Author Archives: Mike Gibson

02.11.22
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The Case for the Defense: Keep hope alive

If this win doesn’t give you hope for the Temple defense, nothing will.

Sometimes reading through the bios of Temple coaches, both past and present, provides some useful clues for anyone trying to look into a crystal ball and predict the future.

Having had a course in sports information at Temple to get some insight into the guys I was going to be dealing with for the next several decades in sports journalism, I found out a big part of their job is to put lipstick on a pig.

Maybe D.J. Eliot gets his first career shutout at Duke. We can only hope.

There were two major defensive coaching hires made by Stan Drayton, one I liked and one I didn’t, and the guy I liked went off to the Denver Broncos on Wednesday, and the one I didn’t remains here.

Maybe the silver lining in this development is that the successful guy, co-DC Ola Adams, won’t have to butt heads in the coaching room with the unsuccessful guy, DC D.J. Eliot. Let’s put it this way: If Eliot went to Denver and Adams was elevated to sole DC, I might be more optimistic about the future.

That didn’t happen, though.

Now the show is all Eliot’s. Soon we will find out if it’s a long-running hit or a circus. Logic doesn’t look good but, as the above video indicates, at Temple there is always hope.

Hope doesn’t get me to a bowl game.

So to Eliot’s bio I went. Here are some highlights (my comments are in italics, the other is from Temple PR people):
 
Kansas: In 2020, true freshman cornerback Karon Prunty earned Freshmen All-America honors by 247Sports.com after having the most pass breakups of any true freshman in the country. Additionally, Kyron Johnson earned All-Big 12 Honorable Mention at outside linebacker, along with Prunty. Up front, redshirt freshman Marcus Harris totaled 7.5 tackles-for-loss, which marked the most by a Kansas freshman since 2012.

Err, nice but who did he shut out and how many points per game did he allow? Kansas lost every game that year and gave up 36.1 points per game. Ugh as in ugly.
 
Colorado: Eliot led the Buffaloes to one of the best defenses in the Pac 12. The Buffs ranked fourth in the conference in yards allowed per play (5.24), while tying for fourth with 29 sacks. Colorado also ranked third in opponent third-down conversion rate (36.36 percent) and fourth in red zone touchdowns allowed (51.6 percent).

Fourth in yards allowed and fourth in sacks and fourth red zone touchdowns allowed ain’t going to get it done in the AAC. Temple has got to get guys who were first in their conference, not fourth.
 
Kentucky: Eliot joined the Colorado staff from Kentucky, where he was the Wildcats’ defensive coordinator and linebackers coach for four seasons (2013-16). He helped coach UK to the 2016 TaxSlayer Bowl, the first postseason appearance for Kentucky since 2010. Eliot also helped Kentucky land the 22nd-ranked recruiting class in the nation, marking the first time the Wildcats assembled a Top 25 recruiting class.

In Kentucky’s best season under Eliot, the Wildcats were 7-6 but allowed 42 points to New Mexico State (3-9 that year), 38 points to Mississippi State (6-7), 21 points to Missouri (4-8) and 38 points to the only winning team he beat, Louisville (9-4).

 Those were his most recent stops.

Not exactly, in my mind, the stellar resume I would look for in a defensive coordinator. There’s a lot of “he developed this guy and he developed that guy” in his resume, but I could not find a single team he shut out during his tenure as a defensive coordinator anywhere. For comparison, former Florida and Temple DC Chuck Heater shut out Ball State and Bowling Green in consecutive weeks (not years) for the 2011 Owls.

To me, keeping the bad guys out of your end zone is a prerequisite for being a good defensive coordinator, not “developing guys.” Developing guys for someone else (like the NFL), doesn’t hold the same appeal for me as sacking the quarterback playing against Temple, getting turnovers for Temple and, most important, pitching a shutout against the team Temple is playing that day.

Hell, maybe Adams walked into a room at the E-O and had the same feelings before leaving for Denver. We might never know but now Adams joins Manny Diaz in having the two shortest tenures of any ex-Temple coach.

Maybe this will work out to Eliot’s advantage but hope will have to defeat logic.

It happened for Temple at least once before.

If the 1998 Temple Owls could prove the naysayers wrong in upsetting No. 10 Virginia Tech, maybe Eliot can, too.

Shutting out Duke would almost be as shocking as that win. Maybe more.

Monday: Pressures


 

02.07.22
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American Underdog: We’ve Come Full Circle

Saturday night usually is movie night for me so, being a Temple football fan, I scanned through the new offerings of Amazon Prime and found out I could purchase “American Underdog.”

It was the best $19.95 I’ve ever spent, not quite bringing me as much bang for the buck as the $125 I spent for a bus trip to the AAC championship game of 2016 (that included tickets) but close. Hell, a championship is worth a million, not a mere $125.

With the signing of Elijah Warner less than a week ago by new head coach Stan Drayton, this seemed like a pretty good time to revisit the story of his dad, 2017 NFL Hall of Famer Kurt Warner.

In the movie, it was funny to hear coaches at several levels call Kurt “Pop” referring to one of the greatest coaches of all time who made two schools (Temple and Stanford) famous for football back in the day. We’ve come full circle now that his kid has “fallen in love” with Temple, whose President played football at Stanford. His winning Super Bowl coach with the Rams was Dick Vermeil, a West Coast guy who fell in love with Philadelphia and still lives a figurative stone’s throw away from Temple.

Vermeil believed in Kurt, a true American Underdog who was bagging groceries at the Iowa equivalent of “The Ac-a-Me” (or Shop-Rite) before the Rams signed him.

Kurt, Elijah and Brenda on signing day.

Evidently, others believe with me. The movie gets a solid 75 percent from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, beating by almost 20 points my second favorite movie of this calendar year “Don’t Look Up” which has quite a few more A-list stars. The 98 percent rating from viewers is off the charts.

It’s easy to see why.

American Underdog was extremely well done and should resonate well here, not just because of the Temple/Warner/Vermeil/Philadelphia angle.

There are so many wired storylines in this family, Philadelphia, and Temple to shut down a Texas power grid.

Something tells me this “Warner Era” at Temple is going to work out. Elijah, like Kurt, experienced his share of rejection along the way, only to be told by other schools he was “their guy” one day who then called that they signed another guy the next day. Drayton said he liked Elijah because he had that same “chip on his shoulder” his dad did after getting rebuffed by the Packers only to prove himself in the Arena Football League and again with the Rams.

In that case, Drayton might be Temple’s Dick Vermeil.

As a big recent fan of thoroughbred horse racing, I’ve long been a believer in bloodlines of champions. The best horse in the business right now is named Flightline, who is the product of the great Tapit. Temple is the one school that has success with bloodlines. Temple NG Joe Klecko’s son, Dan, was Big East defensive MVP at Temple. Jim Bright, a 1950 fullback with the Owls, sired a 1979 Garden State bowl MVP, Mark Bright, also a fullback. Zach Dixon, a terrific 1,000-yard running back with the 1978 Owls, sired future NFL defensive end Raheem Brock.

Now we get to adopt a Northern Iowa son, just like Kurt adopted Brenda’s son, Zach, in the movie. (If the “I pick you” line doesn’t get you in the feels, you don’t have tear ducts.)

Unless the son of John Elway, Dan Marino or even Tom Brady walk through the E-O door, Temple is going to do no better from a gene pool standpoint than Warner.

Not many schools are.

I’ve never seen his mom throw a football but I’ve seen his dad chuck it several thousand times.

If Elijah wings it the way his dad does and both Tapit and Flightline run it, the Owls should be in pretty good shape.

Somewhere up there, the real Pop Warner is looking down and smiling.

Friday: The Case For the Defense

02.04.22
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Temple Football: It just feels different

The number one takeaway from Wednesday around the world will be that Temple signed about a dozen fewer football players than anyone else in the American Athletic Conference, most of them with fewer stars than the top dozen or so signees from the other teams.

That’s important but no less important is the vibe very successful ex-Owls who have been to the Edberg Olson facility since Stan Drayton took over have experienced.

Almost to a man everyone else has said: “It just feels different.”

Different, meaning good.

Stan Drayton’s hastily put together first class might not be rated high but has a couple of starters

Personality matters and the Owls went from a dead fish personality (Rod Carey) to a dynamo (Stan Drayton).

Many of us (raising my hand here) believe both Al Golden and Fran Brown (Temple guys) would have the same dynamic personality of (Texas guy) Stan Drayton but, now, with the decision already made, I will take my dynamos wherever I can get them. More and more, Drayton is becoming a Temple guy and that’s not an easy thing to do.

