Category Archives: Al Golden

09.14.08
by

Prevent defense prevents only winning

By Mike Gibson
Go ahead.
Try it.
Type into Google “prevent defense prevents winning.”
Then type: “prevent defense prevents losing.”
The first search gets you 2,140,000 responses.
The second gets you 274,000.
There’s a reason why there’s such a discrepancy in search results because, maybe, it’s true.
You’ll come up with some interesting search results, too, like the fact that John Madden is widely credited with the origin of that phrase.
In all of my years watching football, I’ve never seen a team lose a game in the final seconds because they blitzed a quarterback and saw him catch them with something underneath the coverage.
Yet I’ve seen too many passes thrown into the end zone with three guys on the receiver where a tipped ball or a freak interference play can win it.
Last year, I saw Brian Griese… Brian FREAKING Griese … take the anemic Bears’ offense 97 yards against the Eagles because Andy Reid sat back in a stupid prevent defense and waited for the Bears beat him.
They did.
On Saturday, on my way to work, I saw Temple sit back in a three-man rush for the final series and wait for Buffalo to beat it.
It had to wait until the final play, but it was inevitable.
I’m not second-guessing now.
I said to everyone within earshot at Maxi’s Bar on Liacouras Walk that the game was over when the Owls went to a three-man rush on the first defensive play of the final series.
“BLITZ!” I yelled at the screen. “BLITZ! BLITZ! BLITZ!”
“C’mon, the best pass defense is putting a quarterback on his ass!” I yelled.
Guess what?
No matter how much I yell, my voice doesn’t carry through a television screen to Buffalo. Only in Poltergeist, but not in real life. This can’t be happening, I said. A coach who has the guts to go for it on fourth-and-1 at his own 34 in a tie game surely has the guts to play just as aggressively on the other side of the ball.
All I could do is turn to the guy next to me and say, “if they don’t blitz, they are going to lose.”
And they did. Hopefully, they learned their lesson.
We’ll see.


A coach who has the guts
to go for it on fourth-and-1
at his own 34 in a tie game
surely has the guts to play
just as aggressively
on the other side of the ball.

Thirty-eight seconds to go and every offensive play Buffalo ran was met with a three-man rush. Drew Willy had all the time in the world to throw.
All … the … time … in … the … world.
Twenty years ago almost to the day, a Temple coach named Bruce Arians almost learned the same lesson Al Golden learned Saturday.
I said almost because he got his wits about him in time to avoid a Temple defeat.
Down 35-30, a Rutgers’ quarterback of similar talent named Scott Erney drove the Scarlet Knights from his own 5-yard line to the Temple 20 in the game’s final minute.
Arians called a timeout and yelled so hard at defensive coordinator Nick Rapone I thought Bruce’s veins were going to burst. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but soon I found out.
Temple went from covering with eight to rushing with eight. Four straight plays, Erney was sacked. It was a jailbreak of Temple defenders and the Owls were loving every defensive call, coming at Erney on all sides. The game ended with a Temple player, appropriately named Swift Burch, on top of Erney at midfield. Four plays. Four sacks. Thirty yards of losses.


There is no doubt in my mind
if Mark D’Onofrio and Al Golden
decided to send more than Buffalo could block,
we’d be talking about how good
that grass stain looked on Drew Willy’s ass
at the end of the game
and not a fluke catch

“If I was going to go down, I was going to go down with my guns blazing,” Arians said, holding the game ball in the locker room afterward.
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” I said then.
That’s what I’m talking about now.
There is no doubt in my mind if Mark D’Onofrio and Al Golden decided to send more than Buffalo could block, we’d be talking about how good that grass stain looked on Drew Willy’s ass at the end of the game and not a fluke catch.
If only my voice could have reached Buffalo. If only they had heard.

07.15.08
by

"How’s Temple going to do this year?"

