Category Archives: Rod Carey

10.31.20
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How Did Temple Get This Bad This Fast?

In any other year, Rod Carey would be on the hot seat at Temple University after a 1-3 start.

As we’ve all found out since about mid-March, this is not just any other year.

In the year of Covid, probably two or three years of it, really, no one is getting fired at any university because the revenue streams coming in are so unpredictable. The Owls are allowed almost no fans this year and next year is up in the air as well.

The university is in the hole for $10 million of a five-year contract to Carey and there is no Lew Katz around willing to eat it.

How did Temple go. in just two short weeks, from the No. 1 team in conference wins (since championship play began in 2015) to a likely 1-7 season?

In a word, Pride. In other, stubbornness.

As King Solomon, a pretty wise guy himself, said: “Pride Goeth Before the Fall.”

In Carey’s case, he had a nice “square peg” offense at Northern Illinois in the RPO and players suited enough for him there to post a 52-30 record as a FBS head coach. When he came to Temple, he found himself with “round hole” players who were more suited to a pro-set offense, and a quarterback who could never sell a defense on a RPO but is damn good at flinging it down the field after the run is established off play action.

Those of us who thought Carey might have been a good hire did so thinking a good coach adjusts his schemes to his available personnel and not try to force an ill-fitting system onto some great players from another system.

I did not see that coming. I thought a professional head coach would be able to improvise and adjust. Carey has not been.

What we learned in Temple’s 38-3 loss to Tulane–a loss that broke an 86-year (five games since the 1934 Sugar Bowl loss) winning streak–was that Anthony Russo is only about 10x a better quarterback than his two backups and that might be a conservative estimate.

Get well soon, Anthony.

Even more than that, though, is that Temple should have been 3-0 coming into the game had the Owls approached the red zone with some simple shit like throwing the fade to Branden Mack on first down instead of dicking around with runs on the first two downs. You’ve got a 6-6 wide receiver and a quarterback more than capable of throwing a fade like this and you piss away two wins by throwing a dump pass short of the goal (Navy) and running straight up the gut followed by a quarterback draw (Memphis)?

This is what Carey should have done for the 2-point conversion at Navy (30-second mark)

If Temple is paying Carey $2 million a year for that, the administration should demand its money back for those two losses alone.

Temple needed a running back and a pass rusher in the offseason but passed up on chances to get running back Ricky Slade from Penn State (who went to Old Dominion) and defensive end Scott Patchan (Miami, who went to Colorado State). Both were arguably better than any player they had here at both positions. Those are administrative errors, but Carey’s coaching errors cost the Owls two precious wins prior to the Tulane fiasco.

Due to missing 13 players (covid) and Russo (shoulder) it is hard to blame Carey for the loss to Tulane but, in the history of college football, rotating quarterbacks has resulted in about zero wins in 1 million games.. That’s why, if Russo is injured, you’ve got about three days to settle on one guy and not use a game as an audition.

This ain’t Hamilton where you audition guys to play the role of Aaron Burr during the play itself.

The Owls have tried two methods of hiring head coaches, one bringing in up-and-coming assistants, and one bringing in a proven FBS winning head coach. They haven’t tried the Greg Schiano Method (hiring a guy who proved he could do the same exact job at a high level), but Al Golden is available. Maybe even a better option is grabbing a local head coaching legend like Gabe Infante, who has been proven to be a great gameday coach.

So far, the prior two methods have been problematic. If Temple goes back to the old way, do you trust Fran Dunphy to identify the next Matt Rhule?

I don’t. Fran is more likely to bring a guy like Bob Diaco than he is a Jeff Hadley.

One led to a revolving door that ended finally after an 18-day turnaround. Another brought in a guy who wanted to do it his way when he was delivered a blueprint for winning at Temple long before he got here.

He ignored it and now we’re stuck with him for three more years. Saturday was ugly, but it’s about to becoming uglier and, unless one of us hits the lottery and are willing to buy him out, we can’t do a damn thing about it.

Brace for impact. To paraphrase King Solomon (and Barry McGuire), we’re on the eve of destruction.

Monday: Fizzy

10.29.20
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TU-Tulane: What we won’t see

No one knows what we will see when Temple and Tulane play in New Orleans on Saturday.

We do know that Vegas believes the game will be decided by around three points and Vegas has usually proven to be right so making a play in special teams for once in Rod Carey’s short Temple life could be the difference between a win or a loss.

.This was just two years ago. It now seems like 200.

Judging on nearly two years of evidence, we do know what we won’t see: An impact play by Temple on special teams. By impact play, it’s simply this: A blocked field goal, punt or return for a touchdown.

It’s as simple as that and as complicated. Penn State might be Linebacker U and Miami (Ohio) might be the cradle of coaches but it wasn’t that long ago Temple was “Special Teams U.”

James Nixon’s 93-yard kickoff return in the 2009 game beat a 10-win Navy team. Delano Green’s punt return in 2010 beat Fiesta Bowl-bound UConn. Those plays were the residue of hard work in training camp below and the coaches putting their most elusive athletes in a position to advance the ball.

Who is the Matty Brown on this team?

Willie Erdman is our Matty Brown this year and that says more about Rod Carey than it says about Erdman. I rarely have to rub my eyes and go to the roster when I see a Temple player but when No. 84 fielded a punt against Memphis I had to ask myself: “Who is 84?”

It turned out to be Erdman, who was profiled on OwlsDaily this week. When I read the lead that he was a transfer from Georgia, I got excited for about a millisecond. “Must’ve been a five-star recruit with moves like Gale Sayers” went through my mind before discovering he was a walk-on with zero punt returns for zero yards at Georgia.

I’m all for transfers from P5 schools coming to Temple, but you can leave the walk-ons there to the Villanovas of the world. If I get a P5 transfer, I want it to be a guy from Penn State, Ricky Slade to throw out a name, who had to transfer to JMU to get playing time despite being the No. 1-rated RB recruit in the country.

Back to Erdman, though. Carey seems to be from the school of thought that just catching the ball and securing it is enough. He doesn’t seem to understand that securing the ball and advancing it are not mutually exclusive concepts.

Where is our Avery Williams?

Williams is shown above blocking a punt. Under Carey, Temple hasn’t even tried to block a punt and no one knows why but a clue can be provided by how Carey approaches the return game. Carey is risk adverse, which means that he’s probably worried more about getting a 15-yard penalty for roughing (or running into) the kicker than he is about, say, Branden Mack using that 91-inch wingspan to leap up and block a punt and then have about 10 other Owls chasing it into the end zone and falling on it.

Again, it’s possible to block a punt without running into the kicker. Temple used to do it all the time. For instructions on how, pick up the phone and ask Ed Foley.

Carey is too proud to do that and too conservative to change his special teams philosophy now. Let’s hope he can make up the three points in other areas but abandonment of one of the three most important phases of the game is not something Temple can sustain.

Predictions this week: Had Marshall laying the 26.5 on FIU but that ticket returned voided due to game being canceled; also was lucky enough to jump on BC getting the 31.5 before the Lawrence injury and picked Georgia Southern covering the 6.5 (barely) in a 24-17 win over visiting South Alabama. Of course, won’t count those so we start at 0-0 with these official TFF picks:

Air Force getting 14.5 against Boise State (any team that beats Navy 40-7 has my respect); going with Boston College now getting “only” 24 against Clemson and Michigan laying the 25 against Michigan State. BC is incredibly well-coached, while Michigan State hiring Mel Tucker coming off a 5-7 season at Colorado was a real head-scratcher to me and that was reaffirmed by Rutgers’ win at MSU last week. Not touching Temple-Tulane (no trust in Temple’s defense or special teams), Memphis-Cincy or Houston-UCF, three AAC games that can go either way.

Update as of 11/1: Lost on both Air Force and Michigan, won on Boston College.

Record so far: 1-2 against the spread.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis

10.24.20
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TU-Memphis: No Mulligans Allowed

There is a school of thought out there that because of a national pandemic things like doing your job correctly should be overlooked.

That maybe this year every coaching staff in America should get a Mulligan and be re-evaluated next season.

Noble, but incorrect because other people in your same profession have no trouble doing theirs. The new head coach at Boston College is doing just fine. The Georgia State coach is doing great. The BYU coach is a sensation.

All have arguably lesser talent than Temple with the possible exception of BYU.

Whether or not Rod Carey is the right head coach for Temple University’s football team going forward is very much an open question.

What we do know based on the evidence of three games is the program is going backward.

In three games, we’ve seen the Owls allow 31 points to a Navy team that scored only 27 on a very bad ECU team, allow 37 points to a team that got beat 42-13 by Tulsa and now made some very questionable moves in a 41-29 loss to Memphis on Saturday.

If you think that’s the Temple football we have all come to know and love, think again.

We said this before the game.

Matt Rhule preached “not beating yourself” but running the ball twice after a turnover that gives you a first down at the 10 is beating yourself. Not doing the basics in the kicking game is beating yourself.

Even the best part of the team, offense, is riddled with coaching mistakes.

In the red zone, the Owls have a ready-made mismatch in 6-6 wide receiver Branden Mack against any secondary. Why not lob it to him in the back of the end zone on the first play after the turnover when the Memphis defense is not set? Your chances are a lot better of a) scoring and b) getting a pass interference that puts the ball on the 1 with a first down than what Carey chose to do. Would Rhule have thrown to Mack?

I bet he would have. That’s why he’s in the NFL and Carey is 0-7 in bowl games.

The Owls missed a chip-shot field goal their first drive. Before the game, Carey said he was “happy” with the kicking game. Any other coach in the United States would look at the results and not only say he wasn’t happy, but that “our kicking game sucks and we need to do something about it.”

Let’s see. After a comical performance in the kicking game the first two games, the Owls not only missed that chip shot field goal but also missed an extra point, had two kickoffs go out of bounds and only by a miracle missed a third kickoff going out.

When you have three kickers on the team and one of them has kicked it out of bounds twice, what do you do? Of course, try another kicker.

Instead, Carey sent out the guy who kicked it out of bounds twice for a try at a third kick out of bounds. Only by some miracle did the ball take a crazy hop and squirt down the sidelines and stay inbounds.

This happens to no other team in America yet Carey tolerates it and has done so for two years.

Sure, Anthony Russo threw three interceptions but one of them was a ball delivered perfectly to Jadan Blue that should have been caught and another came after a brutal non-call on a perfectly-thrown ball to Mack that probably would have led to a touchdown for Temple and robbed Memphis of a touchdown.

That’s a 14-point swing right there and it would have been the difference in the game.

We said before the game that the defense needed to hold Memphis to 28 points or less for the win but because they did not generate even a semblance of a pass rush, they could not.

The kicking and special teams, though, is another story and there is a minimum standard that every team must achieve and Temple is far below that standard.

It has nothing to do with COVID and plenty to do with incompetence and that’s a standard Temple cannot accept but knowing the Temple administration as I do it probably will.

Monday: Fizzy’s Corner

10.12.20
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Fizzy’s Corner: Dissecting The Loss

Editor’s Note: Former Temple football player Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub brings the perspective not only of a player but a lifetime of coaching football, teaching and writing. He breaks down the Navy game here.

By Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub

Well, you saw the game. There could have easily been fourteen more points on the board for Temple, and the two-point conversion call at the end was stupefying. That’s not what I want to discuss. 

     Throughout last season and this year’s first game, one consistency stands out. Temple does not adjust during the game, especially on defense. The game plan you come in with is the plan for the entire game. No matter what.

      Saturday was the worst. With over a month to get ready to play Navy’s triple-option, the plan was an overshifted 4-3 with a defender (nose-tackle) head-up on the center. Guess what? It didn’t work, and Navy ran up and down the field because Temple couldn’t stop the fullback. The only time the defense changed was when Navy had third and/or fourth and short.

 My opinion is that if you stop Navy’s fullback, you destroy their offense. So one different alignment might have a middle linebacker stacked in back of the nose-tackle, and they each blitz the gaps on either side of the center. Another might be two defenders lined up in the gaps on either side of the center. You have to remember that Navy’s quarterback couldn’t run well and couldn’t throw deep. There was no risk.

     After the debacle, Inquirer reporter Mike Jensen interviewed head coach Rod Carey. Carey said the problem was, “Our pad level was too high.” Of all the poppycock excuses I ever heard, this takes the cake. What the hell does that mean? Do you have to get shorter defenders? Carey made no mention of coaching deficiencies. 

     With last year’s defensive collapses in the second half and the poorly designed defensive strategy vs. Navy, one thing is abundantly clear. Temple can’t adjust. What a waste of talent.

Friday: USF Preview

09.07.20
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Did You Ever Get the Feeling?

