offense, the Owls must do a better job of getting the ball in the hands of their play-makers going forward. One of the things that made John Chaney a great coach was that he yelled when someone passed the ball to someone other than Eddie Jones or Aaron McKie. He knew who his scorers were.
These are ours:
Bowl win
CHRIS COYER _ Does our new offensive coordinator even know this kid was the MVP as a quarterback for the school’s first bowl win in 30 years? He hasn’t been given an opportunity to throw the ball yet. He should not be a Wildcat quarterback. (How many times have you seen the Wildcat work? Me, too.) He should be throwing the ball five times a game off pitchouts from Connor Reilly or maybe a throwback pass. The recipe for a productive Coyer is simple: Five passes, five runs, five catches. He also carried the ball for 184 yards in a game at Ohio once. How do you not get someone with those kind of instincts involved in the running game? To under-utilize a talent like this is cheating the team. This is someone who can get 100 yards receiving, 100 yards rushing and 100 yards passing in any given game but not the way he’s being used now.
Khalif Herbin, scoring one of his five touchdowns in Montclair’s 35-7 win over East Orange in front of 9,000 fans.
KHALIF HERBIN _ I hope they find a way to get this kid the ball in space, maybe on a reverse or two, punt and kickoff returns, a bubble screen, whatever. He runs a 4.34 40 and Hassan Dixon is the only guy on the team faster. Herbin, though, wasn’t Offensive Player of the Year in New Jersey (2011) for nothing. We haven’t seen him yet because of injury issues, but he’s good to go and 100 percent for Saturday.
ZAIRE WILLIAMS_Thought after going 7 for 33 from scrimmage against Notre Dame, we’d see more of him against Houston, but all we saw was 11 for 57. Bernard Pierce went 6 for 44 in his first game and that was against a FCS school. The next game, Pierce went for over 100 yards against Eastern Michigan and almost never went below 100 yards after that but he didn’t get the ball just 11 times in any of those games. Williams is of the Palmer-Pierce-Brown-Harris lineage, at least in ability. He was open in the flat all day for screen passes against Houston. I would have loved to have seen him take one of those screen passes to the house.
RYAN ALDERMAN _ Any time the team needs nine yards, throw it to him. He not only catches everything, he’s got a remarkable knack for getting open.
DEON MILLER _ I know he’s had dehydration issues, but if they are not going to throw the ball to him on a fade in the end zone, they probably should put him back on the field goal blocking team. The 6-foot-6 wide receiver blocked two FGs last year perfectly timing his jump from behind the nose guard. I didn’t see him out there for any of Richie Leone’s five made field goals last week. In the absence of 6-11 basketball players coming out for the team, he’s the best option the Owls have for that job.
Other than that, keep calm and Hoot on … there’s plenty of season left to be played and you can only cry over spilled milk for three days.
Tomorrow: The road to a winning season
Temple Football Forever 