Anyone who treats Paul Palmer, Dave Gerson and Nadia Harvin with this much respect is OK in my book.

If you really believe only one person can return Temple to the kind of glory it had only in 2018 and 2019, then you are a special kind of naive. It wasn’t that long ago and there’s nowhere near the work now that needs to be done that, say, Golden did in 2005.

I’ve always felt that there are dozens of guys who could perform CPR on Temple now and my fellow ex-Owls who have visited the E-O have given Drayton their stamp of approval.

Since I haven’t been in the building (but most likely will on Cherry and White Day), I have to take their word for it.

Now the bigger question becomes does signing a dozen or so supbar (compared to the rest of the league) players put Temple in a position to win immediately?

That answer appears to be no.

In the AAC, the Jimmies and Joes will always beat the X’s and O’s.

There are two starters in this class, one I can identify (running back Darvon Hubbard) and that will come out of nowhere, maybe in the linebacker group. After 1-6 and 3-9, that’s not enough but it’s a starting point.

Drayton gets major points in my mind for acknowledging the need to sign a “scholarship quarterback” sometime after spring if “no one here has demonstrated the ability to handle the job.”

My advice is meaningless but I think Drayton should not wait until spring. Incumbent Dwan Mathis hasn’t proven to be good enough and newcomer Elijah Warner probably is a year away. Mathis needs competition at least as good and probably better if the Owls want to double their 2021 win total and that should be the minimum goal. Waiting until after spring means one of those three guys will already have committed elsewhere. Temple can’t afford to gamble.

If the Owls want more adversity, they should probably settle with Mathis and Warner leading the quarterback room.

Drayton said he wants adversity but if adversity means 3-9 again, that’s probably the kind of adversity he doesn’t want nor the kind of adversity fans are expecting.

There are at least three quarterbacks right now still in the portal who are better than anyone Temple has now and Drayton should probably pull the trigger before one of them gets away. Waiting until spring is definitely not needed if Drayton has, as he noted, watched the film. Stan, please rewind to the 3d and 17 play in the Cincy game and watch was Mathis did. After seeing that, please tell me he doesn’t need competition.

No matter how different things feel now, another 3-9 would be the kind of flashback no Temple fan or coach ever wants to experience again and raise questions about the future that would counter any current optimism.

Monday: American Underdog

01.31.22
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Temple football: Dog hunting season

Hopefully, Drayton does turn out to be a home run for Temple.

That old saying a “hungry dog hunts best” certainly could apply to new head Temple football coach Stan Drayton.

The outsiders, objective people supposedly in the know about college football, rated the Temple coaching hire pretty low on the totem pole and maybe Drayton will use that disrespect and work that much harder to prove the doubters wrong.

What he needs now is players and this is the week to get them.

Heaven knows the Owls need some dogs, the fighting kind and not the laying down kind.

The national sports website Yardbarkers rated the Temple hiring 25th between Sonny Cumbie (Louisiana Tech) and Jon Sumrall (Troy).

Maybe Drayton is hungry enough to prove the doubters wrong. Or guys like Cumbie and Sumrall will prove to be hungrier.

Whatever, the way college football works these days, we could know as soon as December because the transfer portal has proven to turn some mediocre teams to winning ones in a year. For instance, Western Kentucky recruited a portal quarterback out of Houston Baptist, Bailey Zappe, and his 61 touchdown passes helped turn the Hilltoppers from 5-7 to 8-5 in a few months.

Co-DC Ola Adams teased some good news with this Sunday tweet.

Can Temple go from 3-9 to 8-5?

Probably not, but certainly a bowl is within reach in an era where there are more good players in the portal than available scholarships across the 130 FBS programs. It’s a buyer’s market, not a seller’s, and the teams that shop best off the field produce best on it. Recently, defensive back George Reid left the Owls and declared for the portal. Nice player, but there are upgrades all over the place out there and one of Drayton’s jobs is to find one for Reid, and another for record-breaking wide receiver Jadan Blue, two of the few who left.

Already, Drayton got a South Carolina cornerback to commit and a Florida linebacker visited this weekend and Kurt Warner’s son, Elijah, “fell in love with the place” (Temple) and committed. While Warner is only 5-foot-11, the more important numbers associated with him are 26 (touchdowns) and eight (interceptions). That’s a more than acceptable ratio when you consider the Owls’ starting quarterback, Dwan Mathis, had 20 touchdown passes to 11 interceptions in his last full high school year. G5 football proved much tougher as Mathis had only nine touchdown passes against six interceptions and that was nowhere near good enough for either Dwan or Temple.

