Category Archives: Phil Snow

01.18.13
by

Temple and the coaching dominoes

Bruce Arians’ first HC job was at TU in 1982 and now, 30 years later, gets his next one.

Round and round the coaching Merry-Go-Round goes and where it stops nobody knows.
Well, at least until a couple of hours ago.
For those who have Temple football connections, it appears to have stopped for awhile now.
Former North Carolina offensive coordinator John Shoop is actively seeking a NFL job. If he doesn’t get one, he reportedly told Matt Rhule he will accept Rhule’s offer to be OC.
Geez, I hope he gets an NFL job because I don’t really want someone here who says, “Well, if nothing pans out, I’ll have to take the Temple job, honey.”

Snow’s defenses gave up 44 points per game in 2010 and 38
points per game in 2012.

I’d rather have Marty Mornhinweg. First, he lives here already, his kid went to St. Joseph’s Prep and his presence might beget a five-star quarterback named Skyler Mornhinweg, currently at Florida.
When was the last time Temple recruited a five-star quarterback?
(Answer: Paulsboro’s Kevin Harvey, recruited by Ron Dickerson.)
Instead, Temple fans will end up with a DC, Phil Snow, whose best days were in the last century at Arizona State. Since 1996, his defenses have not posted a single shutout or had more than three games (in 72 tries) of limiting FBS foes to single-digits. He’s lost a lot off his fastball. In Snow, Rhule sees the 1952 Robin Roberts, not the 1967 Roberts, who ended his career with the Reading Phillies. I hope I’m wrong, but I see similar decline in important career numbers with Snow.
I must admit, after hearing names like Bill Cubit, Nick Rolovich and Nick Rapone thrown out there, ending up with Marcus Satterfield and Phil Snow as Rhule’s top two lieutenants is a bit underwhelming.

In the pros, former Temple head coach Bruce Arians landed as head coach for the Arizona Cardinals. To me, that’s the hire of the NFL year and Bruce having coached at Temple has really nothing to do with it.
Was there a candidate out there with two Super Bowls under his belt as an OC, a reputation of turning young quarterbacks into all-pros and someone who turned a losing culture into a winner as a head coach?

I think Rhule is in love with the 2001 Snow, not the Snow of 11 years later. If you take a step back and look at Snow’s resume objectively, he has not done much since 2001. He had a decent year for a non-winning Eastern Michigan team in 2011, but even then the Hurons didn’t limit any offense under double-digits.
I think Satterfield could be very, very good but I don’t know for sure.
But Rhule built that squeaky bed and now he’ll have to sleep on it.
In the pros, former Temple head coach Bruce Arians landed as head coach for the Arizona Cardinals. To me, that’s the hire of the NFL year and Bruce having coached at Temple has really nothing to do with it.


“Coaching is relationship-building
not just great players
but ballboys, managers
kids at Temple that I still
stay in touch with today
and they are my family.”
_Bruce Arians
head coach
Arizona Cardinals


Was there a candidate out there with two Super Bowls under his belt as an OC, a reputation of turning young quarterbacks into all-pros and someone who turned a losing culture into a winner as a head coach?
Other than Bruce, who got his last full-time head-coaching gig 30 years ago, I know there wasn’t.
I can’t imagine Chip Kelly bringing much more than suspect college assistants to Philadelphia.
Arians’ 20 years of contacts is going to build a solid NFL-ready staff and his first staff member is Todd Bowles, a former Owl player of his, as DC.
Good move by Bruce.
Bowles was unfairly blamed for the Eagles’ defensive woes because he inherited a backfield that was on strike and bereft of talent  all season. Bowles will have plenty of defensive talent in Arizona.
Speaking of Bowles, had he been hired as Temple head coach head coach instead of Rhule, his two coordinators would have been Mornhinweg and Rapone. That would have given Temple a guy who posted 11 shutouts since Snow’s last one as DC, an NFL OC and (possibly) a five-star QB recruit.
A little birdie, a red one, told me.
Funny what happens on the coaching Merry-Go-Round before it comes to a complete stop.

01.13.13
by

Meet your new (likely) coordinators


Phil Snow (left) might be looking at Marcus Satterfield to produce gobs of points.


“While at TU, coach Rapone had a string of DBs drafted or going to the NFL. Kevin Ross, Anthony Young, Todd Bowles, Larry Brewton, Terry Wright, Eddie Parker. ‘Nuff said.”
_ Paul Palmer, Heisman Trophy runner-up
Temple University

What if I told you Matt Rhule’s first two coordinators at Temple are responsible for units that allowed and produced numbers of 38 and 28 last year?
“Geez, Mike,” you’d probably say, “I would have liked the defensive coordinator to give up less than 28 a game, but I’m really excited about the OC he’s bringing in who’s putting up 38 per.”
“Try again,” I’d say.
Yeah, it’s the defensive coordinator coming off a season where his unit allowed 38 per and the offensive coordinator who is coming off a 28-point-per-game season.
What’s that Emily Latilla was noted for saying?
“Never mind.”
We’ve gone 2-for-2 with our most recent ahead-of-the-curve hunches (that Nick Rolovich would never show up at Temple and that Chuck Heater would head to Marshall) and, at the risk of sticking my neck out again, I think we’re going to go 4-for-4 in a two-week time frame.
Unfortunately, in this case.
It looks like Marcus Satterfield goes from OC at Tennessee-Chattanooga to the same role at Temple, while Phil Snow goes from Eastern Michigan DC to Temple DC.

Wikipedia is occasionally amusing, as was this last sentence.

I wish I could say Matt was going to do better than 1-for-2 here, but the evidence suggests otherwise.
I’m good with the Satterfield hire. I don’t mind hiring FCS coaches, as long as they are accomplished ones like Marcus Satterfield, who looks like he’s got a solid past and a bright future.
If I were the lone Eastern Michigan fan left, though, I’d send Rhule a thank you card for taking Snow off my hands. Judging from the numbers his most recent team gave up, I think his defensive philosophy is to give up seven as quickly as possible and pray his offense can score eight.
Four-hundred-and-fifty-one (that’s 451) points in 12 games is 38 points a game. OK, make it 37.58 but I’m rounding it out.

Looks like Snow’s defensive philosophy is to give up 7 as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, another FCS coach who is confirmed to have expressed interest in the job, Nick Rapone, probably won’t be hired and the reason we’re told is that Rhule promised the job to Snow, an old buddy from his UCLA days.
I’m all for hiring old buddies, but not old buddies who give up 38 points per game.
Every young man who ever had the good fortune to have played under Rapone at Temple will tell you they love Rapone and Rapone was the greatest Temple defensive coach they ever knew when he was the defensive coordinator for Bruce Arians at Temple. Rapone has continued his stellar coaching at Delaware, being named FCS coordinator of the year as recently as 2010. That was a year his defense gave up 181, not 451 points, in 15, not 12, games.
You do the math.

My fervent hope is that the first time Snow’s defense gives up 38 points, the 25K Temple fans walking out of the stadium that day won’t be saying “we could have had Nick Rapone and instead we have this Eastern Michigan guy”

SINCE he’s a Penn State-person, I’ll give Matt the benefit of the doubt for being, err, Snowed by a bullbleeper. I like Matt. I really do. I freaking HATE this hire. This is not a rah-rah Temple site. I’ll call it as I see it and I just don’t see this. I didn’t see Daz as right for Temple midway through the season and I called it then. I do think Matt can overcome this, but he’ll have to become the DC himself about 2 games into the season. He needs to concentrate on being a CEO and not doing other people’s jobs.
That’s why Rapone would have been perfect. He’s the type of guy you could hire and put the defense on auto pilot. He’s that trustworthy.
It’s a gold mine that Rapone became available for this job. Gold for Temple.
Telling him “I-can’t-hire-you-because-I-promised-the-job-to-a-2-10-coordinator” rates right up there with “the dog ate my homework” on the excuse meter. That’s like Johnny Football reneging on his original commitment to attend Texas A&M to be The Man at Temple, but the coach saying, “Geez, sorry Johnny, we gave our last scholarship to Spencer Reid.”
Rapone is the very definition of Temple-made. Snow is the very definition of bullbleep-made and, as a Temple-made person myself, I have a very good bullbleep-made antenna.

Snow Fun Fact No 1:
Phil’s last shutout as DC was in September, 1996. Chuck Heater had consecutive shutouts for Temple in 2011, while Nick Rapone has pitched six shutouts since 2006

So does every Temple-made person.
Rapone’s only shortcoming in this case was that he didn’t know Matt in the past. That’s Matt’s loss, not  Rapone’s.
If not Nick, why not Tom Bradley who has at least stopped an offense during the last three seasons?
My fervent hope is that the first time Snow’s defense gives up 38 points, the 25K Temple fans walking out of the stadium that day won’t be saying “we could have had Nick Rapone and instead we have this Eastern Michigan guy.”

Snow Fun Fact No. 2:
In the last 70 games Phil has been DC, he’s held FBS teams to single digits just 3 times

Or that the second time Snow gets torched for 38, the 20K Temple fans say the same thing, followed by 15K Temple fans, and 10K Temple fans the third and fourth times.
Don’t blame the kids, either, because Snow will be inheriting the same kids who allowed UConn only 14 points, none after adjustments the DC made at halftime.
Yeah, the same UConn team which beat Louisville and you know what Louisville did.

Former Temple Owls talk Nick Rapone: