Category Archives: Kevin Newsome

05.15.13
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Two Owls who give a Hoot

Chris Coyer at last year’s Big East media day.

There have been times when no one wanted to see them leave the field, Chris Coyer and Kevin Newsome.
Coyer, upon accepting his MVP award at the New Mexico Bowl, and Newsome as arguably the nation’s top player coming out of high school.

Makes the move to tailback.

Now both are among the Temple Owls who swallowed their pride and accepting position changes this fall and, because of that, they exponentially increased their chances of getting onto the field.
Coyer will become an H-Back, more of a tight end than a fullback, ala Evan Rodriguez in his final year at Temple.
Newsome will take his considerable talents to the halfback position.
I root for anybody who puts on a Temple uniform, but I know two guys I’m rooting for more than anyone else this fall.
Chris Coyer and Kevin Newsome.
Because, in a team sport, they did it for the team.
The team.
That’s the most important thing.
Coyer showed that it’s going to work just fine in the spring game, catching a pair of touchdown passes.
Newsome did not get the chance in the spring because of a shoulder injury, but, just from the 44-yard run in the Louisville game last year, he showed top-level tailback instincts.
And if the Owls showed a need in the spring game, it’s for a top-level tailback. Maybe it is Zaire Williams coming into the school in the fall, maybe it’s Newsome, but it’s nice to have options.
When Kevin Newsome first reported to the Edberg-Olson facility last year, he proudly stated: “I’m a Temple Owl for life.”
When Matt Rhule approached Coyer about making the switch to H-back in the final week of spring ball, Coyer simply said: “I’m a Temple guy.”
How can you not root for guys like that?

At the 1:11 time stamp, a song written and performed by the multi-talented Kevin Newsome kicks in ...

03.20.13
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Matt Rhule Bobblehead Day

Fans grab their spots prior to the 1919 C&W game. (Nah, that’s across
the street for a 1919 A’s game at Shibe Park, 22d and Lehigh.)
Sean Boyle a few days
before he signed at
Temple, Feb. 5, 2008

Spring cleaning comes around this time of the year for me.
This year, I found an old Al Golden Bobblehead (see right), an old social security card and re-arranged some of the furniture.
Everything for a purpose.
When I looked at Al’s bobbing head, I remembered how he routinely changed a player’s position for the betterment of the team.
Everything Al did regarding personnel moves was for a reason. I don’t remember a single Al Golden personnel switch that didn’t work out. Al was shaking his head yes while I was thinking that.

Matt Rhule interview today
Please click here to read an interview with Matt Rhule that appeared in today’s Harrisburg Patriot-News.

I’m the same way. I re-arranged my furniture for function, not style. I moved the chairs and the sofa this year so I can get to the door quicker when the Publisher’s Clearing House people arrive in a couple of weeks. (Smile.)
So it goes with position changes for the Temple football Owls. Change for a reason is good change.
Head coach Matt Rhule made one I totally endorse.
Sean Boyle, a long-time starter at center, will move to the right tackle spot vacated by the dependable and graduating Martin Wallace.  That makes a lot of sense. Boyle is the team’s best offensive lineman and will be protecting Chris Coyer’s blind side, plus Kyle Friend proved he’s more than a capable center as a true freshman last season. It’s mind-boggling to think that Sean Boyle signed on Feb. 5, 2008 (not 2009) in the same recruiting class with guys like Adrian Robinson and Mo Wilkerson. His maturity will help this team.
Some other functional changes that could make sense:

Kevin Newsome: Temple Owl Forever

KEVIN NEWSOME (QB to DB) _ It would be a shame if Newsome’s path to get on the field was blocked by Coyer and Juice Granger again, but I see that happening. Newsome is arguably the best athlete on the team and wants to play quarterback.  Unlike Coyer and Granger, Newsome can play another position. I suggest safety. I love the way Newsome said last year: “I’m a Temple Owl until the day I die.” He’s 6-3, 215, runs like a deer and has a 37-inch vertical leap. On third down against Maryland last year, starting strong safety Justin Gildea went up for “jump ball” type plays with taller Maryland receivers on four different occasions. Not surprisingly, the Maryland guys came down with key receptions each time. Gildea was in great position to make the plays but had no vertical. Put Newsome in the same position and those balls either get knocked down or picked.