In fact, only two other recent Temple recruits had more touchdown passes as a high school senior than Warner did and those were Anthony Russo (Archbishop Wood, 2015) and Adam DiMichele (Sto-Rox, 2004), both with 35 each. Even the great P.J. Walker (Elizabeth, N.J) had only 24 touchdown passes his senior year. If Warner produces at Temple like Russo, Walker and DiMichele did, I will sign for that now. It’s not the only metric but consider this: Vaughn Charlton (Avon Grove) and Chester Stewart (DeMatha) had nine and 17 touchdown passes, respectively, their senior years and they were at Temple what their record said they were in high school.

Subpar would be a kind word.

Still, it’s hard to figure that Warner, right now, is anything more than a replacement for Justin Lynch, who transferred to Northern Illinois. Maybe a couple of more years down the road he can be a starter at Temple.

One immediate starter probably will be at running back, where the Owls upgraded their room with the addition of Texas A&M portal transfer Darvon Hubbard.

Definitely fits the profile of a fighting dog, not a passive one.

The Owls need a few more who fit the description. By Wednesday, we will know how hungry Drayton turned out to be.

Friday: Reaction to Signing Season

01.28.22
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Why the old signing day is important to Temple

Temple needed to sign about 14 Darvon Hubbards for this class to make an immediate impact.

Two things you will never hear a college football coach say:

  1. “We’ve got no chance this season.”

2. “Today is signing day. We did a lousy job getting players.”

The first Wednesday in February was the “old” signing day. It’s the most important day now. It hasn’t been that important to Temple football since the 2007 season when Al Golden took great pride in the fact that one of the two major online scouting services ranked the Temple recruiting class No. 1 in the Mid-American Conference (MAC).

Many of those players had key roles for the 2009 team that played in the Eagle Bank Bowl. Arguably, they were even better in 2010 season when they went 8-4 and beat the G5’s only representative in the top six bowls, UCONN. (That Temple team didn’t go to a bowl but should have. On the day after Golden had to break the bad news to the Owls, he hightailed it out to Miami.)

Since then, Temple has not had a No. 1 recruiting class in any league it has been a participant.

Still, the Owls were able to not only win one championship (2016) but finish second in another season (2015).

Those were outliers, though, and the “inlier” of every recruiting year is that the haves will win championships and the haves will not. Since Temple beat Cincinnati in the 2018 season, the Bearcats have had No. 1-ranked recruiting classes in the AAC and Temple has been in the middle of the pack or worse.

The results?

Despite coaching schemes that were better suited to NIU personnel than Temple’s, Rod Carey was able to cobble together whatever talent Geoff Collins had in that 2019 season and win eight games. On the field, recruiting has pretty much predicted the wins and losses.

It does almost every year in every league.

This year, despite hiring a “charismatic” head coach, the Owls have failed to move up from their penultimate ranking in the league’s recruiting. To expect a recruiting class at the bottom of the league now to finish in the top of taking care of business on the field two or three years from now takes an overly active imagination.

Before the Hubbard signing, Temple’s recruiting class was ranked ahead of only Navy in the AAC. I don’t think that has moved the needle upward.

Logically, that cannot continue for Temple to expect success in the future.

Stan Drayton could prove to be a great recruiter in the future but did not deliver a great first class. Other than Kurt Warner’s son, Elijah, or a portal running back from Texas A&M, Darvon Hubbard, there isn’t a significant IMMEDIATE impact player in this group.

Still, the Hubbard transfer represents more of what Temple needs right now. Power 5 players with big upside who haven’t been able to get on the field but could help the Owls. Temple had about five running backs who were decent last year but could not outrun a single AAC secondary for a long score. That was a huge red flag. Temple needs someone who is a threat to take it to the house on every single handoff, just like Paul Palmer, Bernard Pierce and Jahad Thomas was back in their days.

Hubbard, who has a better resume than any of the holdovers, just might be and Warner, because he’s got the same bloodlines as his dad, should be an immediate upgrade over the departed Justin Lynch. Lord knows Dwan Mathis who was good in only one game–but NOT GOOD ENOUGH in the others–needs competition next season. He needs to fear that there is someone behind him good enough to replace him. Warner may or may not be that guy but there are plenty of players still left in the portal who are and Temple should be open to getting them as well.

When you lose the last six games of the season by seemingly (although not actually) 100-0 each Saturday, that dictates the talent you have in the Edberg Olson Hall meeting room needs a significant upgrade.

Have we seen it with the players this new staff has brought in?

Err, no.

When Wednesday rolls around, Drayton will say all the right things about being pleased with his first recruiting class but unless he brings in more guys like Warner and Hubbard, history will tell the story. The Owls need run-stoppers and pass rushers, particularly. They can get by with the corners, safeties, and linebackers they have right now but the defensive front seven needs to be stronger, both literally and figuratively, and that can’t be improved just in the weight room.

Temple needs to get to where it was recruiting at the top of the league it competes in and it hasn’t been there in a decade and a half. It needs 14 Hubbards at all positions, not just one at running back.

There’s a reason why Alabama or Georgia win the recruiting rankings every year and four years later one of them win the natty. Temple needs only to win the AAC recruiting rankings. It won’t this season but that better be the standard next. It has not been met this year due to the extenuating circumstance of waiting too long to fire the last guy (who should have been outta here after the USF debacle and what we wrote right after that game in this space).

Next year, Temple’s class should be at the top of the league.

The Temple administration or fans should demand no less.

Monday: Great Expectations.

01.24.22
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New highlight video found of Temple’s Paul Palmer

Imagine, if you will, having done nothing with your life more substantive than arranging sports trips and living within shouting distance of Mondauk Common.

You can either look in the mirror and trim that beard of yours or run to the computer, flex keyboard muscles and create hundreds of fake email addresses and criticize fellow Temple grads who actually accomplished something like nearly win a Heisman Trophy or actually did win the top sportswriting award in the state of Pennsylvania. Being that bitter and small are hours and days in your life you can never get back, a complete waste of time much better spent with family.

Said person instead of spending quality time with the wife and kids recently impugned the integrity of Paul Palmer by writing he wasn’t humble enough for his taste.

Like everything he writes, it never saw the light of day on this blog but I’m sure he’s going to waste his time creating another fake email address and name to respond.

Sometimes you have to bring out the receipts.

Hell, you can pretend to hate the only Temple football sports blog of note but never miss a single post. What’s that about? If I hated a Youtube content provider site or a blog, I would never visit it again. I wouldn’t stalk the site but that’s me. I’m not mentally ill.

Small guys who need professional help but don’t know it would. Small isn’t even the word. Tiny and microscopic might be but we won’t talk about that guy today.

To me, Paul Palmer is not only the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) of Temple football but, arguably, the most humble. (Hell, it’s him or Joe Klecko but, considering that Paul is around for every Temple game and Joe isn’t, I will give the nod to Boo.) I’ve known Paul for almost 40 years and the most impressive thing about him is not is accomplishments on the field (many, check the record books) but his humility off of it. The numbers say Palmer should have won Heisman in 1986 but regional biases opened the door for Miami’s Vinny Testaverde to edge him instead. Finishing behind Palmer in the voting that year were Jim Harbaugh of Michigan and Brian Bosworth of Oklahoma.

Paul once told me about first meeting Geoff Collins, who extended his hand and said: “Hey, coach, what school are you from?” without even knowing he was speaking to the greatest running back in Temple history.

Paul just answered the question and walked away, leaving others to fill Collins in on the deal. That doesn’t sound like a conceited person to me.

The above somewhat new video found by Zamani Feelings (thanks, Zamani) is Paul kicking Alabama’s ass in a 24-14 loss. I have to laugh when people like the sports trip guy say the 2016 team was better than Palmer’s team or the 1979 team. Any Bama team would have beaten the 2016 Temple team (and Toledo actually did) much worse. Great video. Wish Temple had done a better job creating highlight videos of past teams, but you often have to find them through other schools.

Palmer once said publicly that “Mike Gibson is My guy” but, really, Paul should be every Temple fan’s guy. Paul still holds the Temple record for most all-purpose yardage and, except for a Herculean Day by Montel Harris at West Point, would also still hold the single-game rushing record (349 yards). Harris scored seven touchdowns and 351 yards that day in a 62-39 win over Army.

Two Temple goats, no matter what any travel agents might feel.

On Palmer’s special day, a 349-yard game at Veterans Stadium against East Carolina, I filed my story for Calkins Newspapers and was rushed to the hospital the next day. Three weeks later, I was out and Paul shaked my hand and welcomed me back. In between, Temple SID (and assistant AD) Al Shrier called while I was at the hospital, as did then current coach Bruce Arians and former coach Wayne Hardin. Their words meant a lot. (I suspect Mr. Shrier had a lot to do with those calls.)

I almost died before getting heart surgery.

Everything since then has been and will remain borrowed time.

Years later, I’ve gotten to know Paul better than I ever did as a reporter who kept objective distance when he was a player.

He’s a good man. Humble, especially considering all he’s done for his alma mater and always has time to talk to every Temple fan. He’s currently the radio color guy.

Maybe one day a Temple fan who criticizes him will win the best sports fan bus trip award in the state of Pennsylvania.

I doubt it. Until then, he should probably STFU.

Friday: Recruiting

01.21.22
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Johnson’s biggest project yet to come?

Plenty of room to build a 10,000-seat North end zone plus getting rid of those few houses (quite a few currently boarded up) across 10th Street would give the Owls a 25,000-seat West Grandstand.

If only a Rod Carey football game plan had as many surprises as the introductory press conference of new Temple football coach Stan Drayton, the Owls might have won enough games to keep Mr. Boring in charge today.

One surprise struck me, though.

Johnson said this in front of the assembled media when asked about his involvement in picking Drayton: “I had a chance to get to know Stan while we worked together at the University of Texas. He is an outstanding football coach and an even better person. He knows what success looks like at the highest levels of football. He also knows what it takes to be successful in this city having spent six years of his career here and learned from two of the city’s legendary football coaches.”

The only way TU can convince Norris Street neighbors to build at 15th Street is to give them all new houses overlooking the new stadium like this and that might be cost prohibitive.

No more than minutes later, Johnson said this in a smaller post-conference gathering:

“I don’t think my being at Texas was a big part of Stan being hired here. I was involved in about $675 million dollars of building projects there so I only knew him superficially.”

Hmm.

We went from “get to know” to the connection “not being a big part.”

That wasn’t key thing, though, Johnson said as far as Temple football’s future.

“I was involved in about $675 million of building projects …”

Four months ago, Temple was looking for an AD and, of the four finalists, only one was involved in any significant building projects.

The Board of Trustees hired that guy.

This is the same board of trustees that voted nearly unanimously to submit a plan to the City of Philadelphia that closed a portion of 15th Street permanently to build a $250 million football stadium and only backed off when they were confronted by a small but angry group of community residents one memorable March night a few years ago.

Presumably, they still want to build it and must feel Johnson is the point guy to get this project done like he did so many in Austin, Texas.

Now, with President Jason Wingard in place along with Johnson and Drayton, the Owls have three high-profile African-American point men to convince a mostly African-American community that this is in the best interest of both the university and the community.

To me, getting this done requires some thinking outside the box in addition to the personalities involved.

Closing 15th Street–even between Norris and Montgomery–seems to be a non-starter so the administration should be looking for another place to build.

They got the community to come on board for a $22 million athletic facility at Broad and Master a few years ago that is used 87 times a year, not the six times Temple will use a new football stadium. Since a trade building was part of that deal, knocking it down to build a football stadium there (and moving the Olympic sports to 15th and Norris) probably also is a non-starter.

How about using the Edberg-Olson facility as the new stadium?

There’s already a regulation 100-yard field there, plus enough room for a 10,000-seat North End zone and a 25,000-seat West Side. The current E-O offices can be used for a small (maybe 1,000-seat Owl Club super box plus press box) area.

The only concessions the university would need from the city is to close 10th Street from Susquehanna to Diamond and that would seem easier to do than 15th from Norris to Montgomery. Tenth Street is not as viable a thoroughfare as 15th Street is and nowhere near the number of residents would be impacted on the Edberg Olson side of the campus.

For the time it takes to build the stadium, the football team can move its practices and offices to Geasey Field. If needed, another $10 million practice facility can be constructed at 15th and Norris. (That’s where the Owl football team practiced from 1974-2004.)

That’s the kind of thinking outside the box that Johnson did at UT.

