Category Archives: K.C. Keeler

11.09.25
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Time to throw caution (and footballs) to the wind

K.C. Keeler did this interview two days before the Army game and he says better days are ahead, we’re just trying to figure out if those better days are this month or next year.

Over the next bye week, the Temple coaches are going to have to decide how to best get one or two wins in their final two shots.

A defense that allowed only 14 points against Army should be competitive enough.

Trust Evan Simon’s arm to do more than lead the Diamond Marching Band and we might revisit this great moment after the Tulane game.

Remember, this is an Army offense that scored 24 on Kansas State and 17 on Tulane–one of the two remaining teams on Temple’s schedule–so it could be said if they perform that way over the final two games, they put the Owls in a good spot to win one of the two games and become bowl eligible.

There do appear, though, to be cracks on offense and those should be fixable over the bye week.

The Owls so far have maintained a balance of running and passing but maybe after a further review of the situation they should realize how fortunate they are to have a quarterback who has thrown for 22 touchdowns against only one interception and incorporate more of the offense around him. After the Tulsa game, K.C. Keeler said his OC (Tyler Walker) told him he thought the Owls’ offense was better when it was “more aggressive.”

I agree. Yet the Owls’ offense was anything but aggressive in a 14-13 loss at Army on Saturday.

Time to reset that.

Evan Simon, to me, seems to be the type of guy who can turn the scoreboard into an adding machine if he gets the chance and maybe Temple gives him that over the final two games.

We can only hope.

Time to throw caution to the wind and that means filling the air with footballs at least at a higher rate than throughout the season so far.

Unless Kajiya Hollawayne’s four-star arm is broken, I’d like to see him throw one touchdown pass on a reverse before he leaves Temple.

Temple has explosiveness on the edge in players like JoJo Bermudez and Kajiya Hollawayne and reliable pass catchers in Colin Chase and a fantastic tight end room led by Peter Clarke. Hollawayne–a former quarterback at UCLA– should be the guy tossing the throwback pass, not a backup quarterback that the defense can recognize right away. In fact, maybe it’s advisable to ditch that entire Tyler Douglas package.

Maybe instead of handing the ball off to Jay Ducker, Keveun Mason and Hunter Smith, involve those guys more in the screen game to keep the pass rush off Simon and then take some deep shots. Run the ball but make it closer to 40 percent of the time instead of 50. Hell, I wouldn’t mind if it was 30 percent of the time.

This is the kind of approach that both Tulane and North Texas haven’t seen on film and they might not be ready for it. Simon isn’t going to be around forever so Temple should put his ability to good use over the final couple of games. If I’m going to try for a bowl game, I want the ball in the hands of my best player wearing that Cherry helmet most of the time.

It’s worth a shot or the final two games could be a repeat of ECU and nobody wants to see that.

Friday: Avoiding Heartbreak

11.08.25
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Flirting with a bowl game was nice while it lasted

For most of the upcoming bye week, what we are going to be hearing from both the Temple coaches and players (and maybe some fans) is that the Owls can win one of their two final remaining games and reach bowl eligibility.

A lot of people (raising my hand here) who have watched this team know what we saw over the last 10 games and come to a competing conclusion.

The Temple fan section in one end zone at the game today.

The flirtation with a bowl was nice, but it’s probably over.

Nobody would like to see the Owls win one of their two remaining games (hell, both would be preferable) more than me but wishing and hoping isn’t going to make it happen and the Owls’ one-point losses to the service academies set them up for having to beat better teams than both Army and Navy.

That will be a nearly impossible task.

Both the Navy and Army games taught the Owls a valuable lesson in the way to close out a football game going forward.

Had the Owls did against Navy what Army did against them–slide at the 2 and milk the clock to end the game–we’d be talking about which bowl game we wanted to attend. The Navy game, a 32-31 loss, should have been a win had the Owls taken three knees and kicked the game-winning field goal.

Army quarterback Cale Hellums illustrated that point with an exclamation mark when he slid at the 2 in a 14-13 win on Saturday. He could have done what Temple head coach K.C. Keeler elected to do a couple of weeks ago and score but that would have given Evan Simon the same kind of time to beat his team that Keeler gave Blake Horvath and Navy.

It was almost like Cale turned to K.C. and said, “This is what you guys should have done against Navy.”

The Owls played dumb football then. Army played smart football today. The hard reality is for all of the great compliments Keeler had about kicker Carl Hardin is that he missed makeable field goals (45 and 38 yards) against both service academies. Just one would have put the Owls in a bowl game. Keeler said Hardin can hit it from 60, but I’d rather have a consistent kicker from 45 and in than the threat of hitting one from 60. Give me a guy like Cap Poklemba–who went 5-for-5 in field goals at Pitt–over someone who might hit it from 60.

After the Tulsa win, Keeler said OC Tyler Walker told him the Owls’ offense was better when it played aggressive. They were anything but aggressive against Army. They should have thrown downfield on 75 percent of the plays against a team that couldn’t defend the pass.

Instead, they relied on the run way too much. If the Army defense is good at anything, it’s playing against a run they see every day in practice. The few times Temple threw the ball on Saturday it was successful.

Clock management is an important thing going forward for next year not this one because it likely won’t be an issue over the final two games.

What will be an issue in the final two games is the same one we witnessed two weeks ago against East Carolina, a roster gap that can’t be bridged by getting all the injured players back over the bye week. Make no mistake about it, the rosters of North Texas and Tulane are every bit as good as the ECU roster.

After that ECU game, Keeler alluded to that issue by saying “we’re not there yet” in the area of talent.

Expect all the quotes over the next week to be of the “we can do it” variety but the quotes over the two weeks after that being of the “we’re not there yet” realm. Or “those guys have had a couple years to build the roster and we’ve had only one.”

You know what I’d like to hear?

“Tyler said to me we’ve got a great QB so let’s put the ball in his hands the final two weeks and that got us a couple wins nobody expected,” Keeler might say.

Doubt we’d hear anything like that, though.

Damn.

When that happens, the story of the 2025 season will be so close yet so far away. Maybe no more than one foot far right twice with the kicker being it should have never come down to one.

Monday: Caution to the Wind

11.06.25
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Temple-Army: So many ways to look at it

This video proves Temple Owls are everywhere, including being producers at CBS Sports Network.

There are about 17 ways to look at the Temple at Army game Saturday (high noon, CBS Sports Network).

For our purposes here, we will only look at the top two because there is a major drop between those two through 17.

Temple fans will be outnumbered, so it is incumbent among the football sideline Temple Owls to be active and cheering their teammates.

The first one, favoring Temple, is that Army (4-4) has won four games against losing teams and lost four games against winning teams.

In case anyone has forgot, Temple (5-4) is a winning team. Both were blown out against ECU, while Temple had a better performance against Charlotte (49-14) than Army (24-7) did.

The second, favoring Army, is that Temple is terrible against the run and Army has the best run offense in college football, averaging 334.9 yards. Temple has given up nearly 200 yards on the ground per game and its 5.2 yards per carry is the 8th worst in the nation.

I know that. You now know that. Chances are both Jeff Monken and K.C. Keeler–two of the best head coaches in the country–know that.

So we know what Monken is going to do–run the ball and only throw about 10 times or less.

Interesting that Temple was 5-4 against Army between the WWII year of 1943 and Daz’s first year (2011). Temple is 5-4 now.

The Temple numbers are skewed in the sense that the Owls also had to defend the pass in many of those games. Not so much in this one.

Keeler, being as smart as he is and having one of the top defensive coordinators against a triple-option (Brian L. Smith), know what both have to do: Sell out against the run and trust the athleticism of their secondary to defend the rare pass. Try to ball that fist up and punch that ball out every time and win the turnover battle.

The stakes are really high at least for Temple because the Owls need only one win over their last three games to gain bowl eligibility and become one of the top five stories for the 2025 season in all of college football.

Here’s the deal.

Should be a perfect November day for football.

For Keeler, it would be remarkable and illustrate why he is the winningest active head coach in all of college football because of where both teams he coached in the last two seasons currently rest on the FBS landscape.