Figuring out Temple football gave Matt Rhule this kind of living space

Every comedian has a shtick, a routine, style of performance associated with that particular person.

Temple football today reminds me of a 1950s and 60s comedian named George Goebel. He started a series of jokes with “Do you ever get the feeling?”

He had the whole comedy thing figured out in how it would work given his circumstances. He knew the room.

Matt Rhule definitely did not have the Temple football room figured out until after his first two years and, largely to figuring it out, he’s sitting on millions of dollars and, on top of that, trying to sell at $2.5 million home in Waco after moving on to the Panthers.

Rod Carey would do well taking notes.

Do you ever get the feeling that this is the year Carey figures how to succeed at Temple? I have my doubts but we shall see.

How did Rhule figure Temple out? After the first two years, he scrapped the spread and went to a more conventional pro offense using two backs. In this interview with USA Today’s Paul Myerberg, Rhule capsulated the Epiphany beautifully. The scheme fit the school. Temple TUFF, 10th and Diamond, run the ball, with two backs, make explosive plays off the play-action passing game, play great defense and special teams.

This the key quote in that story:

Said Rhule, “How do we differentiate ourselves? How do we make ourselves hard to prepare for? Put two backs on the field. Put two tight ends on the field.

“This is what your roots are. These kids have made themselves really tough. And that’s the only way we’ll ever win. By being a really, really tough football team.”

Let’s analyze that. What does “put two backs on the field” mean? Two halfbacks? Two fullbacks? Three quarterbacks? It means exactly what he did: Put a fullback in front of a tailback, establish the run, bring the safeties and the linebackers up in run support and use deft play-faking to the backs in throwing to wide open receivers for explosive downfield plays. It was what we were pleading for him to do in this space for the first two years of the Rhule Era.

Carey, to me, is a good coach but Rhule made the leap to great when he went from to a more traditional NFL-style offense.

Temple has the offensive line to run such an offense, experienced, talented and averaging 300 pounds across the front. Use, say, Tayvon Ruley (6-0, 216) as a fullback in front of Ray Davis and that’s even an extra blocker at the point of attack for a shifty cutback runner. Throw one more blocker in the area of defenders and Davis has a bigger hole to cut through. The Owls have a quarterback known for an accurate and big arm and not for his legs. Those are the essential elements of a play-action focused offense, not an RPO one. Great coaches adjust to their personnel; they don’t make the personnel adjust to them.

Is Carey comfortable with just good or does he want to be great?

This season Temple fans should find out if the Owls play at least nine or more games. If Carey is still living in a modest home in South Jersey next year and driving a pickup truck, he will have done things his way and gone 4-4.

If, on the other hand, he reads the room better than a year ago, he will be 9-0 or 8-1 looking for a $2.5 million mansion somewhere, maybe even Waco.

It’s the difference between being good and great.

Now let’s go have a season and find out.

Friday: The AAC After Week One

09.04.20
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Special Teams are Like Umpires

Whether he wants to admit it or not, Rod Carey cannot say his special teams by delegation produced better results than any of Ed Foley’s special teams at Temple.

Special teams are like umpires. If you don’t notice them, they are great. If you do, they are like Angel Hernandez.

Terrible.

If you don’t notice them, they are John Libka–generally considered the best balls and strikes umpire in the game today.

Last year, Temple football’s special teams were closer to Hernandez than Libka.

After Brandon McManus kicked this game-winning field goal against UConn, head coach Steve Addazio said: “Our goal was to put the ball in the center of the field and let the best kicker in the country win it for us.” He did.

For about a decade before that, nobody really noticed Temple’s special teams. Maybe not coincidentally, that started in 2009 when head coach Al Golden also assumed the head coach of the special teams’ role.

When Steve Addazio took over for Golden, he promoted tight ends coach Ed Foley who made Temple’s special teams legendary for excellence. Foley was a guy who rose to his level of competence. He’s a very competent special teams’ coach, one of the best, but as an interim head coach he proved to be a bridge too far. There can be little doubt if Foley, say, won either the Wake Forest game or the Duke game as an interim, his chances of being Temple head coach today would have been far greater than they are now.

Last year, in an administrative move, Rod Carey took Foley from the field to an off-the-field role and that caused Foley to go to Baylor and now the Carolina Panthers.

The Owls were the Keystone Cops of AAC special teams and that stung Temple fans were used to Owls making big plays in that third of the game.

“If we’re great on defense and special teams, we’re going to be in every game,” Golden said in 2009. “That’s two-thirds of the team. I really felt that special teams was an area I had to take charge of myself.”

Maybe it was Carey’s fault for letting Foley go. All we know is that, under Foley, the kicking and return coverage games were great. With pretty much the same personnel last year, they were terrible. In order to gain trust of Owls fans, it’s going to have to improve this year.

Will we ever see this stat again under this staff? Got to hope so. In this case, we’re from Missouri (show me state) and they are from NIU.

Last year, the Owls couldn’t make a routine extra point at Cincinnati and that might have cost them the East title. A block was missed. Was that the fault of the new special teams “coaches” (Carey has a couple of coaches in charge)? Maybe not. But it didn’t happen on the regular under Foley.

Under Foley, Isaiah Wright was a dynamic punt and kickoff returner in 2018. Under Carey’s coach by committee in 2019, he was just another guy. Temple always flipped the field on kickoffs. Too often last year, the Owls started drives deep in their own territory. Maybe Foley would have been able to communicate how important it was for Wright to eschew the fair catches for the reward of a big play.

The Owls were aggressive on special teams for a decade, going after blocked punts and field goals. High risk, high reward. The philosophy changed to no risk no reward last year. Disappointing. If you’ve got no athletes, that’s probably the way to go but Temple has always had athletes out the wazoo, notably but not limited to 6-5 wide receivers like Branden Mack with a 91-inch wingspan who liked to block punts. They played scared on special teams. That might be the NIU way but that’s the opposite of Temple TUFF.

Now the rebuilding of the Owls’ special teams begins. The Owls recruited a couple of high-profile kickers and Will Mobley’s job appears to be in jeopardy. Rory Bell has a longer leg (Mobley a very reliable extra point kicker) and a pedigree for success at the high school level.

Looks like to me Bell is the guy for kicking. For punting, Adam Berry had his moments and most were not good. Did not like his body language after failing to field a snap or shanking a punt. Hopefully, he has matured but thanks to recruiting, the Owls now have some other options.

Golden was right. This is 1/3 of the team and deserves attention. It did not get that last year. If the Owls are going to be successful in this department, we will not notice this aspect of the team at all.

Monday: Did You Ever Get The Feeling?

07.06.20
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Recruiting 2021: That’s What I’m Talking About

 

There are none so blind as refuse to see.

The blueprints for Temple football’s decade-long transformation from 2006 chump to 2016 champ were in the Edberg-Olson Complex for all to see and it appears, after some rummaging through the files in the attic, Rod Carey’s staff have found them in one important area: Recruiting.

After a hiatus of Geoff Collins making a failed run through the South to fuel Temple with largely suspects, the Owls have gotten back to the prospect formula that worked so well for Al Golden and Matt Rhule:

Recruit Mid-Atlantic and DMV (Delaware-Maryland-Virginia) hard but, more importantly, get a significant number of players who have Power 5 offers. For Golden and Rhule, that breakdown was roughly this: 10-15 three stars and above with solid P5 offers with the rest of the class at least two stars and trusting the film on the others.

That’s what I’m talkin’ about, Willis.

 

Two stars like Tyler Matakevich (consensus national defensive player of the year as a senior) and Haason Reddick (a first-round NFL draft choice) were coached into five stars by the time they left.

Still, you can’t coach every two-star into a five-star and your chances are a lot better when your base is three.

betting

We won’t get into every recruit, but running back Johnny Martin III is rated near the top of RBs in New Jersey and strong side defensive end Jordan Laudato of West Chester Henderson was rated as high as the No. 2 DE in the state of Pennsylvania. The Owls’ most recent commitment, safety Christian Abraham (St. Joseph’s, Montvale, N.J.) is in the top 30 of defensive players in that state.  Justin Lynch (Mount Carmel, Chicago) is the brother of a quarterback (Jordan) who was a Heisman Trophy finalist at Rod Carey’s former school, NIU. He was the leader of a state championship team in Illinois a year ago. In horse racing, good bloodlines almost always mean triple crown contenders. I like Lynch’s future at Temple. He was one of the few who didn’t have a P5 offer, but his film is among the most impressive.

According to Scout.com, Temple now has 10 “hard commitments” and not a single one is lower than a three-star. Almost all had Power 5 offers (not just interest) in hand by commitment day. That’s the best recruiting start we’ve seen in a long while.

Even more importantly, the Owls have been building trust and relationships centered particularly around running backs coach Gabe Infante. Recruits have gone out of their way to praise Infante and he seems to be thriving in a role once played by Fran Brown.

Friday: One of Dick Englert’s last letters from a fan

06.26.20
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Tulane has the right approach

Tulane v Temple

Temple goes on the road to play Tulane, which has two road P5 games.

Even though Temple beat a very good Tulane team last year, there is no denying the Green Wave is on the rise.

This year, if there is this year, they are poised to take advantage.

Tulane’s non-conference schedule has been ranked No. 1 by college football expert Tom Fornelli in the AAC and that’s probably the model Temple should pursue in the not-too-distant future.

Cincinnati v Tulane

Consider this: Tulane returns 14 of 22 starters from a bowl team and runs a unique zone bluff option type offense that is easier to pass off than, say, Army and Navy. It’s an offense few teams run and makes Tulane a tough team to prepare for in a one-week situation. Most P5 teams go up against a read-option and facing a different style makes it a tough team to prepare against.

Temple used to be that way as the Owls ran power football with a fullback for most of the Matt Rhule and Al Golden years. Since P5 teams didn’t see that style, the Owls had a fair share of success against more talented foes.

This is my favorite Rhule quote about Temple football from a Paul Myerberg piece in USA Today:

“”HOW DO WE DIFFERENTIATE OURSELVES? HOW DO WE MAKE OURSELVES HARD TO PREPARE FOR? PUT TWO BACKS ON THE FIELD. PUT TWO TIGHT ENDS ON THE FIELD. THIS IS WHAT YOUR ROOTS ARE. THESE KIDS HAVE MADE THEMSELVES REALLY TOUGH. AND THAT’S THE ONLY WAY WE’LL EVER WIN. BY BEING A REALLY, REALLY TOUGH FOOTBALL TEAM.”” _ MATT RHULE

Now it appears Tulane has adopted its own way to make it a difficult-to-prepare-for opponent.

Tulane goes on the road against Northwestern and Mississippi State and I like that scheduling. Both are P5 teams but both are beatable and winning those games would be a boost to the entire conference and not just Tulane.

Temple plays a home game against P5 bottom-feeder Rutgers and a road game against much-improved (at least from a personnel standpoint) Miami. However, if the Owls bring that read-option style to Miami with a classic pocket passer in Anthony Russo, they are going to get hammered by outside pass rushers Quincy Roche and Gregory Rousseau, who could both go in the first round of the NFL draft. Establish an inside running game to avoid those two ends and then throwing off play-fakes would probably mitigate the rush. Does Rod Carey go outside of his comfort zone to attack the weakness of his opponent?

We didn’t see much evidence of last in his last game.

Hopefully, his next game plan is the polar opposite of that one.

Monday: Drop dead date

 

05.30.20
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Upgrades and Downgrades

arnold

Arnold Ebiketie (47) is the only returning defensive end for the Owls but Wake Forest transfer Manny Walker has a couple of P5 starts under his belt.

Walking away from the late December debacle Temple football was primarily responsible for, it was pretty apparent that the Owls needed to improve in a couple of areas:

  • Game planning
  • Pass defense
  • Pass Rushing
  • Offensive line

We won’t know about the game planning until about halftime of the Miami game if there is such a game but it is apparent the Owls improved in one of the key areas with the acquisition of a Northern Illinois center and a Dayton guard.

Offensive line.

Michael Niese got his number called on NFL draft day and it wasn’t to be selected but showed him pancaking a defender on the way to a Dayton touchdown while another Dayton guy was drafted. All the reports on Mike are that he is a high Power 5-level offensive guard talent who was stuck in the FCS. He should earn a starting spot for the Temple Owls. He certainly has the size (6-4, 273) to play the position at this level and he was all-conference for Dayton the last two seasons.

He deserves a larger stage and he will get it at Temple.

downgrade

There are plenty of players like that, notably two of the last three quarterbacks who played for North Dakota State. One, Carson Wentz, is playing for the Philadelphia Eagles. The other, Trey Lance, is coming off his first season as a starter with 28 touchdown passes, 2,717 yards, and zero (that’s right, 0) interceptions. That’s insane. If there is anything good about the portal, it’s that Temple can grab good players off FCS squads to help them. Brian Westbrook would have come in handy about 20 years ago for instance.