If he can pull that game plan off at UT, he should be able to do it at TU. Hell, considering his resume, that’s what they might have hired him to do.

Monday: Humility Personified

01.16.22
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The Temple coaching tie that binds

At least Texas State has a nice on-campus stadium

When things get particularly boring or depressing in the defensive coaching room at Edberg Olson Hall this fall, at least the new Temple defensive football coaching staff can talk about old war stories in San Marcos.

We’re not talking about the WW2 Italian campaign led by Fifth Army commander U.S. General Mark Clark.

We’re talking about going to war leading the football team at Texas State in San Marcos, Texas.

No less than five Temple staffers, mostly on defense, spent some time at Texas State and three of them (defensive line coach Antoine Smith. linebacker coach Chris Woods and cornerbacks coach Jules Montinar) coached for current Temple football Chief of Staff Everett Winters, the head coach there from 2016-2018.

The war there did not go as well for Winters and his troops as it did for Clark in the big one. Between 2016-18, the Bobcats finished 7-28 with a pair of 2-10 seasons.

Winters has his fingerprints all over these hires and, while he might be pleased with them, had new head coach Stan Drayton consulted NFL Hall of Famer Bill Parcells, he would have nixed those hires in the bud. Parcells was famous for this one line: “You are what your record says you are.”

Spoiler alert: It’s not good.

In the 2016 season, the Bobcats gave up 64 to Houston, 42 to Arkansas, 41 to Georgia State, 40 to Louisiana Monroe, 47 to Idaho, 50 to New Mexico State and 40 to Troy. That was the same year Temple held the then highest-scoring team in the nation, Navy, to just 10 points in winning the AAC championship.

The next year wasn’t much better: 44 to UTSA, 45 each to three teams (Monroe, Wyoming and New Mexico State) and 62 to Troy.

Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you to what is mostly the new defensive staff at Temple University.

Ugh.

New DC D.J. Eliot doesn’t get off free in this comparison. He also coached at Texas State, albeit in 2003 and 2004.

Presumably, he knows he knows the cuisine in San Marcos as well as the other guys.

If doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity, these guys better remember what they did at Texas State and do the exact opposite here.

If not, somebody will be eating crow and that person could be former Texas (not state, though) Director of Football Operations Arthur Johnson, who opened the floodgates for all of these Texas guys to relocate to Philadelphia.

Friday: Building Blocks

01.14.22
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The only recruiting model Temple really needs

Temple needs it to rain players and should raid for the transfer portal this season and high school players next.

Over the next few days, the dominant topic of discussion in the Philadelphia area will be of two weather models, the GFS and the EMRF.

For those acronym-challenged people, they refer to the Global Forecast System model and the European Mid-Range Forecast.

One, the GFS, is calling for a pretty big snowstorm in the city; the other, the EMRF, is saying only a little snow changing to rain.

Snow-haters like me are rooting for the EMRF to win out in this battle of the computer projections.

In this day and age of college football recruiting, there are two models, too.

Really, that’s the Transfer Portal System (of) Recruiting to take precedence over the High School method that has lasted for a few generations.

Temple fans should root for the TPSR over the traditional HSR model in a recruiting cycle that is set to end in a couple of weeks because there is a lot of talk of “being patient” with new head coach Stan Drayton and that “four wins would be considered progress.”

That notion needs to be disabused right now. Patience, smachience.

The green area the above graphic represents the spots that Temple should target getting every significant portal player inside that geographic circle. If so, the Owls can be a winning team as early as next year.

Only a few Temple fans seem to “get it” and one of them is a friend of mine who posts under the screen name of MH55 on OwlsDaily.com. This was a particularly brilliant post that cut to the heart of the work that Drayton needs to both do and get done over the next two weeks:

MH55’s immediate expectations for Stan Drayton should be the same for every Temple fan.

I used to sit in the general proximity of MH55 on the 50-yard-line lower level. We both attended the game where Temple scored 55 points on Eastern Michigan the day after Thanksgiving. That was my first purchase of Chickie and Pete’s crab fries and, after one or two hot bites, I handed the bucket to MH55, who had acquired a taste for them. I was pretty happy not to throw them in the trash.

What we saw that day was the beginning of a pretty remarkable transformation of Temple football from a 20-game losing streak to college football respectability.

There was no transfer portal that day, so Al Golden had to build Temple football the hard way, finding under-recruited players, slowly building their bodies in the weight room, and patiently waiting to win.

There’s a quick-fix system now, the portal, and there are way too many good Power 5 players in it for the available scholarships. Once these players realize it, Temple becomes a viable option. That’s how Georgia’s 2020 starting quarterback, Dwan Mathis, ended up at Temple.

If Temple wants to win right away, and it should, it will have to hit the portal hard this year and rely on more traditional methods in subsequent years. Temple needs guys ready to play now, not guys they need to build up in the weight room and wait three years for contributions.

It could be the same story Drayton writes by signing day if he’s smart. Temple needs to bring in as many as 15 Power 5 portal transfers, good ones, who will not be satisfied with playing on a team with “just” four wins. It certainly needs more than the six Rod Carey’s staff brought in last season.

Or it could go into the portal pool the same way Carey’s failed staff did, one toe at a time. That wasn’t good enough.

Drayton’s staff needs to be immersed in it and the talent Temple puts on the field will have to be significantly better than the last group Owl fans saw. Temple needs great players now, not three years from now, and the only way to get them is through the transfer portal. As much as I want it to rain instead of snow Monday, that’s how much I want February’s signing day to rain great players at Temple. They aren’t getting immediate impact players out of any high school who hold only offers from Buffalo and FAU.

MH55 gets it. In about two or three weeks, we will find out if Drayton does, too.

Monday: The Tie That Binds

Friday: Johnson’s Next Project

01.10.22
by

Now it’s more about the Jimmies and Joes

Even though Stan Drayton is the shortest guy in this photo, he stood tall for honoring Spencer Prescott’s Temple legacy last week.

Hard to believe it was more than 15 years ago, after attending a press conference that featured a Joe Klecko introduction, I dashed off a congratulatory email to a new Temple head coach.

It took only a couple of hours for Al Golden to respond.

“Thanks, Mike,” he said. “I’m going up to St. Peter’s today to recruit a guy who could be a game-changer. Wish me luck.”

One of Golden’s first recruits, the late Kee-Ayre Griffin, wasn’t a game-changer but he was a more than solid contributor to Temple’s turnaround. Griffin was holding offers from BC and Pitt, but something Golden said to him that day convinced him to attend Temple.

When I asked Al what he said a couple of weeks later at the signing day ceremony, Golden smiled and said, “that’s a professional secret” before telling me what his recruiting philosophy was. “We’ve got 46 percent of the nation’s population a five-hour drive from Temple. Not many schools can say that. We can’t get them all but we should be able to get enough really good players to turn this thing around.”

The rest was college football history.

In that first class, Golden recruited 18 team captains from either state or league championship high school teams.

The number on the helmet makes zero sense.

“They weren’t necessarily the most recruited guys in those teams,” he said, “but they were leaders of championship teams and I wanted to bring that mentality here. You bring five guys Power 5 schools want, mix in a bunch of leaders and guys you can develop and you can win.”

Drayton has put together the X’s and O’s part of the job. Now it’s time to get the Jimmies and Joes.

That’s pretty much the challenge Drayton faces now.

He’s not going to out-recruit Penn State or Maryland but, in the new AAC, he doesn’t have to. Get five guys holding P5 offers and 20 guys in the leader/development area and Temple can win that league. Really, all he has to do is out-recruit Memphis, UAB and USF and the Owls can challenge for the title every year.

Drayton might have the personality to do it.

Like Golden (and unlike Rod Carey), he’s already connected with Temple football alumni. Instead of sending a representative to former Owl coach Spencer Prescott’s funeral last week, Drayton showed up himself. Carey was pretty standoffish with Temple football alums by comparison. It was a super classy move by Drayton. Golden was also good at networking with Temple football alums, as was Matt Rhule. Golden brought back TEMPLE on the helmets, because it reminded him of the Temple TUFF teams he faced while at Penn State. Maybe Drayton will put his own imprint on the program by bringing back TEMPLE on one side of the helmet and keeping the T on the other side. Getting rid of the number (which is already on the jersey and was a Carey move) makes the most sense.

That’s cosmetic, though. The substantive change is getting back to the Temple TUFF culture re-established under Golden.

The template for Temple football success has been established. All Drayton has to do is follow it and success will follow.

Wish him luck.

Friday: Navigating the new paradigm

Monday: The Tie That Binds