The guy had Sam Houston as a nine-win team and bowl eligible last year. Now, without him, they are 0-8, while he has Temple at 5-4 and only one measly win away from turning a program that had gone 3-9 for four-straight years into another bowl eligible team.

A loss means falling farther down that hill and having to crawl back up it against far better teams than Army.

It’s not going to be easy because Army has played everyone tough in this league with the exception of ECU.

Our picks this week.

So has Temple.

Something has got to give.

(In case anyone is wondering, one of the 15 other factors is that Temple quarterback Evan Simon has been sleeping at the E-O and watching Army film for the last six days determined to have his usual great game. I’ve been watching Temple football for over 40 years and when I had the great honor to meet his parents before the first home game, the first words I told them were: “I love that kid” not because he was a good quarterback but because he showed me how much he cared when he fell on a fumble against Tulane last year like it was a live grenade. That same caring will go into his preparation this week.)

This, though, is largely assignment for Keeler, Smith and the Temple defense to complete.

Time for this team, especially along the defensive front, to show some Temple TUFF and both tackle well and ballhawk.

If they complete that task, they will come home bowl eligible for the first time in six years. It only seems like 100.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis

11.01.25
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Somebody please bury the White helmets

When Penn State lost at Temple a mere decade ago, James Franklin made the major subject of his Monday press conference burying the game tape.

These helmets look good.

We don’t know where. It might be on a remote farm in State College.

If the Temple football Owls are lucky, K.C. Keeler will find at least a dog park in North Philly to bury about 105 helmets.

All White ones.

I didn’t remember Temple ever winning in the combo of White helmets and Cherry uniforms, but I did a deep dive over four years of American Conference highlight reels and did find one victory in that combination.

These helmets are better carried than worn. They look like total crap and the Owls don’t play well wearing them.

Oct. 19, 2024 when Stan Drayton’s Owls doubled up Tulsa, 20-10, at last year’s Homecoming.

That’s it.

We did find a win over Navy (2023) wearing White helmets with gray jerseys, but only one with White helmets and Cherry tops.

The uniform combination of White helmets and Cherry tops is 1-9 against all competition, most of them Ungodly blowouts like Saturday’s 45-14 loss to East Carolina.

The Owls have won with White helmets and White uniforms (UMass this year) but White helmets with any combination of Cherry are no bueno.

No only does it look like crap, the Owls almost always play like crap with the White helmets.

Now that’s probably not the reason why they played like crap on Saturday–you have to give some credit to the Pirates–but why risk it?

This is the only Temple helmet ESPN Gameday allows on the set.

Take me, for instance. Rocked the Temple No. 1 game jersey for a 55-7 win against Howard and then wore it again against Navy. The Owls looked good and played well in both games (wearing Cherry helmets).

Because of the Navy loss, retired it for this season for the gray Temple hoodie.

Now the gray Temple hoodie is retired, and I will pull out the Cherry hoodie for the Army game a week from now. Had to buy one on the concourse today ($85, 2XL).

At this rate, I will go broke.

Superstition notwithstanding, a great day up until 2 p.m. was ruined by what happened between 2 and 5 p.m. The defense that completely shut down a scoring machine in UTSA either didn’t show up or was too banged up to duplicate that effort.

The Owls were on the precipice of becoming bowl eligible and that’s something Keeler and company embraced that thought all week.

Now the next thought should be to win the next play, the next game, and not look at the scoreboard or the implications of it.

Leave it to the equipment crew to take a sledgehammer to those God-ugly White helmets. It might have had nothing to do with the latest loss, but even to tempt Karma on All Soul’s Day was probably not a good idea.

Monday: Last Chance Hotel

Friday: Army Preview

10.26.25
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K.C. Keeler was right about high expectations

How much of a genius would this guy have looked now if the refs made the right call against Navy?

In a couple of weeks, Temple went from controlling its own destiny in the American Conference football championship picture to needing help to stay in it.

This is exactly the type of thing Temple head coach K.C. Keeler was talking about back in August when asked about the possibility of the Owls getting to a bowl game this year. Keeler said hell with the bowl game, this team’s goal is to win a championship.

This year, not some far-off year in the future.

That raised some eyes in the assembled media who knew the history of four-straight 3-9 seasons, but Keeler wasn’t here then because he was winning championships at other places.

Not all the assembled media raised eyebrows because a New York Post guy named Michael Leboff was buying Temple stock when it was low back on Aug. 14, predicting in the paper that the Owls would win the title.

Only a brutal missed call (among other things) by the refs in the Navy game separates the Owls from controlling their own destiny in the American Conference race. Had the refs seen the Navy guard false start, maybe Navy kicks the extra point or that 3-yard pass for the two-point conversion becomes a much-tougher 8-yard pass that misfires.

Now the Owls can control only what they can control and that’s to win out and let the chips fall where they may.

There is no “easy” path to the championship game but an argument can be made that that, among the one-loss teams, Temple can help itself the most because it has home games against one of the one-loss teams (ECU) and a road game at another, North Texas. They also have a home game against Tulane, which like Navy, is unbeaten in the conference.

Other than what Temple can do, the Owls have to hope that Navy loses twice because that would eliminate the first tie-breaker (head-to-head competition). Then, after … hopefully … beating ECU and Tulane, they have to hope either one of those teams beat Navy or another one-loss team.

That’s pretty much it.

Tough but doable.

If it gets past the first two tie-breakers (head-to-head and computer rankings), that’s where things work against the Owls because of playing two top 25 teams–which most of their competition didn’t do–in the non-conference slate.

While it would be nice to have their fate in their own hands, having of a lot of it now for what Keeler called on Saturday “the stretch run” was something unforeseeable in August but something that Keeler wanted his team to visualize.

If such a scenario comes into focus, that New York Post guy will immediately be inducted into the College Football Prognosticator Hall of Fame for seeing something nobody else did.

Except maybe Keeler.

Friday: ECU Preview

10.25.25
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Learning lessons in a win goes down easier

A couple of weeks ago, the Temple football Owls learned a hard lesson in a bitter loss.

Today, they learned the same kind of lesson in a win, a remarkable 38-37 overtime one at Tulsa that has to rank with one of the top college football games in Week 9.

Give me the second option any day of the week.

Put both lessons up on a blackboard, add one plus two and come up some basic arithmetic that could result in the Owls controlling their own destiny–as much as they can–to get to the American Conference title game.

First, the old news. Temple head coach K.C. Keeler probably learned that taking three knees with a first-and-goal at the 1-inch line and then kicking a field goal with either no (or very little time) on the clock for the bad guys was the preferable option to scoring too soon and giving Navy time to do damage.

Water under the dam and a damn hard way to lose a game.

Today, he learned that trying to reward a guy with a touchdown after a long run is definitely not preferable to giving it to your Mr. Inside (Jay Ducker) after your Mr. Outside (Hunter Smith) put you in a similar spot at the 1-yard line.

That’s why Ducker is Mr. Inside and Smith is Mr. Outside. They both have specific roles on this team and the play-calling took both out of their roles.

Ducker is the inside run specialist but it looked like Temple OC Tyler Walker was trying to “reward” Smith for his effort with a touchdown and Ducker never got back in the game on that series. One, Smith had to be gassed after that long run yet he got the next carry. Two, Ducker is the better runner between tackles.

To me, that was the key to the game being a 31-14 Temple win and a 38-37 Temple win (or worse) because Tulsa made that a 14-point swing. Stopping the “sure” seven of Temple and scoring seven on its own on the next series.

Afterward, Keeler said he was “doing other things” and that Walker was responsible for those four ill-fated calls. That would have made it 21-7, Temple. Instead, the Hurricane used that goal-line stand as momentum to go up, 17-14.

Can’t do that going forward against anyone and, hopefully, this hard lesson was learned.

When the Owls wear Cherry helmets, they usually don’t lose.

