Category Archives: K.C. Keeler

02.03.25
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Some great players remain in the portal

Hard to believe the number of very good players left in the college football’s transfer portal and, the longer they stay there, the better the chances for a G5 school like Temple to come away with some.

There’s no secret who new Temple portal expert Kyle Pollock should be targeting because the Owls lost two of their better defensive lineman to both portal and graduation and their offensive line struggled in pass protection last season.

Both need to be resupplied.

The top offensive lineman remaining in the portal is Fa’Alili Fa’amore who is a 6-5, 314-pound junior from Wake Forest. He originally signed with Washington State but moved on to Washington.

C.J. James from UTSA was granted an additional year of eligibility due to the Diego Pavia lawsuit. He’s 6-3, 310 pounds and is familiar with Temple. The Owls lost their starting quarterback to a rival conference school from Texas two years ago so turnabout is fair play. K.C. Keeler has plenty of recruiting connections in Texas so maybe he could pull this off.

Hard to believe the number of very good players left in the college football's transfer portal and, the longer they stay there, the better the chances for a G5 school like Temple to come away with some.
Analysts like Bruce Feldman insist the biggest problem with the transfer portal is the belief among players that they will land somewhere. Nearly 50 percent who enter one year find themselves without a home the next.

Kai Greer (6-6, 285) redshirted this year at Georgia Tech and has offers from places like Liberty and Utah State so Temple should probably throw its hat into the ring for him. Temple beat Utah State, 45-29, last year and Keeler beat Liberty, 20-12, as head coach at Sam Houston State.

Those are just a few of the “types” of lineman Temple can and should go after.

The Owls don’t have the same NIL resources many other schools have but they can offer an opportunity for good players who want to bet on themselves to succeed.

Maybe it’s enough. Maybe it’s not, but we will never know unless we try.

Friday: Signing Day Recap

01.30.25
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Next dozen signees could be key to a bowl game

Quarterback Evan Simon is our Jan. 30 choice as the MVP of the 2025 Temple Owls. Here he is working out earlier this week.

Leave it to a future college football Hall of Fame coach to set the bar high for the 2025 Temple Owls.

“While we’re thinking long-term success in the form of championships, the immediate goal is to be in a bowl game now and we think we can do it,” new Temple coach K.C. Keeler said back in early December.

While the Owls have a lot of holdovers capable of leading the charge to fulfill that immediate destiny (we’re thinking quarterback Evan Simon and running back Torrez Worthy here), what they do in the next dozen signings probably will determine that fate.

Hundreds of really good players remain in the portal and there aren’t enough musical chairs for all of them to receive a scholarship, let alone NIL money, and that’s where Temple has to offer a place to sit.

Look at Matt Sluka, the quarterback who left Holy Cross because he said he was promised $300,000 to play at UNLV but instead got nothing once he landed in Las Vegas. Got to give the kid credit for sticking up for principles and leaving in the middle of the season.

The sensible ones at this stage know the smart move is to find a landing spot where tuition, board, housing and what’s called “Cost of Attendance”–usually a stipend of at least $5,000 a year–is provided to the student athletes.

You know, just like the old days.

The not-so-dirty dozen comes in because the Owls now have at least 12 of those scholarships to dangle and playing for Hall of Fame head coach certainly has its appeal.

Think about it.

In the entire history of FCS football, the No. 1 winner is K.C. Keeler with 171 victories. There is no way with that resume he doesn’t join Pop Warner, Wayne Hardin and Paul Palmer has guys with Temple connections in the College Football Hall of Fame.

On top of that, Keeler is a proven FBS winner at Sam Houston State and he looks to pad that resume at Temple.

We don’t have to tell a guy like that what he needs to do. While the Owls lost their two best linebackers, Keeler already has brought in a linebacker who was captain of the Delaware team and another linebacker who had offers from LSU and Alabama and signed with Michigan State before going to Kentucky last year.

In the pre-portal era, Temple could never dream to sign the latter type of player out of high school.

Now there’s a chance for a significant roster upgrade for this coming season.

Bring some P4 backups and FCS stars in here to rebuild the offensive and defensive lines and away we go.

A dozen should do it.

The rest of the roster is fairly well set and, unlike the last six or so years, the coaching is rock solid.

01.24.25
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Good portal news comes in threes for Owls

Owls getting the work done on Tuesday at The Edberg-Olson Football Complex.

For all of the exciting new additions in the transfer portal for Temple football since K.C. Keeler has arrived, maybe the best news is that some of the current Owls have reconsidered.

Maybe that’s the impression Keeler has fostered over his nearly two months here.

Three pretty good Temple players who entered the portal have done the Prodigal Son thing and returned to the Owls.

Khalil Poteat should be an important part of the defense in 2025.

Good news, as well as bad, comes in threes.

Joseph Auzenne, a defensive lineman who played in 10 games, was the latest to return and told OwlsDaily.com’s Shawn Pastor in a text message on Thursday he was “ready to kick ass for the Owls.”

I like the sound of that.

Countries who had citizens view Temple Football Forever in the last two days. Not shown is Saudi Arabia (one view). We need that guy to make a significant NIL contribution to Temple football.

Also, leading rusher Terrez Worthy dipped his toes in the transfer portal water and decided that it was ice cold and is back to compete for the No. 1 tailback job with Jay Ducker.

The third player who tried the portal and returned was opening day starter at left offensive tackle, Kevin Terry. When the guy the past staff trusts at the most important pass protection position on the team comes to that conclusion, it can only help.

Temple is set at quarterback with Evan Simon, a guy who can win an AAC title, and some pretty good receivers and tight ends. The linebacker room is solid and there is a pretty good group in the back end on defense.

Temple needs to replace the best placekicker in the country and that might be the toughest get.

There are still wants and needs because the offensive line should be upgraded and the defensive line has holes created by the portal, but with 11 scholarships left to dangle in the second portal window, Keeler has some currency for good players running out of options.

The portal has been, at least for the last two years, a buyer’s market with way more players in it than available scholarships. That means some really good players should shake free and fall to Temple.

Whoever does, they should be welcomed by a lot of the guys already here who have bought into this new culture.

01.20.25
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Keeler finally showing his recruiting hand

Jay Ducker appears to be the biggest addition so far for K.C. Keeler.
Ty Davis takes an INT to the house for Delaware.

A lot can change in 12 months.

This time in 2024, Temple football Chief of Staff Marcus Berry was talking about having a “good plan” to upgrade the roster.

We learned then that the plan was rooted in 1980s recruiting philosophy where immediate needs were filled by JUCO transfers. Not surprising because head coach Stan Drayton and DC Everett Withers were assistant and head coaches, respectively, back in the 80s and never changed with the times.

New Temple head coach K.C. Keeler was also coaching Rowan in the 1980s but the difference seems to be that Keeler has adjusted to the current reality of the transfer portal and finding talent at higher levels than JUCO.

New Temple LB Jayvant Brown talks about his offers coming out of high school.

As we’ve been preaching in this space for the last two years, the fastest way for Temple upgrade the roster is at levels higher than JUCO, with a special emphasis on disaffected but good P4 backups and FCS stars.

That appears to be the case with the latest additions.

The biggest addition is Jay Ducker, a proven 1,000-yard FBS back at Northern Illinois as a freshman who Keeler is familiar with because he was at Sam Houston State this year. Ducker, who is 5-10, 205, had 1,184 yards in just his freshman year for NIU.

Temple looks like it landed a pair of cornerback starters in Youngstown State’s Jaylen Castleberry and two-year Hampton starter Omar Ibrahim. Castleberry (6-0, 190) was an All-Missouri Conference performer where he had 50 tackles, including five tackles for losses.

On defense, the new 3-4 will be bolstered by a pair of speedy linebackers, Delaware transfer Ty Davis (6-3, 218) and Kentucky transfer Jayvant Brown (6-0, 225). Originally a Michigan State commit, Brown had offers from LSU and Alabama coming out of high school in Florida.

While Keeler also added a backup RB to an All-American at Stony Brook, and a starting quarterback at Robert Morris, those appear to be walk-ons for depth purposes.

The other guys are potential starters and there is not a JUCO in sight.

That’s a new plan better than the old one.

01.12.25
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Walker should turn the LFF scoreboard into an adding machine

This is the way Montana State plays offensive football and the way Temple will going forward.

After three years of watching Stan Drayton’s offensive coordinator Danny Langsdorf throw 3-yard swing passes on 3d and 5, Tyler Walker’s approach should be like a breath of fresh air.

Walker is Temple’s new OC and he will be joined by offensive line coach Al Johnson.

There are a couple of strong signals in those hires for Temple football fans.

One, there is no indication that either one of those coaches had a prior relationship with new Temple head coach K.C. Keeler. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing, as Drayton showed by his hires that he was more wedded to hiring friends than he was to the overall advancement of the Temple program.

He made one of those friends, Everett Withers, his Chief of Staff and then gave Withers carte blanche to hire a staff that included three of Withers’ assistants at Texas State University. Withers was fired there after a 2-10 season.

Losers beget losing and that’s exactly what happened at Temple.

Huge red flag.

Arthur Johnson and John Frey have to be pleased with K.C. Keeler’s staff additions.

Hire the best people, not the guys that you feel comfortable having a conversation with by the Edberg Olson coaches office water cooler.

Keeler has signaled he is willing to do the former, not the latter. Drayon never did.

Two, the frustrating offensive system that caused Temple fans to pull their hair out is no more. That means a unique RPO game based on establishing the run first and then throwing off fakes to the running backs that results in explosive downfield plays in the passing game.

Too often, especially with immobile quarterback E.J. Warner, Langsdorf tried to force a square peg into a round hole–hoping a short passing game would open up running lanes on draw plays.

That never worked because the Owls could never convince defenses their running game was a threat.

That’s where Johnson comes in because the Montana State offensive line coach and new Temple one, realizes that some beef is necessary to move the ball on the ground first.

Fortunately, he had a mobile quarterback who won the Walter Payton Award as FCS Player of the Year but still that mobile quarterback threw for 29 touchdowns against only two interceptions.

Contrast that to Warner’s best year at Temple–23 TDs, 13 interceptions.

In case you didn’t notice what happened in the NFL on Sunday, winning teams only win when they cut the number of mistakes to as close to zero as possible.

Temple QB Evan Simon may not be as mobile as the Montana State QB, but he has functional mobility and a knack to protect the football.

Even if the Owls don’t get a super mobile QB in the transfer portal, Simon can run this kind of offense and maybe even draw some NFL eyes with it.

Drayton proved that hiring losers begets losing and Keeler is determined to show hiring winners will do the exact opposite. Sounds like a plan.

Friday: High-Profile Reunion

Monday: Five Most Impactful Newcomers

Friday: Wants and Needs

01.05.25
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When your best offer is Tarleton State

One word of caution for Temple players looking to jump into the transfer portal.

Don’t.

By all indications, most especially the eye test, Terrez Worthy was a pretty good player for Temple football this past fall.

Maybe the best from a pure production standpoint.

This is the Tarleton State practice facility (note that tiny building is where the locker room and weight room is).

But he’s getting pretty bad advice from who knows where?

That’s because he’s been in the portal for a few weeks now and the best (only?) offer he has is from Tarleton State.

We had to look up where Tarleton State was and it is in Stephenville, Texas. Its practice facility is a couple of storage lockers and a grass field, while Temple has a $17 million practice facility at 10th and Diamond.

On the field, Tarleton State doesn’t have a TV contract and plays pretty obscure opponents in Drake, West Georgia, Eastern Kentucky, Utah Tech (not regular Utah or Temple opponent Utah State) and Austin Peay. (Worthy also has a scheduled visit to UTEP but that is also a worse program than Temple by any measurement.)

Can’t imagine there’s a whole lot of NIL money available at a school that can barely afford pads and jerseys but there are always players at Temple and pretty much every G5 school who believe the grass is greener on the other side of the 10th and Diamond fence.

It almost never is.

