Category Archives: Stan Drayton

03.21.22
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Forecasting: Data tops Feelings every time

On the day Stan Drayton signed on the dotted line to be the new head coach of Temple football, the most-often heard question from the fan base was about how fast he could turn around the won/lost record.

Too soon?

Yes, and even now, a couple of weeks into practice, it is too soon to tell.

The reason simple: Data tops Feelings every time.

We’re not talking about Zamani Feelings, the Owls’ terrific team photographer. If a guy named Joe Data tried to match him shot for shot, he’d air ball every photo.

I thought about data while filling out my NCAA brackets last week.

Some Temple football team stats at the end of last season.

When I won the Philadelphia Inquirer’s 2011 NCAA March Madness pool, it was 10 percent knowledge and 90 percent consulting and cross-checking the two full agate pages of every team’s score from every game. I haven’t been able to find a single newspaper that does that since. Holding a couple of broadsheet pages certainly beats going back and forth and clicking on each team.

This “best win, worst loss” capsule is for the birds when back then I could have easily identified five best wins and five worst losses just by turning my head. That really made all the difference. Easiest $2,400 I ever made, non-taxable and delivered in cash in a brown paper bag at Westy’s Tavern, 15th and Callowhill, after the 2 a.m deadline. (It was a very nervous early morning walk over to the parking garage.) Since then, the paper’s staff went from about 500 writers across all departments to about 1/10th that many so I don’t think the current haul compares.

The point is the more data you have at your disposal the better the forecasting.

What we do know about Temple football and the most recent data available is that cross-checking most of it doesn’t bode well for the 2022 won/loss record.

Of the 130 FBS teams, the Owls finished 112th in passing yards, 115th in rushing yards, and 122 in points against. The Owls special teams were 98th.

Ugh, as in ugly.

In other words, Drayton and staff have their work cut out for them this spring.

There is plenty of room for improvement and maybe too much room.

Still, a variable not on any NCAA stat sheet is the era of good Feelings Drayton has ushered in at 10th and Diamond. The Owls have improved the offensive and defensive lines and running game. They’ve probably fallen off in the area of pass receiving, having lost two good players in Jadan Blue and Randle Jones.

They haven’t improved the quarterbacking since they are probably one injury from a complete disaster and probably need to bring in an accomplished QB portal guy sooner than later and those guys are going fast.

While it’s still too soon to forecast any 2022 won/lost record, as Yogi Berra might say: “It’s getting late early.”

Friday: A Tradition Unlike Any Other

03.18.22
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5 Guys Who Should Thrive Under Drayton

During the second half of his third spring ball press conference, only a few sentences in, new Temple head football coach Stan Drayton singled out a position group a lot of fans might not have given a lot of thought to before now.

Tight ends.

https://twitter.com/Temple_FB/status/1503732761294630914

That said a lot because, up until now, wide receiver seemed to be a much deeper position but Drayton bemoaned the early lack of leadership in that group and heaped some praise on the tight ends.

There is some logic to that.

David Martin-Robinson is a 6-5, 255 redshirt junior and has always performed when he number was called. He, in my mind, is a leader. He leads a group at TEs at least three deep who could cause damage to opposing defenses this fall.

So were Randle Jones and Jadan Blue for the wide receivers.

Robinson is one of the five guys who should thrive under Drayton because, even at this early stage in practice, Drayton is understanding a basic philosophy we’ve preached here for over a decade: Coach to the talent you have, not the talent you want.

The coach who shall remain nameless forced round pegs (an NIU system) into square holes (Temple talent) for much of his three years.

Jose Barbon in the 2019 win over a Maryland team that beat Rutgers, 48-7.

Now, at least from what Drayton says, the square pegs are going into the square holes. You read here first that DMR will be a first-team all-AAC player at TE this year.

Here are four others who could challenge for league honors under this sensible system:

Jose Barbon, wide receiver _ The 6-0, 185-pound receiver filled in admirably whenever Jones and Blue went down with injuries over the last two years and caught a lot of difficult balls in traffic. He seems a logical starter at one of the WR positions and should shine.