Temple had a big hole in center when Matt Hennessy went in the third round of the draft to the Atlanta Falcons and did not fill it by spring camp but used the quarantine time to acquire All-MAC center C.J. Perez in the portal. With Niese replacing Jovahn Fair and Perez replacing Hennessy, the Owls not only shored up a couple of positions but allowed for more depth along the line because they won’t have to move people around to fill areas of need.

westbrook

Villanova’s Brian Westbrook representing Temple.

If this gives quarterback Anthony Russo an extra nanosecond in the pocket to make a decision, it’s a big plus. I’ve got to think that Anthony’s 21 touchdowns versus 11 interceptions will improve too, say, 25 and 8, and that would make a difference in the win/loss total.

Their pass-rushing got worse, not better, with the loss of AAC Player of the Year Quincy Roche in the portal to Miami but they did acquire Manny Walker, a DE from Wake Forest, in the portal and Arnold Ebiketie logged a lot of time on the field in the last five games at the other DE. Still, that’s a thin area and maybe some thought of moving Dan Archibong back to end, a spot he started at, could be a consideration if tackles like Kris Banks continue to develop.

Overall, it looks like coach Rod Carey has some pretty good personnel to work with on defense but he must emphasize success in the running game first for both his offense to work and to help keep his defense off the field.

Has he figured this out on his own or is he too set in his ways to change?

We won’t know that for a few months at least.

Monday: A Game to Mark on Calendar

Saturday: Significant Stat Predictions

Monday (6/8): Drop dead date

 

05.23.20
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Recruiting looking up for Carey

National High School Coach of the Year Gabe Infante will have a positive impact on both Temple’s game plans and recruiting

People who were wondering what the Temple football coaches were doing since spring practice was cut short can rest easy now because it’s obvious that they haven’t been.

The Temple coaches obviously have been working and working hard.

Rod Carey dipped into his past to pick up a center and now the Owls have a marquee running back for the future.

The 2021 class now includes one of the best running backs in South Jersey, Blackwood’s Johnny Martin and the Owls were able to land a big-time portal transfer from Northern Illinois, center C.J. Perez, to fit an area of need.

Also, Gonzaga (D.C.) defensive back Jalen McMurray turned down multiple Power 5 offers to attend Temple on a firm commitment (“I won’t listen to other offers”) and Iowa State’s No. 2 quarterback, Re-Al Mitchell, is a portal transfer.

Impressive indeed as I don’t recall even great recruiters like Al Golden and Matt Rhule getting a similar haul in the space of one month. Rod Carey is a damn good gameday coach, even if I disagree with his RPO offense, but him getting players eschewing the Power 5 for Temple was always a huge question for me.

Not anymore.

Already, the recruiting prowess of running backs coach Gabe Infante is starting to show. Infante has been a legendary high school head coach in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey and, when he was hired, it was thought he would be able to bring in a motherlode of talent from both sides of the river.

It took more time than I thought but better late than never.

To me, if Carey ever left, Al Golden would be a nice replacement but Infante might be an even better one. Golden can recruit and CEO but Infante can recruit and game-day head coach way better than Al. CEO? That’s a question but he was a damn good CEO at St. Joseph’s Prep.

It took him a little time to get his feet wet, but now it appears his persuasive powers helped him land someone who a few Power 5 schools were after. Just look at this quote from Martin, as told to 247 sports recruiting guru Brian Dohn.

If the kind of relationship-building skills Infante showed with Martin manifests itself in future recruits, the Owls could be moving up the rankings. Right now, their class is in the middle of the AAC pack (fifth) and they are an unacceptable 83 overall.

Something tells me by filling in areas of immediate need, as with Perez, and future need, as with Martin, the 2021 class will finish closer to 50 nationally and in the top three in the conference when all is said and done.

Not ideal, but you can win with those kinds of numbers, and,  with a head coach with an FBS record of 60-36, you can win a lot.

I’m not asking to win national championships at Temple but I’m asking to win a lot and the month of May, 2020, has been a terrific step in that direction. It’s nice to know the coaches are earning their coronavirus paychecks.

Monday: Suspending Campaigns