Author Archives: Mike Gibson

03.12.19
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5 Priorities for Temple spring ball

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At the start of every spring practice, Bruce Arians used to give a little speech to the Temple players.

It always closed with, in a strange Southern accent for a York, Pa. boy: “Get your work done.”

Spring ball at Temple, which begins today, has changed a lot since Arians. The rock-strewn practice field is now the Pavilion. Geasey Field is waiting for a stadium that will probably never arrive.

Back then, the work pretty much started on the first day of spring ball. Today, it’s just a continuation of a 365-day deal. Just because the NCAA insists on a spring ball structure that includes 15 organized practices, that doesn’t mean nothing gets done on the other days. The work continues, not starts, today, but should be at least five points of emphasis near the top of new head coach Rod Carey’s list (in no particular order):

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Return to Normalcy 

That means structured depth charts, not vague “above-the-line’ concepts. Since Carey is starting with a clean slate, everybody else does, too, so don’t expect a full depth chart until after the spring game. It also probably means less D.J. playing and band participation while the work is getting done.

Restoring Depth 

Carey has said the difference between being a new coach at Temple and elsewhere is that a new coach elsewhere has to start from scratch with a bad football team. At Temple, this new coach inherits a good football team across those two first-team depth charts. One of the challenges this year, is finding depth, particularly on the offensive and defensive lines. It’s great to have players like Zack Mesday, Karamo Dioubate, Dan Archibong and Dana Levine returning along the defensive line, but it’s time to identify their replacements. The same can be said for the offensive line.

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Finding a Running Back 

Unless you count current wide receiver Isaiah Wright, a one-time running back No. 3 on the depth chart under Matt Rhule, there is no Ryquell Armstead, Jahad Thomas or Bernard Pierce-level talent on this roster. That’s why you have you have to count Wright since the Owls did not go out and get a big-time JUCO or grad transfer there. Will Carey have the courage to experiment with Wright back there? Having an embarrassment of riches at wide receiver (Sean Ryan, Branden Mack, Jadan Blue, Freddie Johnson, and Randall Jones) should buy a lot of courage. Blue is particularly interesting because he was by far the star of the spring game last year and had to sit out the fall.

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Fixing the Offense 

Right at the top of winning football is protecting your quarterback and getting to the bad guy’s quarterback. Offensively, Dave Patenaude thought the best way to protect a quarterback with an NFL-level skill set was telling Anthony Russo to slide. The Owls will have to do much better than that this year and take a page out of Bill Belichick’s book and abandon the RPO offense. Belichick won a championship by keeping his prototypical NFL skill set quarterback upright with an effective running game that set up all sorts of interesting play-action options downfield and that is the way the Temple personnel is set up.

Sound Defensive Concepts

Mayhem was promised by the last coaching staff but rarely delivered. Geoff Collins’ schemes often gambled and produced some effective takeaway stats, but also factored into games where the Owls gave up 57, 52 and 45 points–all losses. In a halftime basketball interview with Harry Donahue, Carey said he puts a premium on a defense that keeps the bad guys out of the end zone even if that means fewer turnovers.

That sounds like a plan. The work doesn’t begin today but continues in a more structured environment.

Bruce Arians would probably approve of the approach.

Thursday: Numbers Guessing

 

03.09.19
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Armstead’s 4.45 makes him intriguing for Eagles

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Forget the over 1,000 yards rushing and 13 touchdowns last year.

Temple running back Ryquell Armstead made a lot of money at the NFL combine with a 4.45 40-yard dash, the second-fastest among the running backs invited.

Armstead came into the combine listed as a “potential seventh-rounder or undrafted free agent” but moved up at least a couple of rounds with that eye-opening time.

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Maybe even with the Philadelphia Eagles, who need a running back. The Eagles have been reluctant about drafting Temple players in the past and leaked a story to the Philly media about their interest in Florida Atlantic running back Devin Singletary. The FAU back bombed in this speed time at the combine, clocking a 4.73. They have also shown interest in Memphis’ Darrell Henderson even though a number of AAC coaches (including former Houston coach Major Applewhite) called Armstead “by far the toughest running back in our league.”

Armstead has always put up the numbers on the field, the only question was about his durability and how he would fare in the combine. The fact that he fared much better in the combine than a couple of other Eagle targets has to at least put him in the conversation because of the Eagles’ emphasis on combine numbers in the past.

For a team that sorely missed Jay Ajay last year, Rock would be a significant upgrade in that area and probably can be grabbed in the fourth or fifth round, enabling the Eagles to address other needs in the first few rounds.

Let’s hope Howie Roseman and company in thinking about that because whatever team adds Armstead is getting a potential starter who has the speed to be an explosive cog in the running game.

 

03.07.19
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A New (Old) Twist to Single-Digit Tradition

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Tyler Matakevich was the ultimate single digit, a walk-on turned national POY

What do new Coke, Team Jeopardy and the Temple football single-digit tradition under Geoff Collins have in common?

All represent a failed attempt to improve a product that was already perfect.

Fortunately, we can say for all three traditions, sanity has been restored.

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The Temple football single-digit tradition was established by Al Golden with one purpose in mind: Have the players all work hard to achieve a goal and have them recognize other players who have stood out among their peers. Voting was limited to players only because Golden always felt that they know who the tough guys wearing the numbers 1-9 were. Matt Rhule, who coached under Golden, felt the same way.

Two carpetbaggers from Florida, Steve Addazio and Collins highjacked the process by picking the tough guys with only limited input from the players.

 

Much to his credit, new head coach Rod Carey has brought back the tradition the way it was intended.

“We’re going to let the players pick them,” Carey said. “From listening to some people here, that’s the way the deal was originally intended and I kind of like the players having control of that.”

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A question on Jeopardy last week.

There are a couple of things there that impress me about Carey. He’s willing to listen to the Temple guys–most likely we’re talking assistant coach Ed Foley here–and he wants full player participation in this endeavor.

I like it, too.

Players get in the meeting room, write the guy’s name on a piece of paper and drop it in a hat and the guys with the most votes get digits 1-9.

The only sad thing here is that offensive linemen are prohibited from NCAA rule from wearing the numbers 1-9. Otherwise, you know guys like Dion Dawkins, Kyle Friend and current center Matt Hennessy would be wearing them.

As a big Jeopardy fan, watching the show in the last two weeks was pure torture because there was much discussion about strategy than playing the game. We were back to the show the way it was originally intended and it was a good enough game to begin with that never needed tinkering. Alex Trebek, who is facing an uphill cancer battle, established a solid brand with a good formula that never needed to be tinkered with.

The same can be said of Temple’s single-digit brand.

Leaving the single-digit tradition at Temple to a players’ only deal falls into the same category. Kudos to Carey for recognizing that.

Saturday: Making That Money

03.04.19
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Tribute to a Legend: Al Shrier

This space was supposed to be occupied today by a discussion about a new twist to the Temple single-digit tradition.

We’ll get to that some other day because that seems so insignificant now.

Al Shrier, the Temple Sports Information Director before I was born and the school’s SID through my education at Temple and much of my subsequent career in the sports writing business, has taken his famous briefcase to the other side.

Legend is a word thrown around far too much these days, but Al Shrier was a legend in the way the word was meant to be used.

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“Bill, listen to me. Hire. Matt. Rhule.”

The news that Shrier passed away was incredibly sad for anyone at Temple and elsewhere who has ever had a positive interaction with him, in my case several hundred.

I wrote here several years ago that Skip Wilson, the long-time baseball coach, belongs on Temple’s Mount Rushmore with Wayne Hardin, John Chaney, Harry Litwack and Al Shrier.

People were somewhat taken aback that I put a SID on that mountain, but that’s where Shrier belonged. For a long time before Hardin or Chaney or even Wilson got there, Shrier was, if not the face, the mouthpiece of Temple sports.

Only Litwack, the basketball coach, pre-dated him.

Putting sports, the front porch of any university, out there in a positive light was Shrier’s job and he did it extraordinarily well.  He set the standard for all SIDs to follow. He was named the nation’s top SID four times and is a member of five Halls of Fame: the CoSIDA Hall of Fame:, the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame, the Philadelphia Big 5 Hall of Fame, the Temple Athletics Hall of Fame and the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

That doesn’t even begin to tell his story because you would need a thick volume to do that.

As a former sports editor of the Temple News, Shrier had an especially soft spot for those who followed him in the same spot. Some of them included Ray Didinger, Phil Jasner, Dick Weiss, Joe Juliano, Craig Evans, Mike Ferretti and a host of accomplished journalists. Somewhere in there, I spent a stint on what was then a 7-day-a-week job to put out a daily from Monday through Friday that took up more of my time than my full course load.

Nobody helped me more than Al, who arranged interviews and trips for us with the teams. Later, as the Temple beat writer for Calkins Newspapers, Al made sure I had a seat on every football charter flight, often calling me before I called him.

As late as 2012, Shrier still had a hand in making decisions at Temple. He took then-athletic director Bill Bradshaw aside the second time Matt Rhule applied for the head football coaching job and said, “Bill, listen to me. Hire. Matt. Rhule.”

Bradshaw said it wasn’t until that moment he made the decision and he told that story at Matt Rhule’s opening press conference. Four years later, Temple was rewarded with its first-ever major football championship because of that decision.

Ironically, because he was reluctant to fly, Al only made the road games he could drive to but he still made sure the Temple story was told. Everywhere he went, he had his legendary briefcase. He never told anyone what he carried in that.

That was probably the first question St. Peter asked a few hours ago.

Thursday: Single-Digit Twists

03.02.19
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Pure Gold: Temple-Rutgers 1988

Prospectors made a dangerous trip across the continent in 1849 looking for a few nuggets of good near a mill owned by a guy named Sutter.

Different things have varying value to people but I found some real value in a Throwback Thursday post the other day from former Temple offensive lineman Ray Haynes (No. 71 in your program in the above video).

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To me, the value in this Temple vs. Rutgers game (1988) was that it only existed in my memory. I was in the press box that day and remembered a lot of detail but, in my searches on the internet, was not able to find it until Ray posted it. That’s the problem with a lot of past Temple games. You can get almost every game Alabama has played in the last 50 years, but it’s almost impossible to find any Temple game film in the 1980s or before.

I used to have the national broadcast of the Garden State Bowl but I lost that tape. I hope to see it again someday.

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I don’t know how Haynes got this Rutgers’ game  (maybe an old recording on a VCR) but I’m glad he did. It was a trip back into a simpler time when a road game meant not a trek across the country but a simple hour drive up Route 95 and 206. It also meant shorter trips to places like Syracuse, Penn State and West Virginia.

Maybe all of these Eastern Regional schools will one day see the logic in forming a football alliance again, but probably not in any of our lifetimes.

It also reminded me of the rivalry Temple and Rutgers used to have and how that Rutgers’ team was able to beat Penn State and Michigan State that year, but not Bruce Arians’ Owls.

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It was abundantly clear how hard-fought that game was and how Bruce Arians’ teams played with a purpose, especially on offense, that made a lot of sense. To me, Arians’ schemes were more sophisticated and effective in 1988 than any of the schemes we’ve seen from Al Golden, Steve Addazio, Matt Rhule and Geoff Collins since.

Hopefully, new Temple coach Rod Carey will bring that kind of gameday expertise back to the Owls and be able to raise the level already good talent here and that will create a domino effect that begets wins and more talent.

That’s the kind of Gold maybe Pat Kraft was prospecting for when he took a chance on Carey.

Meanwhile, finding this precious memory Pure Gold.

Tuesday: The 360 Single Digit Twist

Thursday: The Season Ticket Call

Saturday: Spring Practice To-Do List

02.28.19
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Gabe Infante Hints at New Offense

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National High School Coach of the Year Gabe Infante will have a positive impact on both Temple’s game plans and recruiting

A few weeks back, a writer for Philly Voice named Joe Santoliquito (who I will henceforth drop the journalistic norm and refer to him as Joe in any second reference) made a big splash by spilling some locker room gossip about Carson Wentz.

No names were attached to the quotes in that piece but it got a lot of attention.

Nice story and it got a lot of clicks for a website called Philly Voice but a more newsworthy story Joe did last week received as much splash as a pebble skipping across a puddle on 13th Street.

In other words, none.

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It deserves mention here because it says a lot more about the other Lincoln Financial Field football tenant, Temple University.  Full disclosure here: As a big fan of the Catholic League, I’ve followed Infante’s teams closely over the last decade and I can write without hesitation that it was the best-coached team, college, high school or NFL, I’ve seen in that time frame. Infante will have a positive impact on Temple’s preparation and recruiting, which has been lacking in the past couple of years.

Joe did a story on new Temple running backs’ coach Gabe Infante and, in it, Gabe went on record as saying more revealing than anyone said in that Wentz story: “There’s no chance to catch your breath and learn how to do it, while you’re installing a new offense.”

On the surface, that’s a pretty innocuous remark. Of course, moving to a new job would naturally involve a new offense except for the fact that St. Joseph’s Prep and Northern Illinois ran essentially the same read-option offense a year ago. It was also pretty much the same offensive look Dave Patenaude ran at Temple last year.

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While Prep and NIU had the personnel to run such an offense, Temple does not. The Owls have a classic NFL skill set passer in Anthony Russo and fans had to cringe every time Patenaude was asking a talent like that to slide, which he did rather well.

Maybe this group of accomplished coaches looked at the current Temple personnel grouping and decided to fit the offense around the skills of the players they have and not tried to force a system onto ill-fitting players. The offense Temple should run is the exact same system Bill Belichick ran while leading the New England Patriots to the NFL championship–heavy use of the fullback to establish the run and explosive downfield plays in the passing game as a result of play-action.

Definitely the antithesis of the RPO game and something to look forward to in the weeks ahead.

Joe wrote a story that had a lot more meat to it than his Wentz one because it attached a name to a quote and hinted at real positive change.

We should find out soon enough but, with Infante around, the Owls should be in pretty good shape.

Saturday: Pure Gold

Tuesday: The Annual Season Ticket Call

Thursday: 5 Things to Watch in Spring Practice

 

02.26.19
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Carey Tweets Up a Storm (for him)

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Pedestrian is a pretty good word to describe Rod Carey’s approach to social media.

His twitter account usually consists of shoutouts to the other Temple athletic teams, mostly men’s basketball, and a season ticket promo.

So that’s why when the new Temple football coach came up the tweet at the top of this post it could have raised a few eyebrows and definitely both of mine. Carey isn’t as savvy as Collins was with social media, but Collins wasn’t as savvy on game day as I would have liked. To me, I can do without the social media savvy and if the tradeoff is some good old-fashioned game-day coaching.

I think it is. We will find out not in August against Bucknell (I could probably coach the Owls to a win on that day), but the early part of September.

Since Carey did not specify the reason for being so fired-up, the timeline of the tweet matches up with the Owls getting their first commitment for the 2020 recruiting class and that is Dyshier Clary, a defensive end from Woodrow Wilson High in Camden, N.J. A couple of things here. Clary is 6-3 and 210 pounds and, while the 6-3 part is good for a major college DE, the 210 part is not. He’s going to have to do a lot of filling in and weight training to get up to even what a good AAC DE usually goes but the good news is that he has a senior year to do that.

The best thing about the Carey tweet is some of the responses:

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The above was the first response to Carey, but I’m afraid they are keeping even Temple football coaches out of the loop regarding stadium news. It’s interesting that neither Carey nor Manny Diaz even mentioned the stadium in their pressers while both Matt Rhule and Geoff Collins said they had seen the stadium renderings and “would do everything they could” to make it a reality.  Since we heard nothing from those two, I’m convinced the BOT has either soured on or tabled the entire project indefinitely.

Another fan asked the question: “Is Bryce Harper moving close by?”

My hope was that the Owls dropped Bucknell in favor of an opening-week trip to Rutgers, of course helping the Bison schedule a game with UMass (which is scheduled to play at Rutgers that Friday night).

That would fire me up, but Carey has a whole other set of priorities with building a first full recruiting class so we will just have to settle for that.

For recruiting, as in tweeting, you have to walk first before you run so we can’t expect anything more than pedestrian at this point.

Thursday: New Offense?

Saturday: A Special Trip Down Memory Lane

Tuesday: Season Ticket Push

 

 

02.23.19
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Temple 2019: Upgrading The X’s and O’s

The great Bear Bryant once said: “It’s not about the X’s and O’s, it’s about the Jimmie’s and Joe’s.”

Given Byrant’s six national championships at Alabama, there is a lot of street cred behind that remark.

Still, when it comes to Temple’s football history, if you really look at it, it’s more about the X’s and O’s.

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Mark Bright, a “legacy” recruit, became the MVP of the Garden State Bowl

 

Look at the 1979 team for instance. The above video is the coaches’ game film from the 28-17 Garden State Bowl win over California. (A big thanks to Zamani Feelings for unearthing this pure gold. I once had a copy of the national broadcast of this game but lost it.) In it, you will find a lot of guys who had only one other scholarship offer or none outplaying a lot of guys who were four stars for one of the PAC-10 powers of the day.

None other than Bill Belichick has said that game film illustrated a masterful coaching job by Wayne Hardin that day. “I looked at that a lot and I lot of things didn’t make sense at first, but then rewound it and said, ‘Geez, I knew what Wayne is trying to do there and now it makes sense.’ ”

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Mark Bright was the son of Jim Bright, the starting fullback of the 1950 Owls’ team.

The MVP of the game, fullback Mark Bright, had no scholarship offers out of William Tennent High school in Warminster but Hardin took a flier on him because Mark’s dad, Jim Bright (the then principal at New Hope-Solebury High), was a starting fullback for the 1950 Owls. “At Temple, we take care of our own,” Hardin said the day he signed Mark.

Hardin broke down film as well as he made it mandatory viewing for other legendary coaches and he saw something in Bright’s game that he liked. Same for starting quarterback Brian Broomell, who was recruited out of Sterling High in South Jersey as a strong safety. Broomell was good enough to crack the starting lineup as a true freshman on defense, something that never happened in those days and Hardin, needing a quarterback, converted that athleticism to the offense the next year.

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Other players on that team like linebackers Steve Conjar and Mike Curcio became the Jimmies and Joes under Hardin they probably weren’t before they got to Temple and it all added up to the best team in modern Temple history. Hopefully, with 2019 being the 40-year anniversary of that first bowl win they will be honored at halftime of a game this fall.

That’s where 2019 comes into play. There are a lot of Jimmies and Joes on the team along with the documented fact that Rod Carey is the first proven winning FBS-level head coach to come into the school since Hardin.  Geoff Collins really did not have that kind of knowledge nor did even the Sainted Matt Rhule or the devilish Steve Addazio. Carey is not Hardin, but if he’s even close it’s a significant upgrade in the X’s and O’s department.

Mix the knowledge of X’s and O’s that Carey has with the Jimmies and Joes who have been mostly the product of Matt Rhule’s hard recruiting and this could be a special season. For it to be the most special season of all, this is the minimum benchmark: 11 wins, including a bowl game, and at least a No. 17 or better ranking in both major polls.

The 1979 Temple team proved you needed both X’s and O’s and Jimmies and Joes and it should be fascinating to see if the 2019 team can use that same formula to produce similar results.

Tuesday: Tweet Storm

Thursday: Hinting at a New Offense

Saturday: Season Ticket Call

 

02.21.19
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King Solomon Solution to a King-Sized Dilemma

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Kicking the can down the road has been a hallmark of the stadium issue from a figurative standpoint for seven years. Kicking it down the road literally offers perhaps the best solution to a vexing problem.

If you haven’t heard anything on the stadium issue, there are at least a couple of reasons for it.

One, when Mitchell Morgan takes over for Patrick J. O’Connor as the Temple University Board of Trustees chairman on Aug. 1, that big folder marked “Temple Stadium” will be left on his desk along with another one “candidates to replace Dick Englert.” (Englert has held the job as President since Neil Theobald was let go three years ago.)

If there was every a can kicked down the road, it’s a stadium that was a supposed “done deal” as far back as March 2012 and talked about prior to the Liacouras Center even being built.

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Unfortunately, these guys are still around and it looks like a few Temple fans have switched to their side as former Cherry Crusader Luke Butler is listed as “Interested in going” to this event.

 

That’s a little ironic because the final piece in this puzzle could literally be kicking the can down the road.

Splitting the baby was King Solomon’s solution and the Board of Trustees needs to split this baby as painful as it may be but killing off a perfectly good and nearly brand new $22 million Olympic stadium and putting a $130 million football stadium in its place.

Kick the football stadium can down the road to Broad and Master and return the Olympic sports teams back to their original home, Geasey Field, at 15th and Norris. The neighbors who object so strongly to football lived with the Olympic sports for 50 years at Norris Street without any histrionics so it would be disingenuous to object to those sports returning now.

There are really only two solutions now and the preferable one is admitting that the first mistake was trying to build at 15th and Norris. The university did not expect the kind of opposition it got from neighbors at that location, the same neighbors who never objected to the lacrosse and field hockey teams playing there for almost a half-century prior to this latest fiasco.

The second is dropping the whole stadium issue entirely but, before that happens, all other avenues should be exhausted.

There will still be opposition to the Broad and Master site, but the fact that the university had rather large and working stadiums at that site for the last five years should mollify the opposition somewhat. There’s plenty of room for a football stadium at Broad and Master and the fact that by converting it to a football stadium m48akes it less intrusive, not more, on the community that the three sports currently there. Those fields now were used 48 days for home games in the Olympic sports, while football will only be used for six days or nights.

Plus, Morgan Hall, which is used over 300 days a year, is just next to it and the new BOT chair should know something about that high-rise. It was named after him.

Saturday: The Jimmies and the Joes

02.19.19
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First Sign of Spring: Temple QBs and WRs

 

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There are little indications that give you a hint spring is coming.

One was Groundhog Day earlier this month.

Yesterday was the full squad reporting for the Philadelphia Phillies.

A week ago it was pitchers and catchers.

Soon, March 10, we will move the clocks ahead, one day ahead of the real pitchers and catchers.

This is not official yet, but I’ve been told by reliable sources that the next day we will see the “real” pitchers and catchers–quarterbacks and wide receivers–report with the team to full practices as the Owls gear up for the spring game (April 13, which is official).

It just so happens that pitchers and catchers are probably the strength of the 2019 Owls. In starting quarterback Anthony Russo and backups Toddy Centeio and Trad Beatty, the Owls have set themselves up with pretty solid quality and depth at the most important position on the field. In fact, in my 40-plus years as a Temple fan, I can only remember three quarterbacks of this quality way back in the 1970s when Maxwell Award-winner Steve Joachim led a room that included Marty Ginestra.

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Got to be impressed with any coach who takes pen and paper in hand and sits down to write a note. Nobody does that anymore. Thanks, coach Carey.

Depth-wise, that pales in comparison, though to the catcher part of this equation as the Owls are set with wide receiver starters Sean Ryan, Branden Mack and Isaiah Wright and pushed hard by backups Jadan Blue, Randall Jones and Freddie Johnson.

That’s a lot of depth and one would hope that to strengthen the running back position, new head coach Rod Carey is open to moving a former tailback, Wright, back there to help keep the running game among the best in the league as it has been for the last five seasons.

We should find that out soon and the idea has been proposed to Carey, who like all good coaches, is open to moving players from a position of strength to shore up an area where the depth might not be as impressive.

Meanwhile, unofficially, there has been a lot of pitching and catching at the Edberg-Olson Complex both outside on the field and idea-wise in the coaching offices.

The fruits of that back-and-forth should be unveiled soon.

Thursday: A King Solomon Solution to a King-Size Dilemma