ALEX JACKSON (TE to DE) _ Jackson has some experience as a DE and maybe it’s time to put him back there. For some reason, Alex could not catch a cold at TE last year and Rhule’s new offensive philosophy minimizes the tight end position.  I do see a guy with his height and speed being a nightmare for opposing quarterbacks. I like it when opposing quarterbacks have nightmares against the Owls. It would be great for Jackson and Sean Daniels to be meeting regularly at the opposing quarterback.

Khalif Herbin could be the
 Matty Brown of the next 3 years.

KHALIF HERBIN (WR to RB) _ Temple already has one great Khalif in a major sport (basketball) and put  this Khalif as a RB and he might be the next. This is the exact same situation Matty Brown faced four years ago. When he was moved to running back from slot receiver, his career took off. Brown was 5-5, 150 at the time and ran a 4.40. Herbin currently is 5-7, 170 and runs a 4.34 40. He’s got the metrics to do it.
Sometimes, you’ve got to re-arrange the furniture for function.
Steve Addazio was too stubborn to do it.
One of the intriguing things about this spring practice that starts on Friday will be finding out if Matt Rhule is as open to change as Al Golden was.
If he is, expect Matt Rhule Bobblehead Day to come sooner than later.

02.18.13
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One fan’s take on how the season will go

The Big East’s original color-coded schedule.

Any day now the Big East will release the schedule for the upcoming football season.
A guess on how Temple will do at this point is just that.
Too soon for me. Last year, I didn’t post my prediction until August and I’ll probably wait until that same time this year.
Too many things can happen between now and then.
That doesn’t mean I discourage other fans from playing a preliminary numbers’ game.
One of those fans, Steve Sipe, actually gave a pretty optimistic rundown below:

Steve Sipe’s early game-by-game analysis. I’ll sign for that now. Unfortunately, Charlie Strong is still at Louisville.

He only has the Owls down for two losses, one by a touchdown to national runner-up Notre Dame, the other at Tommy Tuberville’s Cincinnati.
When it comes to Temple football, I always hope for 12-0 and settle for winning seasons.
While many might view Steve as being a little overly optimistic, I’ll sign for it now.
Maybe that view is tempered by the fact that I had Steve Addazio going a base 6-6 (with a bowl win) or as optimistic as 8-3 in 2012. No way did I ever dream that he would come up with a hare-brained one-dimensional offensive scheme that would add up to 4-7.
Right now, though, I feel better about  Matt Rhule’s offensive acumen but I’m waiting on how the defense shapes up.

Cherry and White Day Special
From Feb. 16 through Cherry and White Day, get this cool Temple Football Forever bumper sticker.
Anyone who contributes at least $20 via the pay pal donation option on the sidebar (in the Support TFF section) or $20 to the P.O. Box address (in the help TFF afford a pair of shoes section) gets this cool bumper sticker exactly as it appears above (3 inches high, 11 inches wide). Please allow two weeks for pay pal orders and one month for postal orders. Thanks.

I feel confident about the kicking game (Paul Layton, Jim Cooper Jr., Nick Visco) and I’m a big Chris Coyer  guy so I feel good about those areas. I would like to see Zaire Williams on the field  but that’s not going to happen until August. I hope Jamie Gilmore has a big spring. He’s the only legitimate tailback on the roster now.  Heck, even fullback Wyatt Benson, the best blocker I’ve seen at Temple since Shelley Poole, might even get a few carries.
If Phil Snow is as good a defensive coordinator as Matt Rhule advertises him to be, maybe 10-2 is a good prediction. I’d love to see Kevin Newsome or Nate L. Smith  roam the middle of the field as a free safety and Kenny Parker moved to strong safety and the Owls go to a 3-4 defense to take advantage of their nose tackle depth (Averee Robinson, Hershey Walton and Levi Brown) and terrific linebacker speed. Sean Daniels is going to have to become the push-rusher I know he can be at one DE and the Owls are going to have to find another speedy pass-rusher on the other side. If all those personnel moves pan out, the Owls could cause enough turnovers to become an efficient, maybe dangerous, Big East defensive team. Right now, without knowing, I have the Owls losing to ND, Central Florida (a better team than Steve might think), Rutgers, Cincy and Louisville for a 7-5 record.
Praying for 12-0, would sign for 10-2 right now and grudgingly accept 7-5 at this point.
Anything less would be disappointing.
Spring practice starts March 22.

11.27.12
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Temple football: The road to Super Phenomenal

One last Temple look at Matt Brown. Something tells me we will see him again playing on a different day of the week.

Interested in keeping Temple Football Forever regularly updated during recruiting season? Please click over the donate button to the right.

Right about now, Temple head football coach Steve Addazio is setting the GPS for the road to Super Phenomenal.
If the Owls get there, it will depend a lot on Daz inputing the right coordinates.
At the very least, you’ve got to figure that Temple is going to be a better football team this year than next.
The Owls played as many as 16 freshmen starters at times this year and a couple of solid teams leave the schedule in Pittsburgh and Syracuse.

Addazio says the team is moving in a “super phenomenal direction” and you’ve got to hope that Daz’s definition of “super phenomenal” is not just five wins next year.
What is my definition of “‘super phenomenal” .. hmm, AT LEAST flipping the 4-7 into 7-5 next year. I’ve never seen a “regular” phenomenal 6-6 team. If “super phenomenal” is, say, 9-3 or better in a couple of years, you’ve got to at least go 7-5 along the way.
Still, though, there are some serious concerns to be addressed before the Owls chose the road that leads them to Super Phenomenal.
Since you’ve got to go with the current roster personnel, I would tweak things just a big to improve the 2013 Owls. I don’t think anybody currently playing in high school is going to make the Owls super phenomenal next year.
My easy fixes:

Looks like the Army Billy Goat followed the Owls from
West Point in this great image captured by Frank Stephens.
The shadow behind John Christopher was not photo shopped.

DEFENSIVE SECONARDY _ Can this be fixed in one year? I don’t know but I would give a serious look to former Rutgers’ recruit Abdul Smith as a cornerback. Unlike the current starter, who was recruited by FCS Hofstra (now without a program), Smith brings solid BCS recruit potential in there and I thought he played very well in his most extended duty, the UConn game. With lock-down cornerback Anthony Robey on the other end, that’s an upgrade. I would give Kevin Newsome the entire spring to become the star playmaking free safety I think he can be and he was proven to be in high school. If the first two QBs get injured, Newsome’s 2012 of being third-team quarterback won’t be wasted and he could fill in as emergency QB. He’s too good an athlete to keep off the field, though.
DEFENSIVE LINE _ Since the Owls appear to be thin there and have plenty of talented linebackers, why not go 3-4 instead of 4-3. With a 3-4 you need to have a good nose guard and I think both Levi Brown and Hershey Walton fit that bill. I would recruit a big, mean, pass-rushing JUCO DE or at least two. Playng a 3-4 allows you to blitz a couple of  speedy linebackers on passing downs, while leaving two back to cover a screen or draw.
OFFENSIVE SCHEME _ I would ditch this run-first approach and rehire Scot Loeffler as offensive coordinator. The Owls’ offense was much more smooth under Loeffler and he was even able to make Chester Stewart effective in the Maryland game by a lot of short rollout passes to the tight end and running backs on first down. That made Bernard Pierce a much more effective back. Daz needs more than a yes man as OC and Loeffler would fit that bill nicely. Without Matt Brown and Montel Harriss, the Owls can’t be one-dimensional. I think Jamie Gilmore and Montrell Dobbs would thrive under a more balanced approach and the Owls have to show future quarterback recruits they are more than ready and willing to throw the football.
That’s how my GPS tells me to get to Super Phenomenal. I hope Daz has the same GPS system.

10.23.12
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The case for the defense

On the touchdown passes in the end zone, you can see Owls around the ball but nobody makes a play on it.

Temple’s defense experienced the worst kind of replay on Saturday, three similar touchdown passes within a seven-minute stretch of the fourth quarter.
For all intents and purposes, the game was over right there, a 21-10 Rutgers’ lead on the way to a 35-10 win.
After giving up two touchdown passes in the first quarter at Uconn, the replays are maddening familiar.
Progress, at least in this case, was the coverage.
If you look at the coverage, Owls are there. On one touchdown, it was a linebacker (Nate D. Smith) and a corner (usual lock-down left corner Anthony Robey, beaten for the first time all season for six). On another, two Owls miss tackles in the open field against Juwan Jamison, one of the best halfbacks in the conference. On another, three Owls are around the ball.
Against UConn, over the middle, nobody was.

Kevin Newsome: Too good an athlete to keep off the field.

Temple defensive coordinator Chuck Heater made the adjustments he needed to make at halftime to close off the middle and the rest of the field. There’s nobody better than Heater making halftime adjustments.
Problem on Saturday was there was no halftime to make adjustments and no offense to make a comeback with.
There would have been an offense if the Owls had thrown on play-action passes on first down in the opening half (see Sunday post below), but 21-10 is too large a deficit for Temple to recover from when facing the No. 15 team in the BCS standings. Throwing is a whole different story when you HAVE to throw the ball. Temple should have mixed it up in the first half, when it didn’t have to throw.
This is about the defense, though.
To me, the solution is simple: Get athletes in there who can make plays and knock the ball down and maybe even intercept it.
They don’t even have to be recruited. They are already here.
Vaughn Carraway, the starting free safety who was suspended for the Rutgers’ game because of a questionable hit (the hit looked OK to me) at UConn, will be back for Pitt.
He’s one of the athletes. I think Carraway makes the tackle on Jamison.
I’d love to see them move Carraway to one corner and move Kevin Newsome, a three-time first-team all-state safety in Virginia, from scout team quarterback to roaming the middle of the field. It’s not like the Owls don’t have Big East talent back there. Carraway, Newsome, Tavon Young, Robey and Abdul Smith are Big East talents. Heck, Newsome (PSU recruit) and Carraway (Michigan recruit) are Big 10 talents. It’s not like the Owls have to play MAC defensive backs against BE wideouts. It’s not like the brain trust at the E-O hasn’t thought about it. Newsome said as much after the Maryland game: “Coach Addazio asked me if I would play either wide receiver or safety and I said I would do anything to help the team.”
The “or safety” comment was the most intriguing to me.
What happened since? I’m told Addazio was not comfortable with only having one spread offense quarterback in reserve should starter Chris Coyer go down. When you are constantly getting beaten on jump balls in the secondary, that’s not a good enough reason for me. Heck, it’s not like if Newsome moves over to defense he won’t be available to play quarterback in a pinch.
Can you imagine how much different it would be on the back-line defense with two 6-foot-3 guys with 4.5 speed  and near 40-inch vertical jumps (Carraway and Newsome) back there to make plays?
We might be talking about three field goals and not three touchdowns.
Even with the Owls’ anemic offensive game plan, we’re also talking about a 10-9 lead going into the final quarter.
And maybe, just maybe, a 3-0 Big East record.
Is it too late to change secondary personnel?
Maybe,  but I think it’s worth a shot even at this late juncture.
Otherwise, get used to more jump balls in the end zone landing in the wrong hands.

09.20.12
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Early forecast for Saturday: Temple sunshine

While the rain won’t be coming into Philadelphia until dinner time, it should be at Penn State by kickoff.

The early forecast is for rain on Saturday during Temple’s game at Penn State.
They might as well call it Temple sunshine.
Before the season, Penn State lost its top running back, Silas Redd, to a USC transfer.
Early reports this week indicate his top two replacements, Derek Day and Bill Belton, are banged up and might not play.

Bill O’Brien answers a question about the availability of top tailbacks Derek Day and Bill Belton.

Conversely, Temple lost its top tailback, Bernard Pierce, to the NFL draft but replaced him with an arguably better version of Pierce in Montel Harris. Also, Matty Brown, not Pierce, was Temple’s No. 1 all-purpose runner last year.
Unlike two Penn State tailbacks, Harris and Brown are 100 percent healthy and ready to go Saturday (ABC-TV, Channel 6).
As good as Pierce was, not even the biggest Pierce fan (err, me) is ready to say that Pierce would have been the second-leading all-time rusher in the ACC had he played in that conference.
Harris was and would have been the all-time leader had he remained at Boston College for his senior season.
History shows rain tends to dramatically reduce scoring and teams that can run the ball and have a good field goal kicker have a major advantage.
Temple can run the ball and its field goal kicker, Brandon McManus, is a darn sight better than Penn State’s (Sam Ficken). McManus is also a great punter and field position could be especially important under adverse weather conditions.
One of the most infamous times Penn State played a home game in a pouring rain and mud at Beaver Stadium, Navy posted a big upset win, 7-6, in 1974, one year after Penn State beat Navy in Annapolis, 39-0. In the rain, maybe it is a 10-7, 6-3 game and not in a 24-21 range. The last time Temple played in a steady rain was a 12-6 overtime loss to UConn during Hurricane Hanna.
I’ve never placed a bet on a Temple game and probably never will (it hurts enough to lose straight up and covering in a loss doesn’t make me feel any better), but it’s something to consider for those so inclined.
The under looks very appealing, Still, I’ll take any Temple win over cashing in at the payout window.

08.21.12
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Newsome: ‘I’m a Temple Owl until the day I die’

“When I was at Penn State ….  I would always look at when we played Temple. They would always get close to us, and I used to see just the fight in these guys, knowing they were the underdogs, and they kept fighting with the big dogs. I thought that was very impressive, really impressive, with their fight. And that was a big deal as to why I came here.” _ Kevin Newsome

Kevin Newsome spoke to the media for the first time after practice on Tuesday and I have to say that I was very impressed. Not only did Newsome come up with the quote of the summer camp “I’m a Temple Owl until the day I die” he opened the door for the possibility of playing on defense and special teams to help the Owls. Go to the 1:50 mark on the time stamp for the exact quote.
Another great quote was this one:

“When I was at Penn State ….  I would always look at when we played Temple. They would always get close to us, and I used to see just the fight in these guys, knowing they were the underdogs, and they kept fighting with the big dogs. I thought that was very impressive, really impressive, with their fight. And that was a big deal as to why I came here.”
I always thought Newsome would make a great starting OLB or  safety for the Owls and I still think that.
Newsome was 240 pounds three months ago and has now slimmed down to 215, which would probably make him a better safety candidate than a linebacker.

Whether head coach Steve Addazio or defensive coordinator Chuck Heater think that is more important.
Everything I’ve been hearing from Addazio so far is that Newsome is in a battle with Juice Granger for the No. 2 quarterback spot. If Addazio thinks it is more important to have three athletic and solid QBs, then Newsome will remain in the QB rotation.
Newsome was Darryl Clark’s backup at Penn State for the entire 2009 season.
Whatever Daz says about this, I agree with but seeing Newsome holding the clipboard as No. 3 QB when he can be a playmaker on defense right away would be frustrating from my standpoint as a fan and maybe Kevin’s as a player.
There’s no law against Newsome playing defense for the Owls this year and moving back to the other side of the ball if needed. Brian Broomell started on defense as a true freshman at safety, then moved over to quarterback by the time he was a senior and led the nation in passing efficiency.

Temple’s Fan Fest is Wednesday
(8/22) from 5-7
at Xfinity Live (outside section).
It’s free but $15 to park due to
Phillies game that night.

I don’t think Kevin would have brought up defense or special teams if he wasn’t being considered for one or both.
We’ll find out in less than two weeks.

Tomorrow: 2011 ACC Preseason Player of Year Montel Harris