By Mike Gibson
One of my New York friends, a guy who loves the Yankees named Frank, asked me what is turning into a yearly question the other day.
He usually asks “How’s Temple going to do” but this year phrased it differently.
“How many wins is Temple going to have this year?” Frank asked.
“Seven,” I said.
“SEVEN?” he asked, incredulously. “They haven’t had seven wins total in the last seven years combined!”
(That’s not quite true but it’s what Frank and so many fans believe.)
“Seven,” I said again. “Check back with me in December.”
Now Frank is a very good sports fan, a Giants’ fan as well as a Yankee fanatic.
Strangely, he’s adopted Temple football over the years and has become a closet Owl follower. He went to Pace University and his wife went to Temple.
He pretty much knows everything about every baseball team.
He’ll tell me how many homers Ryan Howard, one of his fantasy players, needs to hit this week so that his team can advance.
On the front porch of his summer place near mine in the Poconos he has a sign that says “Mickey Mantle Way.”
A good, solid, sports fan with impeccable credentials. Yet he shook his head when I said seven.
I meant eight, but I said seven because I didn’t want to hear him follow me in his golf cart yelling while I was jogging and trying to listen to Mike and the Mad Dog at the same time.
Eight, I’m saying now.
I’d love to get greedy and have nine, 10 or 11, but I’ll settle for eight and consider seven OK.
As I turned the bend and rounded the road in the direction of the Blue Ridge Country Club, I thought Frank was pretty typical of the informed sports fan around the country, the kind of guy who just can’t picture Temple winning seven games.
Well, for the first time in nearly a generation, some informed fans and pundits are picking Temple to win seven games. One ESPN insider wrote as much. Athlon’s College football preview also predicted the Owls to win seven games.
Bright, intelligent, objective, people.
They could have chose any team to win seven games.
They chose Temple.
And they don’t see the world through Cherry and White-colored glasses.
You really have to know college football to pick the Owls to win seven games. In fact, you’d really have to be a hardcore college football junkie.

    Here are my simple reasons:

  • 1. Temple really won five games last year. The loss to Big East co-champ Connecticut was a well-documented travesty. Only some UConn fans really believe the myth perpetuated by some that Bruce Francis was juggling the ball. In fact, MAC officials used the side angle those same UConn fans claim showed Francis juggled it to support their apology to the Owls saying their officials got it wrong.
    The MAC officials viewed the play from every conceivable angle, including the Hartford TV station reverse angle, and came to the inescapable conclusion that BF had both the ball and possession. In fact, the ball clung to Francis’ hands so snugly that some claimed he must have had a sticky, glue-like, substance on those gloves.
    Bobble my ass.
    Period, end of story.
  • 2. Temple played the second half of the season without its MVP, quarterback Adam DiMichele. He’s back and better than ever. Check out the scrolling quote of the day on the sidebar of this blog. With DiMichele, the Owls beat UConn and later won three straight games, including a one-touchdown win over a Miami team that beat Syracuse, which beat Louisville (who also, by the way, beat UConn but that’s another travesty for another day). Temple led, 24-7, and physically manhandled Miami before the Redhawks came back to make the score respectable.
    You really have to know
    college football
    to pick the Owls
    to win seven games.
    In fact,
    you’d really have to be
    a hardcore college football
    junkie.
  • 3. Temple won those five games with just 64 scholarship players. This class brings the Owls up to NCAA norms.
  • 4. Temple recruited the best class in the MAC for the third straight year. It’s going to show up on the field. It has to.
  • 5. Temple is now strong in areas where it was weak last season (running back, offensive line) and stronger in areas where it was strongest last season. Remarkably, over the last few days, the Owls picked up a BC recruit, Eric Reynolds, who was considered the No. 1 high school running back in Pennsylvania last season. He might not be good enough to start and I’m serious because in Joe Jones, a kid from Florida who had to sit out a year with an injury, the Owls may have a future pro.
  • 6. Temple had the No. 1 overall defense in the MAC last season. Temple had the No. 1 red zone defense in the country last season. No. 1. Everybody is back from that defense.

I told Frank seven wins because he’s a doubting Thomas for now.
Much like the rest of the unwashed college football country.
That’s OK, though.
It’s going to make those of us who don’t doubt look all that much better once we get a helluva Christmas present under that tree.
Two tickets to a bowl game.
It’s going to happen.
At Temple.