Ronnie Stevenson, wide receiver _ The Owls have lacked a red zone lob pass threat since Branden Mack left and the 6-5 Stevenson with reliable hands provides that threat.

Trey Blair, running back _ The redshirt freshman was a superstar quarterback at Haverford High and the best punt and kickoff returner in that school’s history. Temple hasn’t had a dangerous punt or kickoff returner since Isaiah Wright was the 2018 AAC Special Teams Player of the Year and there may be a STPY Award for Blair in the future, if not this year, then maybe next. We screamed for Big 33 starting quarterback Jalen Fitzpatrick to throw a pass for Temple in this space for over a year and, when Matt Rhule relented, his first pass went for 86 yards and a touchdown against SMU. We did the same for the last staff with Blair and they were as blind as Stevie Wonder on the specific talent of their players. If Drayton allows Blair to throw a halfback pass, it will be for six. We won’t guarantee it but it’s got a 50/50 shot.

Adam Klein, offensive tackle _ The 6-5, 290-pound redshirt senior from Episcopal Academy has played here on a high level so long consider this: His blocking probably was the key factor in Ryquell Armstrong’s seven-touchdown performance in a 59-49 win at Houston. The RPO system the last guy championed probably didn’t highlight Klein’s run-blocking prowess but the downhill running game that made Drayton a Little All-American at Allegheny College will probably take hold at Temple. He earned his first career start in Sept. of 2018 against Tulsa and has been a fixture on the line since. Downhill blocking in the running game is his forte and that’s a philosophy Drayton can get behind here.

At least we can hope.

More on that after we take in the Cherry and White game on April 9.

Monday: Data vs. Feelings

Friday: A Tradition Unlike Any Other

03.14.22
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5 Newcomers who could make a difference

One of the hazards of being a big college football fan is that, due to the transfer portal, one of your favorite players on your favorite team could be here today and gone tomorrow.

At least that’s what it was under the old guy.

Lancine Turay will also be wearing No. 58 for the Owls.

Temple football, under Stan Drayton, seems to have stabilized things because the new guy has done a pretty good job of bolting the exit door to the Edberg-Olson Football Complex completely shut. Since the PR guys have always done a good job keeping the roster on Owlsports.com up to date, we’re going to assume that everybody who is on paper will show up for practice tomorrow.

Five guys usually don’t make as much of a difference on a 100-man football roster as do five guys on a basketball roster but we’re going to list five newcomers today who could make a big difference for the 2022 Owls. By newcomers, we’re talking about guys who have not seen the field for any significant time so far, even if they have been walking around the practice facility.

In no particular order, they are:

Nazir Burnett, a redshirt sophomore WR _ Since he only played against Wagner, we will call him a newcomer. He played wide receiver for coach Jeff Weachter at Bishop McDevitt in Harrisburg and was rated the No. 24 player in the state of Pennsylvania by 247Sports. With Jadan Blue gone to Virginia Tech, the Georgia Tech transfer should get an opportunity to catch a lot of balls. As a high school senior in 2018, Burnett caught 78 passes for 1,746 yards and an insane number of touchdowns (25). By comparison, the all-time single-season TD record for a WR at Temple is by Bruce Francis (15, 2008), which was the exact same number of TD catches Burnett had as a JUNIOR.

Iverson Clement,, a redshirt junior RB _ Got into a little dispute with the old head coach and strength coach, which is probably a plus and not a minus considering the cancer in the locker room those older guys were. In good graces with Drayton, Clement had 46 career touchdowns and 3,404 yards for his New Jersey High school career before signing at Florida.

Xach Gill, a redshirt senior DT _ Drayton has already noticed the 6-5, 295-pound tackle (hard not to) by singling him out for praise. One of the few Owls who have started a Power 5 game (at Wake Forest and for North Carolina), he immediately upgrades an area of need for Temple. A first-team All-State, he had 18 sacks (not simulated, but real) as a high school senior in North Carolina.

Lancine Turay, a redshirt junior DE/DT _ Another DL transfer from North Carolina, Turay gives the Owls needed size (6-6, 270) and length. Originally out of New Jersey, he’s got good genes as his brother, Kemoko, plays defensive end for the Indianapolis Colts. Lancine was rated as the 32d prospect in the entire state of New Jersey by 247Sports and had nine sacks his senior year.

Darvon Hubbard, a redshirt sophomore RB _ Coming all the way from Arizona by way of Texas A&M, Hubbard might be the fastest Owl since Bernard Pierce brought his state champion 100-meter (10.8) speed to Temple from Glen Mills. He averaged seven yards a carry as a high school senior and is pretty fresh since he only had 99 carries (for over 1,000) yards in his last full year of football. Probably is the best bet to take a long run to the house since the Owls did not get a single one of those from any of their running backs last year.

Friday: Five Veterans Who Should Thrive

03.11.22
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Temple Football: Hope springs eternal

Fall football is the main course, complete with the mashed potatoes, meat and all the sides like tailgating Temple fans have come to know and love.

Spring football is an acquired taste, more like an appetizer than a full meal.

Fans starving for football love both and, for Temple fans, the menu changes starting this morning when the Owls begin a month of drills at the $17 million Edberg Olson Football Complex.

People ask me why I occasionally throw in the price tag of something that started as a significant $7 million investment in 2003 and included a $10 million add-on in 2011.

Simple.

The $10 million addition to the E-O under construction in 2010.

That kind of investment shows the commitment from the top on down at Temple to a winning football program from the Board of Trustees. There are not many current AAC practice facilities better than Temple’s if you include the indoor one at 15th and Montgomery. Add a $200 million commitment to building a football stadium on campus the Temple brass appears all-in on football.

What has happened since the neighbors pushed back three years ago today in a March meeting that was more madness than the NCAA tournament was troubling but the fact that the face of Temple leadership now more reflects the face of the community is a sign that those at the top understand the goals remain unchanged.

Now the football part.

Temple needs to win this year.

You and I and everyone who follows the program know that.

The $17 million (err, $217 million) question is whether the old guy has set things so far back that the new guy can’t make an impact his first year.

That won’t be answered in the next month, but some clues should give an insight into the future.

To me, the biggest key to winning in football is protecting your quarterback and putting the other guy’s quarterback on his ass and Temple did a piss-poor job in both areas last year and, if there is a No. 1 goal of this coaching staff in the next four weeks, it is fixing both.

To me, “simulated pressures” won’t get the second task done but D.J. Eliot deserves a chance to show that philosophy leads to real pressures.

Offensively, the Owls have some talent on the line and should be better able to protect the quarterback if they establish a running game first. Darvon Hubbard and Iverson Clement following an experienced line gives them the chance to do that. Under the last guy, the scheme to run the football behind guys who didn’t have the speed to break a long run was a failed philosophy.

New philosophies will be in place starting today. If there is a real Cherry and White game on April 9 with hitting and long runs, that will be a good sign that Temple TUFF is back.

Light a candle and pray those changes will be obvious once we see a real Cherry and White game for the first time since 2018.

Monday: 5 Newcomers to Watch

03.04.22
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Marching into the most important spring practice

Bad weather was no excuse for the Owls to shut down in the winter of 2017, like it was in the winter of 2021

A year ago at roughly this time, we outlined a rather grim but damn close to perfect 2021 season forecast.

We went through every game and saw only two wins for our most beloved sports team: The Temple football Owls.

We were only off by one game.

The coach who shall remain nameless gets no credit for exceeding our expectations because our reasoning was this: 1) because he brought in only six starters from the transfer portal and needed to bring in 15 starters, he failed in the offseason. 2) He lost the locker room that was already here.

Spring practice begins in a week

Another valued poster here, KJ, chimed in with a 1-11 prediction. I take no joy that I was 33 percent closer to being right than he was simply because the win over Memphis proved to be an outlier. Every other game, even the 41-7 one over Wagner, proved him to be more right than me. (Temple should have beaten the worst team in FCS by 82-7, not 41-7.)

Now what?

Signs of life are beginning to show at the $17 million Edberg-Olson Facility in that the Owls are lifting weights and running at a level we have not seen since Geoff Collins and Nick Sharga practiced in the snow in the January and February of 2017.

What happened then?

The Owls followed up a 10-win championship season with an acceptable but still underachieving 7-6 and a Gasparilla Bowl win over Butch Davis and FIU.

Underachieving because Matt Rhule left Collins with 10-win talent. Acceptable, because Collins was learning how to be a head coach for Georgia Tech on Temple’s time and Temple’s dime and his first-year loss to Villanova was an example of an entrenched good staff taking their ums and beating Temple’s better ums due to a coaching staff learning on the job. The Temple kids deserved better coaching that year.

This much we will give The Minister of Mayhem. His 8-5 in 2018 was way more impressive than the coach who shall remain nameless’ 8-5 the next season. Beating Cincinnati and fewer blowouts were the difference.

My guess and gut feeling is that new Temple coach Stan Drayton is closer to Collins than he is to the nameless guy simply because he got the team to buy in the same way Collins did and the opposite way the nameless guy did. He, unlike nameless, will be learning on the job but he, unlike nameless, has the respect and love of the kids and that cannot be underestimated.

Still, there is a learning curve for him as well. Collins’ curve was high and outside. Let’s hope Drayton’s curve catches the corner of the plate. John Chaney always liked to talk about the known and the unknown. Both Collins then and Drayton now are unknowns and that, at last to me, poses some concern.

Spring practice begins on March 11. It might not be the most important spring practice ever but certainly is the most important in at least five years.

If you see a real Cherry and White game, with hitting and punt returns and football excitement and fewer routine drills, that will be a good sign that 2022 will be closer to 2017 than 2021.

Until then, we will reserve a game-by-game forecast.

What Drayton has done to this point buys him that much wiggle room.

Monday: Outside Noise

02.28.22
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Key to season: Taking care of business now

No pain, no gain at the E-O this winter.

Judging from social media, it looks like the Temple football team has lifted more weights in the last three or four weeks than in the prior full year under the coach who shall remain nameless.

There is a temptation that all these videos coming out of Temple football of the players lifting weights is pure public relations but put it this way: If the Owls were lifting weights like this and as many drills, wouldn’t the staff of the nameless guy want to put it out there?

Yes, just to give the appearance of showing fans he was earning his $2-million-per-year paycheck.

So he either didn’t care to promote what they were doing or they weren’t doing enough.

From the results on the field, the evidence is the latter.

Getting in some speed work.

The real eye-opener for me was the 34-14 loss at USF. The Owls were not only dominated on the scoreboard, they got pushed seemingly 5-7 yards down the field by a very bad team before they could even make contact. It’s almost like they had lifted no weights last winter.

Maybe they didn’t.

They lacked both strength and speed.

They had a cornerback pick up a loose ball and seemingly headed for the end zone only for that cornerback to be chased down from behind by a tight end.

A corner should never be caught by a tight end, especially when spotted 10 yards.

That game more than any demonstrated that big-time college football is a 365-day business and the Owls were not only out of business on game day but did not do enough work on the 300 days preceding the season to be competitive both strength and speed wise.

Now, under new coach Stan Drayton, they seem to be putting in the necessary work.

Now they have to show it. Winning the opener is nowhere near a given–the last time the Owls played Duke they lost, 56-27–but they need to show they can do what a mid-level Conference USA team (Charlotte) did and win there.

Then physically overwhelm UMass and Lafayette and not get embarrassed against Rutgers.

Then, to have a successful season, they had to win three of the last eight.

Tough?

Yes, but doable.

UCF, Cincy, revenge-minded Memphis (with quarterback Sean Henigan), Houston, Cincy and ECU seemed to have lapped them in the last couple of years. Maybe they can steal one of those games, but I doubt it.

They can beat Navy, Tulsa and USF if they put in the work now.

The fact that they seem to be doing it so far gives them a puncher’s chance. They will get a chance to throw a few punches (figuratively, of course) soon enough.

Friday: Spring practice keys

02.21.22
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Now we’ll find out how bad Carey really was…

As the losses piled up and the exorbitant margins added to the pain of losing, one truth was more apparent last year than even the year before.

Rod Carey is a really bad coach.

At least he was for Temple. How he went 52-30 at NIU is a question for another day.

The answer to how bad could come in about seven months when the Owls are finishing up what could be a 3-1 September.

After that, it will be tough to find three wins on the schedule in the last eight because of the way the 2021 Owls got handled by most of the same teams.

Three wins in those eight will be hard but doable.

There are two keys to a successful season:

No. 1, the Owls have to do what Charlotte did last season: Open with a win at Duke.

No. 2, find three wins in the last eight games.

It should not be too much to ask Temple to do what a lower level CUSA team did. If Temple can’t do better than a team that allowed 56 points to Old Dominion, 38 points to Florida Atlantic, 45 points to Western Kentucky and 49 points to Marshall, maybe the Owls should get out of the football-playing business.

The team that gave all of those points away beat Duke.

Temple should be able to as well.

Then the Owls must take care of business in two of three next three games against overmatched foes like Lafayette and UMass.

Beating a Rutgers team that beat them, 61-14, might be a bridge too far but what the Owls do with the momentum of 3-1 behind them might be enough to get three wins in their next eight games.

That (6-6) would be a successful season, especially after 1-6 and 3-9.

Anything less?

That would probably raise serious questions about the future and would not meet even the minimal expectations of success.

The 3-9 probably was worse than the 1-6 because of how the Owls lost those nine games. They weren’t in any of them and probably shouldn’t have been because of the way they were pushed around. They had one historically bad strength coach. Now they have three new strength coaches and 12 months to lift weights and that should show on the field.

They always say the biggest game is your next one and, for this year’s Owls, that’s never been more true. It’s probably the difference between making a bowl or having a third-straight losing season.

If Carey is as bad as we think he was, six wins should be attainable.

Friday: Finding Those Three Wins

Monday: Benchmarks

02.14.22
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Simulated pressure: Something we’ve never seen before

This is how simulated pressures are supposed to work.

In the last two Temple football coaching regimes, Temple went from promising Mayhem on defense to absolutely no pressure on the quarterback at all.

Now Temple fans will get to see something they’ve never seen before: Simulated pressures.

Meh.

To me, I’ve always felt that the best defense is putting the bad guy’s quarterback on his ass and, in the process, hopefully separating him from the football, and picking it up and running the other way for a score. Plus, the benefit of hitting the guy so much is putting his head on a swivel looking for pass rushers instead of open receivers.

That’s the kind of Temple TUFF most fans like to see.

D.J. Eliot is considered a master of simulated pressures.

That was what essentially was promised by former coach Geoff Collins, the self-anointed “Minister of Mayhem” who rarely delivered what he promised.

Collins was the victim of his own hiring process, though, grabbing a guy from Kennesaw State (Andrew Thacker) to run his defense. In fact, his own staff was peppered with FCS coaches who had a hard time adjusting to FBS life. Still, the few times we did see Mayhem, it was a beautiful thing. The Owls had a pair of pick 6s (Christian Braswell and Ty Mason) caused by pressure on the quarterback as well as a Quincy Roche-forced fumble that Karamo Diaboute picked up and took to the house.

Too few and far between.

This is the best example of “real” and not “simulated” pressure.

The guy who succeeded Collins, Rod Carey, made no promises on defense and delivered on that promise.

Now new head coach Stan Drayton is delivering the keys to his defense to a “simulated pressure” specialist in D.J. Eliot.

In terms of points and sacks, they haven’t delivered much in Eliot’s last three stops but he has a chance to draw up the X’s and O’s here in a way that have his linebackers and safeties getting to the quarterback faster than Matt Rhule’s defensive ends did and, if that happens, all will be forgiven.

Just remember that in the greatest Temple victory of maybe all time, the Owls put the bad guy’s quarterback down 10 times and six of those were credited to defensive linemen and only four to linebackers (Nate Smith and three for Tyler Matakevich). The only sack that came as a result of a “simulated pressure” was Smith’s on a two-man rush.

Sometimes the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, which was proven that day.

Another kind of day starts with the opener at Duke and pardon at least one Temple fan for being skeptical at this point.

Friday: Which coaching job is better?

02.11.22
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The Case for the Defense: Keep hope alive

If this win doesn’t give you hope for the Temple defense, nothing will.

Sometimes reading through the bios of Temple coaches, both past and present, provides some useful clues for anyone trying to look into a crystal ball and predict the future.

Having had a course in sports information at Temple to get some insight into the guys I was going to be dealing with for the next several decades in sports journalism, I found out a big part of their job is to put lipstick on a pig.

Maybe D.J. Eliot gets his first career shutout at Duke. We can only hope.

There were two major defensive coaching hires made by Stan Drayton, one I liked and one I didn’t, and the guy I liked went off to the Denver Broncos on Wednesday, and the one I didn’t remains here.

Maybe the silver lining in this development is that the successful guy, co-DC Ola Adams, won’t have to butt heads in the coaching room with the unsuccessful guy, DC D.J. Eliot. Let’s put it this way: If Eliot went to Denver and Adams was elevated to sole DC, I might be more optimistic about the future.

That didn’t happen, though.

Now the show is all Eliot’s. Soon we will find out if it’s a long-running hit or a circus. Logic doesn’t look good but, as the above video indicates, at Temple there is always hope.

Hope doesn’t get me to a bowl game.

So to Eliot’s bio I went. Here are some highlights (my comments are in italics, the other is from Temple PR people):
 
Kansas: In 2020, true freshman cornerback Karon Prunty earned Freshmen All-America honors by 247Sports.com after having the most pass breakups of any true freshman in the country. Additionally, Kyron Johnson earned All-Big 12 Honorable Mention at outside linebacker, along with Prunty. Up front, redshirt freshman Marcus Harris totaled 7.5 tackles-for-loss, which marked the most by a Kansas freshman since 2012.

Err, nice but who did he shut out and how many points per game did he allow? Kansas lost every game that year and gave up 36.1 points per game. Ugh as in ugly.
 
Colorado: Eliot led the Buffaloes to one of the best defenses in the Pac 12. The Buffs ranked fourth in the conference in yards allowed per play (5.24), while tying for fourth with 29 sacks. Colorado also ranked third in opponent third-down conversion rate (36.36 percent) and fourth in red zone touchdowns allowed (51.6 percent).

Fourth in yards allowed and fourth in sacks and fourth red zone touchdowns allowed ain’t going to get it done in the AAC. Temple has got to get guys who were first in their conference, not fourth.
 
Kentucky: Eliot joined the Colorado staff from Kentucky, where he was the Wildcats’ defensive coordinator and linebackers coach for four seasons (2013-16). He helped coach UK to the 2016 TaxSlayer Bowl, the first postseason appearance for Kentucky since 2010. Eliot also helped Kentucky land the 22nd-ranked recruiting class in the nation, marking the first time the Wildcats assembled a Top 25 recruiting class.

In Kentucky’s best season under Eliot, the Wildcats were 7-6 but allowed 42 points to New Mexico State (3-9 that year), 38 points to Mississippi State (6-7), 21 points to Missouri (4-8) and 38 points to the only winning team he beat, Louisville (9-4).

 Those were his most recent stops.

Not exactly, in my mind, the stellar resume I would look for in a defensive coordinator. There’s a lot of “he developed this guy and he developed that guy” in his resume, but I could not find a single team he shut out during his tenure as a defensive coordinator anywhere. For comparison, former Florida and Temple DC Chuck Heater shut out Ball State and Bowling Green in consecutive weeks (not years) for the 2011 Owls.

To me, keeping the bad guys out of your end zone is a prerequisite for being a good defensive coordinator, not “developing guys.” Developing guys for someone else (like the NFL), doesn’t hold the same appeal for me as sacking the quarterback playing against Temple, getting turnovers for Temple and, most important, pitching a shutout against the team Temple is playing that day.

Hell, maybe Adams walked into a room at the E-O and had the same feelings before leaving for Denver. We might never know but now Adams joins Manny Diaz in having the two shortest tenures of any ex-Temple coach.

Maybe this will work out to Eliot’s advantage but hope will have to defeat logic.

It happened for Temple at least once before.

If the 1998 Temple Owls could prove the naysayers wrong in upsetting No. 10 Virginia Tech, maybe Eliot can, too.

Shutting out Duke would almost be as shocking as that win. Maybe more.

Monday: Pressures


 

02.07.22
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American Underdog: We’ve Come Full Circle

Saturday night usually is movie night for me so, being a Temple football fan, I scanned through the new offerings of Amazon Prime and found out I could purchase “American Underdog.”

It was the best $19.95 I’ve ever spent, not quite bringing me as much bang for the buck as the $125 I spent for a bus trip to the AAC championship game of 2016 (that included tickets) but close. Hell, a championship is worth a million, not a mere $125.

With the signing of Elijah Warner less than a week ago by new head coach Stan Drayton, this seemed like a pretty good time to revisit the story of his dad, 2017 NFL Hall of Famer Kurt Warner.

In the movie, it was funny to hear coaches at several levels call Kurt “Pop” referring to one of the greatest coaches of all time who made two schools (Temple and Stanford) famous for football back in the day. We’ve come full circle now that his kid has “fallen in love” with Temple, whose President played football at Stanford. His winning Super Bowl coach with the Rams was Dick Vermeil, a West Coast guy who fell in love with Philadelphia and still lives a figurative stone’s throw away from Temple.

Vermeil believed in Kurt, a true American Underdog who was bagging groceries at the Iowa equivalent of “The Ac-a-Me” (or Shop-Rite) before the Rams signed him.

Kurt, Elijah and Brenda on signing day.

Evidently, others believe with me. The movie gets a solid 75 percent from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, beating by almost 20 points my second favorite movie of this calendar year “Don’t Look Up” which has quite a few more A-list stars. The 98 percent rating from viewers is off the charts.

It’s easy to see why.

American Underdog was extremely well done and should resonate well here, not just because of the Temple/Warner/Vermeil/Philadelphia angle.

There are so many wired storylines in this family, Philadelphia, and Temple to shut down a Texas power grid.

Something tells me this “Warner Era” at Temple is going to work out. Elijah, like Kurt, experienced his share of rejection along the way, only to be told by other schools he was “their guy” one day who then called that they signed another guy the next day. Drayton said he liked Elijah because he had that same “chip on his shoulder” his dad did after getting rebuffed by the Packers only to prove himself in the Arena Football League and again with the Rams.

In that case, Drayton might be Temple’s Dick Vermeil.

As a big recent fan of thoroughbred horse racing, I’ve long been a believer in bloodlines of champions. The best horse in the business right now is named Flightline, who is the product of the great Tapit. Temple is the one school that has success with bloodlines. Temple NG Joe Klecko’s son, Dan, was Big East defensive MVP at Temple. Jim Bright, a 1950 fullback with the Owls, sired a 1979 Garden State bowl MVP, Mark Bright, also a fullback. Zach Dixon, a terrific 1,000-yard running back with the 1978 Owls, sired future NFL defensive end Raheem Brock.

Now we get to adopt a Northern Iowa son, just like Kurt adopted Brenda’s son, Zach, in the movie. (If the “I pick you” line doesn’t get you in the feels, you don’t have tear ducts.)

Unless the son of John Elway, Dan Marino or even Tom Brady walk through the E-O door, Temple is going to do no better from a gene pool standpoint than Warner.

Not many schools are.

I’ve never seen his mom throw a football but I’ve seen his dad chuck it several thousand times.

If Elijah wings it the way his dad does and both Tapit and Flightline run it, the Owls should be in pretty good shape.

Somewhere up there, the real Pop Warner is looking down and smiling.

Friday: The Case For the Defense