According to a fan post on OwlsDaily.com, these players are among the many who have current Temple offers.

If Worthy’s tale should be anything, it should be a cautionary one. He would be welcome back to Temple if he chose to return and would have the benefit of playing in an NFL stadium in a big-time league with a big-time TV contract and a Hall of Fame head coach.

The point here is that, after three-straight 3-9 seasons, not a whole lot of suitors are going to come after Temple players so those who have scholarships would be wise to keep them and not lose them.

There are plenty of good players in the portal who would love to have a Temple scholarship and a number of them have reached out to new head coach K.C. Keeler first.

The great majority of players who have entered the transfer portal over the last three years–not just at Temple–have not only become homeless but lost a valuable scholarship at a school whose degree unlocks a lot of doors to a promising future.

Cooper Blomstrom, one of the top-rated edge rushers, just posted he has a Temple offer.

Plus, they would be on TV in the fourth-largest market in the nation with a lot more eyeballs on them than they would at a FCS school or a lower-tier FBS one. Many of those eyeballs are NFL scouts.

Got to feel for Worthy in the sense that the past Temple staff didn’t recognize his talent until midway through the season. To have a back like E.J. Wilson starting ahead of him in the first few games was borderline criminal.

That’s also the same kind of talent evaluation that put Forrest Brock as the starting QB ahead of a clear better choice, Evan Simon.

With K.C. Keeler, those days are over and any player lucky enough to have a Temple scholarship would be wise to keep it.

01.02.25
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K.C. Keeler: Trust, but verify

K.C. Keeler’s New Year’s Eve message to Temple fans.

If you had to create a perfect Temple football coach in a petri dish, you would be hard pressed getting the DNA to replicate a K.C. Keeler.

Born North of Philadelphia, had success both East and South of Philadelphia with other teams, intimately familiar with the team in the middle who gave him his only loss in the 1979 season.

Hell, he wanted to go to Temple but head coach Wayne Hardin ran out of scholarships.

Not hard to trust K.C. Keeler as my football coach for the next few years.

That said, as Ronald Reagan might say of the Soviet Union when it made a nuclear weapons sweetheart deal with the U.S., “trust but verify.”

K.C. Keeler said his goal was to be in a bowl game immediately. If so, he needs to upgrade the roster via the transfer portal with about 20 solid FBS/FCS players right now.

For a guy who got a new job in December, he’s been pretty slow to make major moves on the coaching offensive side of the football or the transfer portal.

There are a couple of clues about the verify part.

Keeler hasn’t announced a new offensive coordinator and that might be because one of the leading candidates, a running backs’ coach from Penn State, is currently otherwise occupied. If so, I’m more than willing to wait.

The transfer portal is another story.

Temple has been slow to pull the trigger. Maybe too slow.

Kinda hoping that Al Golden’s first national title was with Temple but, that being impossible, I am literally betting on him to take it all as ND’s DC and I made that bet 14 days ago.

Watching Notre Dame win its quarterfinal game on Thursday night against Georgia, 23-10, it was abundantly clear they did it on the backs of two transfer portal acquisitions: 1) Duke’s Riley Leonard and 2) Marshall’s Jayden Harrison.

Temple fans are all too familiar with Leonard, who led Duke to a 30-0 win over Temple in Stan Drayton’s first game.

Notre Dame went out and got a big-time P4 quarterback in Leonard.

Temple can’t do that but certainly a big-time FCS quarterback is within reach. In my humble opinion, I can ride or die with Evan Simon who has shown he is Temple tough. I can’t depend on either Forrest Brock or Tyler Douglas to be a capable AAC backup. Keeler has to show me he can either convince the Sam Houston starting quarterback to come here to compete for the job with Simon or get me a star-level FCS quarterback to do the same.

I love Evan Simon as my quarterback and I’m sure once Keeler sees him throw a few balls in practice he will feel the same way. The film is the film. All K.C. has to do is to watch the entire Utah State game. If Simon played against UConn, the Owls win by at least two touchdowns. I will never change my mind about that. Simon has been quoted as saying he loves Temple.

(For the record, Simon wins the job in my mind.)

Harrison was the No. 1 kickoff returner in the country for Marshall last year and ended up at ND as a portal transfer. His return the house to open the second half was maybe the key play in a national quarterfinal game. Temple hasn’t had a good kickoff returner since Isaiah Wright was named AAC’s Special Teams’ Player of the Year in 2018.

Does Keeler have to get me the No. 1 FBS kickoff returner in the country?

Hell no.

I’ll take the top FCS kickoff returner. I’ll take the top Division II kickoff returner.

Just don’t give me another JUCO like Stan Drayton has done.

The trust the level with a guy who has done it at Rowan, Delaware and Sam Houston State is off the charts.

The verify level will come with what we see in the next couple of weeks.

Hoping it’s a nuclear-type jawn like Reagan had with Gorbachev but as always in this space we will be honest with what we see.

12.30.24
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What Temple can take from Navy’s win

If Temple can keep a lot of players like Khalil Poteat, it should be OK next season.

About a year and a month ago, Temple got a terrific game from a quarterback and a linebacker and earned a 32-18 win over Navy.

A couple of days ago Navy completed a 10-win season with a win over an Oklahoma team that opened this season by beating Temple, 51-3.

The AAC’s image improved this bowl season. Now it’s time for Temple to contribute to that profile.

If anything, the juxtaposition shows how much fortunes can change in one year.

That’s because the transfer portal system both giveth and taketh away. The schools who decide to build their rosters with high school players will be left behind by the other schools who judiciously scour the portal to upgrade their rosters with 20 or so new players who can compete for starting spots.

So far, Temple head coach K.C. Keeler has talked about building a team through high school players and, as the lady on the video said, “ain’t nobody got time for that.”

Me when I heard K.C. wants to build his roster with high school players.

For now, let’s hope that is all that it is–talk.

However, if Keeler adds a couple of key players from, say, Sam Houston, a few all-star type players from FCS ranks and as many disaffected really good players from P4 schools who can’t get on the field there that’s the formula to do what Navy did–go from three wins (and dominated by a three-win team)–to, if not 10, then eight or nine wins.

Ironically, Navy got better not from an influx of new players but from being able to retain its roster. Temple can do the same but still needs to keep the good players like quarterback Evan Simon and a few others.

On the flip side, the Owls need to upgrade their offensive line with solid players from the portal (be it FCS, Sam Houston or P4) so Simon doesn’t spend next year running for his life.

That’s one of the reasons why the old staff got fired. They relied too much on JUCOs on the offensive line. The one player who fit the profile of the kind of guy they should target, a South Carolina transfer starter, was their most valuable offensive lineman. Really, the only good one.

So Keeler knows what he has to do. Keep a solid chunk of the current roster and upgrade with the top end of the 6,000 or so players who won’t find a home. He already has shown the chops for being able to coach them up.

First, he has to get them to coach them and we’ll be keeping an eye on those developments over the next four or so weeks.

12.27.24
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My Belated Christmas Wish List for Temple

Under this unfair system, the best Temple can hope for is to do what Toledo did on Thursday.

After hearing about 100 good things from new Temple head football coach K.C. Keeler, I’m hoping that two days after Christmas he’s a watch what I do, not watch what I say guy.

That’s it. That’s my entire realistic Christmas Wish List for Temple football.

(The unrealistic part is me winning tonight’s MegaMillions with the numbers 8-13-15-30-55 (6) and donating $100 million to Temple’s NIL football fund so Keeler can get any player he wants. That will only happen if I get struck by lightning and eaten by a shark while holding the ticket and hopefully handing it off to Arthur Johnson on Ocean City Beach.)

Our low/risk, high/reward, picks in college football. Toledo already came through.

The realistic part is watch what I do and not what I say when it comes to Keeler.

Why do I say that?

Heard something in the press conference from K.C. that really concerned me.

He said he wants to build a program with high school recruits.

Hmm.

Not a fan.

Hell, that’s what I would have done a decade ago at Temple.

That’s what Al Golden did. That’s what Matt Rhule did.

Unfortunately, those days are over.

Here’s what happens now if you recruit high school players:

One, you develop them.

If these numbers hit, K.C. Keeler can afford any player he wants at Temple. That’s my promise here.

Two, you lose them.

Developing means that you put them in a weight room for a year, redshirt them that year, play them as a redshirt freshman and–if they blossom–lose them to a Power 4 team by their sophomore year.

The reality in the G5 is that the only way to build a program that wins exciting bowl games (see Toledo’s win over Pitt yesterday) is to get them from the portal on the cheap.

Toledo didn’t beat Pitt with high school players or even JUCOs. Seventeen of the Rockets’ starters in a six-OT win over Pitt came from Power 4 schools where they were stuck as backups and only wanted a chance to show their stuff.

They gave a hometown discount (most were Ohio high school stars) for Toledo in the sense that they weren’t asking for big NIL money but just a chance to get on the field.

That’s the formula for Temple.

Temple cannot win a NIL bidding war with anyone. This is a hardscrabble school in a scrabble town whose grads had to look under beds and in the seams of couches for two tokens to get to school every day.

They don’t own Twitter or Tesla or even Tastykake. They’ve got no money.

That’s where the “watch what I do” part when it comes to Keeler comes in and not the “watch what I say” part. That’s because Keeler built his Sam Houston team not with high school players but great transfers from both FBS and FCS schools and that’s exactly what he has to do here. Because building a program on the backs of high school players is a bad idea at any level today.

Just wish he would have said so in the press conference.

12.22.24
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Clayton Barnes: The Howie Roseman of Temple

When there are 8,000+ players in the portal and only 2,000 or so keep their scholarships, finding 20 or so gems among the other 6,000 is the job for a guy like Clayton Barnes.

Anyone hanging out at the Cherry and White street sign (see above) looking for the white smoke to come out of the top of the Edberg-Olson Complex chimney might be disappointed today.

When the smoke clears, it doesn’t look like Temple football will have its offensive coordinator today or tomorrow.

From what we hear, the Kirk Ciarrocca talks have fallen through because, while Temple paid former OC Danny Langsdorf a half-million dollars to continually throw 2-yard passes, that doesn’t come close to what the Temple grad currently is making at Rutgers.

Meanwhile, an addition that was made last week might be more important.

New head coach K.C. Keeler is bringing in Clayton Barnes to be his “general manager”–the so-called “Howie Roseman of Temple” and that’s been something we’ve been advocating for in this space for the last three years.

Because, while Temple will never be able to offer big-time NIL money, scouring the portal for disaffected P4 players good enough to start at that level but stuck as backup players to future NFL players might be the key to that success.

Barnes, like Roseman, has a keen eye for talent and has been primarily responsible for feeding Keeler the kind of talent that overachieves. Barnes is a Texas A&M graduate who was in charge of evaluating recruits and managing the football scholarships for the past two seasons under Keeler.

He did a pretty good job putting the roster together two years ago and a better job at keeping them together before this current season as Sam Houston State had only one player exit the portal before the opening game, the lowest among all of the 134 FBS teams.

Temple had no such guy under Stan Drayton, instead relying on the staff to evaluate newcomers and sticking with the old model of recruiting high school players and JUCOs.

That was the kind of thinking that led to three-straight 3-9 seasons.

Barnes concentrated on upgrading the Bearkats’ roster with a hefty dose of P4 recruits.

That led to an improvement from 3-9 to 9-3 this regular season and a bowl championship.

That involves not only scrutiny of a player’s football skills but also character.

The football transfer portal is a financial windfall for only the top one percent, who move to the SEC or the Big 10.

Most of the other players are looking for a chance to start and to increase their own football profile, either for the NFL or for a possible move up the latter down the line.

Even more of the players–the great majority–looking for riches and end up out on the street, their scholarships lost and their football careers over.

That’s a lesson worth teaching not only the current Temple football roster but 20 or so newcomers who could upgrade what the Owls have now.

The fact that they have a Czar of the portal probably means the roster will be upgraded for the first time in at least three years, maybe more.

Friday: My Christmas List for Temple Football