Fortunately, the Owls survived because my favorite Temple quarterback (now officially of all time, supplanting Adam DiMichele, sorry Adam), Evan Simon, threw five touchdown passes and, once again, no interceptions.

For those counting, that’s 21 touchdown passes against zero (that’s right, zero) interceptions for the season. Simon is only two touchdowns from tying E.J. Warner’s record for touchdown passes at Temple (23) and is almost a sure bet to eclipse it. Look who is on that list. One, is the son of a Super Bowl winning QB (Warner) and Brian Broomell (who had 22 TD passes) is QB of a Temple team that finished No. 17 in the nation in 1979 and beat two other bowl teams, West Virginia and Syracuse. Another (Steve Joachim, 20 TDs in 1974) only won the Maxwell Award as the best college football player in the nation, beating Heisman winner Archie Griffin.

Now back to Simon, who is going in the books as better than all of them.

This was the sequence that turned a potential blowout for Temple into an overtime game. I get that you are trying to reward a guy who had a 72-yard run with a touchdown but, if after the first play, he doesn’t score, give it to your inside run specialist.

That won’t be the first time he’s ever beaten Warner because, in 2022, Simon was the winning quarterback in a 16-14 Rutgers’ win at Temple. The key play was when Temple’s tiny quarterback tried to throw over a lineman who tipped it and took it the other way for 6.

The hard lesson that day for Temple was if you are a vertically challenged quarterback, don’t throw when a big guy is coming at you with outstretched arms.

The hard lessons the last two times for K.C. Keeler and his staff include a smarter approach when you get to the bad guy’s 1-yard line.

How they apply those lessons will go a long way in determining whether the Owls reach “just” a bowl or something much sweeter.

Much, much sweeter.

Monday: The scenarios

10.24.25
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Keeler has a chance to challenge Hardin’s start

Probably the best look behind the scenes at Wayne Hardin and Temple Stadium that I’ve ever seen.

Only one new Temple coach started his career with the Philadelphia school winning roughly twice as many games as he lost.

That was the great Wayne Hardin, a College Football Hall of Famer who continued his great career here in 1970 and finished 18-9-1 over his first three years at Temple.

Nobody else started at Temple so successfully.

Tomorrow’s high at Tulsa is 59 but there is plenty of wet weather in the forecast.

Not Bruce Arians. Not Al Golden. Not Matt Rhule.

To me, and pretty much everyone else, K.C. Keeler is a sure-fire bet to join Hardin in the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta for what he’s done before he got here.

That was the way with Hardin, too, who had Navy as the No. 2 team in the nation in 1962.

Yet what Hardin did at Temple might have been more impressive.

Same with Keeler at Temple because his best may be yet to come.

Top teams in the country in turnover margin.

Keeler got his 275th career win on Saturday, 49-14, at Charlotte.

In his first season, the Owls are 4-3 with a shot to finish 9-3. Amazing in the sense that they were 3-9 for the last four years and 1-6 the year before that.

Even more amazing that they were only a missed false start away from being unbeaten in the American Conference and having their championship destiny in their own hands.

Now they are going to need help to knock Navy out of a tie-breaker situation.

It all starts on Saturday (3:30 p.m., ESPN+) at Tulsa. Temple has no chance in that game if it is thinking about 9-3 or even looking at the scoreboard.

K.C. Keeler tells the story about being recruited by Wayne Hardin in the late 1970s.

It does have a chance if it does all the “Hardin-like” things Keeler has been preaching all season. One, don’t look at the scoreboard. Two, concentrate on the next play. Three, “do your job” on the next play and not go outside that job by “trying to make a play.”

These things have been what Keeler has been preaching all year and, for the most part, the Owls have answered his prayers.

Saturday at Tulsa will provide a challenge because the Owls will have to overcome some weather issues. There is a good chance of rain, a high temperature of 59 degrees, and even some thunderstorms in the area. That’s advantage Temple because the Owls No. 4 in the country in turnover margin and Tulsa is No. 109. On a rainy day, that ball is slippery and the team who values it most has the advantage.

You can add 4 wins to that total.

The Owls have experience in that area as the home game against Howard was delayed by a half hour by thunderstorms in Philadelphia and the game at Georgia Tech was also delayed by the same thing. The Owls remained focused at home, not so focused on the road, but the lessons learned in Atlanta should be applied in Tulsa.

One game at a time. One play at a time.

Seven years after the above video was made, Hardin had Keeler in his office on a recruiting visit. The Owls ran out of scholarships that day, but Keeler is where he belongs now.

Beating Tulsa tomorrow opens another door. There are four more doors to bust down after that.

A 9-3 start is implausible but not impossible. Wayne Hardin showed the way in 1972.

K.C. Keeler is doing the same almost 60 years later. The fact that the two were in the same room once talking about coming to Temple is a pretty neat thing indeed.

Late Saturday Night: Tulsa Game Analysis

10.20.25
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Tulsa Week: Some solid evidence out there

The guys from The College Football Experience discuss Temple once again.

A year ago, the Temple football program was in turmoil with talk of a leadership change and still was able to beat visiting Tulsa.

By double digits, 20-10.

Each season is a new deal, especially in the era of the transfer portal and NIL and both teams hired new head coaches.

Temple hired K.C. Keeler, a legend, who won his 275th career game on Saturday. Tulsa went the younger route, hiring Tre Lamb, who was head coach at East Tennessee State.

Pretty sure we all know who made the better hire and it wasn’t just because Keeler recognizes that the Owls play and look a lot sharper when they wear the Cherry helmets.

Temple is now 4-3 (really should be 5-2), while Tulsa is 2-5. One of those wins was against Oklahoma State. The other was against Abilene Christian.

Both teams played Navy which is a point of comparison.

Navy went to Tulsa and won, 42-23, while it was lucky (and got some help from the refs) in surviving at Temple, 32-31.

That doesn’t mean Temple is going to win by 20 or so on Saturday (3:30 p.m., ESPN+) but if the Owls dot their I’s and cross their T’s, they should be able to come home with a two-game winning streak.

One, they have a staff that was able draw X’s and O’s well enough to play a competitive game against Navy. Two, Tulsa doesn’t.

Also, unlike that Navy game, the Owls are going to have to be focused in an environment that could put them to sleep.

Now that staff will have to turn its film study to a Tulsa team that likes to throw the ball deep and the fact that the Owls faced a lot of that on Saturday in a 49-14 win at Charlotte should help them adjust. What they have to do is play the ball and not the man because the few times the 49ers were able to move the ball, they were helped by face-guarding penalties against the Owls.

Another good Tuesday practice should help clean up those kinds of mistakes and help the Owls take another step forward.

Wearing the Cherry helmets with the White uniforms again wouldn’t hurt, either.

Friday: Tulsa Preview

10.18.25
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Temple: Killing two monkeys with one rock

Took a philosophy course because I needed an easy elective due to pulling 60 hours a week putting out The Temple News back in the day.

(It was a daily then.)

Had a bearded professor who smoked a pipe in class and described a situation where two problems were solved at the same time.

I raised my sleep-deprived hand.

“You mean, like killing two birds with one stone?”

Chalk up another win to the Cherry helmets, which looked particularly good with the White uniforms today. Let’s keep the best helmets in college football going forward.

The guy with the beard took a puff of the pipe, stroked his beard, waited about 10 seconds, and said:

“What an unfortunate way of putting it, Mr. Gibson, but I guess you are right.”

It’s one thing killing birds with stones and it’s another thing to take out a couple of monkeys with a rock and that’s exactly what Temple’s football team did today.

Two monkeys off the Temple football back. One, the first road win since 2019 and, two, the first time the Owls have won more than three games since the season prior to that one.

All because of a 49-14 rout at Charlotte. (Should have been 56-14 because the Owls fell on a scoop that could have easily been a score, but we’ll let that slide.)

Kyle Pagan of Crossing Broad bet 2x as much as I did way back in July. God bless him and everyone who had confidence in this team.

Important milestones if you put your money where your mouth was back in July, like I did. Way back on May 28, I picked the Owls to win six games and get to a bowl.

When challenged by a poster on OwlsDaily.com about that way back in July, I put my money where my mouth was and bet the over 3.5 wins.

My response to his post was this: “If I had $100,000, I would have bet that but since I only bet what I can afford to lose, I put $50 on the Owls.”

I’m $57 richer today.

Would have been $100K richer if I had the money to bet back then.

My reasoning then was simple: One, the Owls upgraded not only at the head coaching level, but also at the key coordinator positions.

In 2025, I reasoned, the Owls would pick up one or two more wins because they wouldn’t have the plethora of pre-snap penalties they had in the three years under Stan Drayton and the three years before that under Rod Carey.

Building on that reasoning was the way K.C. Keeler approached his important role as CEO of the program, which meant plugging some roster holes with key pieces.

Add those two things and it was easy to come to the conclusion that Temple could make the jump from three to six.

Keeler, in my mind, already has proven himself to be the best head coach we’ve had here since Wayne Hardin. Ironically, that was the guy who told him that we didn’t have enough scholarships for him back in the late 1970s and then turned the conversation to golf.

Keeler didn’t want to talk golf but headed to Delaware.

Now he’s back where he should have been in the first place. In my opinion, he’s the best coach at Temple since Hardin because he’s had to do it with a transfer portal and NIL that Al Golden, Matt Rhule, Bruce Arians and even Hardin didn’t have to deal with. Arians deserves a lot of credit because he had two winning seasons against Top 10 schedules but he got to keep all his players then.

Temple ran into trouble after Golden and Rhule and Keeler has righted that ship.

Killing two monkeys with one stone is impressive enough.

If somehow he is able to run the table with this team and this schedule, a big Gorilla is in sight and that might be an American Conference championship game.

Let’s get greedy.

Monday: Tulsa Week

10.16.25
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Temple-Charlotte: Long past time for a trick play

Halfway through the season one thing Temple fans know about both offensive coordinator Tyler Walker and head coach K.C. Keeler is that they don’t like trick plays.

Walker has shown an innovative offense with a lot of motion that causes both defensive coordinators and defenses in general to scratch their heads.

CBS Sports and Emory Hunt made Temple a highlight game and like the Owls. Great photo of Temple center Grayson Mains here. The Owls’ offensive line led the way for 518 yards of total offense against Navy and deserved the win.

What he hasn’t shown is a “trick play” and, by that I mean, a throwback pass to Kajiya Hollawayne (a quarterback at UCLA), who draws the defense to him and leaves JoJo Bermudez wide open on the other side of the field for six.

Saturday (3:30 p.m., ESPN+) would be a good time to dust that one off because the Owls need a booster shot after being made sick by a heartbreaking loss to Navy.

When asked about trick plays two weeks ago, Keeler said he was hesitant to use them “when we’re not playing well.”

He didn’t say anything about the first play of the game.

Not going to be an easy game for the Owls because it’s Charlotte’s Homecoming in this compact 15,000-seat stadium.

The Owls have played six games and, on five of them, the first play of the game has been a standard handoff to Jay Ducker. I know that. You know that. The bad guys certainly know that.

None of those handoffs have gone for more than 3 yards.

Why not fake that handoff to Ducker, toss a throwback to Hollawayne and have the former UCLA quarterback hit Bermudez in stride for six?

Why not indeed?

This is how wide open JoJo Bermudez would be on a throwback pass from Hollawayne.

That would get the sideline pumped.

Mentioned this to Evan Simon’s dad the last couple of tailgates and he agreed. Also brought it up with Grayson Mains’ dad and he didn’t hate the idea.

Don’t know if these dads enough pull with their kids for them to draw this up in the dirt like a sandlot play but it wouldn’t be a bad idea for this game particularly.

This team is hurting (hell, I’m still hurting) from the toughest of tough losses and getting off to a spectacular start would just be what the doctor ordered.

That doesn’t mean a 3-yard handoff to Jay Ducker.

Showing the world that the Owls have bounced back means a touchdown on the first play of the game. Nothing ventured nothing gained is a great saying for a good reason.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis