Category Archives: Stan Drayton

07.07.24
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5 Newcomers who could make a difference

It’s “Manheim Central” not “Mana” heim Central but these are RU educated people, not Temple.

Not a single Temple fan is holding up 128 fingers (120 borrowed) and saying “we’re No. 128” but that’s what Athlon Sports has the Owls ranked for the upcoming season.

Evan Simon during a spring game for Rutgers.

Sobering indeed, especially considering there are only 130 FBS teams.

The numbers other than 128 aren’t all that encouraging, either.

Temple had the No. 1 passer in the league in yards per game (E.J. Warner) but he’s at another team in the same conference now.

On defense, Temple was last in forced turnovers.

SO, if a difference is to be made, it’s only logical that it will come from the newcomers and not the guys who are left behind.

Since there doesn’t seem to be a newcomer at the quarterback position other than Rutgers’ transfer Evan Simon, we’re going to have to be happy with what we have.

Thanks to Stan Drayton, we have no choice.

Here are the five newcomers who could be impact players for Temple this year:

One, running back Antwain Littleton. When I make an argument that the Temple running game is going to be the best it has been since Ray Davis, people ask me about the offensive line. I think the offensive is going to be at least as good as last year but, if you look at Littleton, at 6-1, 245, he’s an offensive line all by himself. Those aggravating times where we saw Edward Saydee lose balance on a 3d and 1 and fall short of a first down are probably over.

Two, quarterback Simon himself. If Forrest Brock, who was a large part of the reason Temple crapped the bed in a 55-0 loss to SMU last year, beats out Simon for the starting job, we will know what we suspected. Simon stinks. If, on the other hand, Simon clearly beats out Brock, maybe a horse racing analogy comes into play. Those of us who follow that sport know a Grade 3 horse who drops into an Allowance Optional Claiming race usually is a good bet. In this case, the Big 10 is a graded stakes while the AAC is an Allowance Optional Claiming race. Maybe those six interceptions against four touchdowns in the Big 10 translates to 12 and 4 on the good side in the AAC. Let’s face it. He’s not going to put up the numbers Warner did but I will take 12 and 4 over Warner’s 23 and 14 any day of the week. I don’t think we will see it but Drayton probably does and he’s getting paid a lot more than I am. For his sake, I hope he’s right.

That’s a heckuva troll job by Torey Richardson after this interception.

Three, cornerback Torey Richardson. The UTEP transfer actually stopped some top wide receivers at that level and, for Temple fans who had to hide their eyes on every first pass of the game last season, there is a real expectation that those long completions will now be long incompletions.

Four, safety Andreas Keaton. The Western Carolina transfer has a chance to be a difference-maker in the turnover equation. In three years with the Catamounts, Keaton started all 33 games and totaled 184 tackles, five interceptions, and 14 pass breakups. “The main thing with Temple was the relationships,” Keaton said. “Temple came easy. They showed me a great time. It seemed like a family. It just felt right… no bad vibes, everything was cool. There was a brotherhood. They do a great job doing that.” Matt Rhule left Western Carolina to come to Temple so if Keaton does as well, the Owls should be OK. “The players invited me with open arms,” he said.

Five, wide receiver Ian Stewart. Calling him a newcomer would be a misnomer, but he’s been plagued with injuries all of his career so he’s basically a newcomer. If he plays up to the single digit he’s been given, Temple might have the best wide receiver trio in the league with Dante Wright and Zae Banes. He’s going to have to stay out of the injury tent.

Is the talent enough to go from three wins to six?

Not according to the outsiders who objectively look at things. The insiders seem OK with the talent level and they will be the ones who either suffer the consequences or reap the rewards.

Friday: Hidden Genius

07.04.24
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Business as usual: We’re back baby

In 1984, Time Magazine estimated Bill Cosby’s net worth at $368 million. That same year, Cosby went on the field and hid a flag that an official threw against Bruce Arians’ Temple team. Fortunately, the ref laughed.

Sometimes you have to read between the lines to get a real handle on what someone is saying.

Reading too much between the lines is dangerous but this we do know.

Temple’s new President, John Fry, is on the record as being anti-football. According to a recent article in Football Scoop, which shouted out Temple Football Forever and got Fry’s quotes from a Philadelphia Inquirer story, he’s now anti-football ONLY at places not named Temple.

Hmm.

In the story, Fry says “Temple has a proud football tradition” and he has “no plans to end football.” He also says he has “no preconceived notions” about football at Temple.

Thanks to Zach Barnett of Football Scoop for the shoutout.

So we’re back in business, baby, but on notice.

This is where the reading between the lines part comes into play.

The comment I felt particularly interesting was the “no preconceived notions” part.

The implications are when he does get here–and that will be after Drexel names a President–he will start having “conceived notions.”

I imagine if another 3-9 season or worse comes while Fry is on board he will start building those notions.

So Temple football is on notice. Start winning and make it snappy. I find it particularly interesting that Temple’s recruiting class for 2025 is good but what about 2024? To paraphrase Terrell Owens, “where is my quarterback?” because we can’t say for sure “that’s my quarterback.”

If 2024 is not a good one, there might not be a 2025. When the E-O is on fire, you don’t bring out a garden house to wet it down. You need the whole damn fire department or, in this case, the whole damn transfer portal.

Where’s the urgency to win now?

No more 3-9 seasons in the future because those will be conceived notions built on the foundation of two-straight 3-9 seasons before that and one 1-6 season before that.

The university is investing a lot of money in football and has seen little return on it since Geoff Collins used Matt Rhule’s players to post consecutive winning seasons. Since the university invested $17 million into the E-O and a couple more million on Collins’ salary, and maybe a couple more on support staff, that was an acceptable return on the investment.

Happy Birthday to Temple Sports Hall of Famer Al Golden. Not an exaggeration that he saved Temple football at a time it needed saving. Born 16 days before the first Moon landing.

Since then, what we have seen is unacceptable.

It would be impossible for Fry to do to Temple what Drexel did to itself when it eliminated football if Stan Drayton could meet that minimum standard.

Right now, that’s the $21 million question only to be answered by either Drayton or his next big boss.

Monday: Some roster additions

06.30.24
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Owls: Screwed, blued and tattooed

One more day. As a big fan of summer and long days, Monday is a sad day for me. The sunset has been 8:33 p.m. since June 22 and will be for one more day until Tuesday, when it's 8:32. Means it really didn't get dark until 9 for more than a week now.
Jason Wingard (left) soaked in the Temple football tailgates. New President John Fry probably won’t.

One more day.

As a big fan of summer and long days, Monday is a sad day for me.

The sunset has been 8:33 p.m. since June 22 and will be for one more day until Tuesday, when it’s 8:32. Means it really didn’t get dark until 9 for more than a week now.

New Temple President John Fry thinks schools should not have football.

Loved these last three months because I was looking forward to the days getting longer. The good news is that we really won’t notice it until the middle of July because we only lose three or so minutes until then but it’s sad nonetheless. The other good news is that hope springs eternal every year.

BOT chairman Mitchell Morgan sent a clear signal by hiring former big-time football player Jason Wingard as President and now he’s sending a similar message by hiring a football hater.

Worse news is that the sun seems to be setting on Temple football with the apparent hiring of John Fry as the new President and there might not be a spring, if not by 2025, certainly by 2026.

Temple football is blued, screwed and tattooed.

Screwed, we’ve known about for a while. That means “cheated” and the Owls–along with the other 63 fellow G5 members–have been cheated out of the big boys’ club by NCAA rulings favoring the larger P5 schools.

Blued, means lost or being robbed and that certainly applies to all the players Temple developed over the last half-decade or so only to see them move to other schools.

Tattooed refers here to a beating with very rapid blows, in the same sense as a military tattoo, which is a rapid pattern on a drum. That interpretation is correct in the sense that this pattern has repeated itself over the last few years with no remedy in sight.

So the phrase literally means cheated, robbed and beaten.

Does Temple continue to go down this dark alley year after year to get its figurative wallet stolen or lumps on the head or does it go in another direction?

The Temple BOT seems to have made its decision by hiring an anti-football guy in Fry, who wrote a noted editorial decrying schools who try to succeed in big-time football.

Contrast that with their last hire, a Stanford tight end who was a teammate with U.S. Senator (D-New Jersey) Cory Booker at that school.

The BOT seemed to put the football bus in drive with the Jason Wingard hire and back to neutral by going to old standby Dick Englert. With Fry, it’s in reverse.

The BOT micro-manages Temple and this is sending a clear signal to the fans that it prefers a David Adamany-type over a Jason Wingard-type given the current state of college football.

Otherwise, they would not have signed off on a football-hater.

One more day until the sun sets a little later is sad but nowhere near as sad as one, maybe two, years before the sun sets on Temple football for good.

July 4: Business as Usual

Monday: Roster Additions

06.27.24
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Temple beating Oklahoma is a habit about to be broken

There is also a town named Temple in Pennsylvania.

If you need a reason to believe Temple might come up with a victory in late August at Oklahoma, providing some historical perspective might help.

Or not.

In the 1940s, a one-win Temple team beat the Sooners, 14-7, at Temple Stadium as a defensive back named Woodhouse made the decisive play, an interception.

After the victory over Penn State, national defensive player of the year Tyler Matakevich and his teammates made a pilgrimage to an old folks home in Blue Bell to present the late Mr. Woodhouse with the game ball.

Woodhouse was also the last living Temple player to participate in the 1941 win over Penn State, which was the last time the Owls beat the Nittany Lions.

Almost a generation later, in the middle of the John Chaney basketball era, Temple beat Oklahoma in the NCAA tournament in Florida.

The difference between those times and these times is what will be the ruination of college sports.

Then, there was such a thing called “student/athletes” and everyone–from the No. 1-ranked team in college football to the last-ranked team in college basketball–could only “pay” their players with room, board, books and tuition.

The playing field was completely level.

On that the last Friday night in August, please do not adjust your TV screens.

What you will be seeing is real.

Every time the Sooners get the ball, the field will be tilted down.

Every time the Owls get the ball, they will be playing upfield.

Welcome to the world of the NIL and transfer portal.

Oklahoma gets the all-star transfers from the P5 and G5, already proven players.

Temple gets the hopefuls from the JUCO ranks, guys who want to prove themselves.

The nation has noticed.

In May, the line opened at 39.5.

Now, it’s up to 40.5.

There is no reason to believe it will move downward, only upward, as Temple refuses to recruit any of the five big-time quarterbacks remaining in the portal.

Don’t ask me why Temple has refused to dip into the portal after picking up Evan Simon from Rutgers and Clifton McDowell from Montana. Maybe after McDowell left for the obscurity of McNeese State, Temple head coach Stan Drayton promised Simon the Owls were not interested in anyone else.

Temple fans should take no solace in the fact that the Owls were 36.5 underdogs to 1998 and beat Virginia Tech, 28-24, on the road.

Back then, the Tech players and the Temple players were getting paid the same.

The NIL isn’t dropping $4 million dollars on the Okie players to lose to a Temple team that might be getting a couple of players getting 100k at best.

If that.

Although that would be a delicious way to open the season, not only for Temple fans but for fans of every underdog team.

My prediction remains the same: 66-7, Okie, though nothing would please me more than to write an apologetic post on the first Saturday of September saying I was off by 60 points in the Temple direction.

Pretty hard for the new anti-football Temple President to drop football after a win over Oklahoma.

Monday: Screwed, blued and tattooed

06.23.24
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Temple recruiting: A risky strategy

Antwain Littleton II after being the No. 1 reason why Maryland beat Michigan State.

Are the Temple coaches playing five-dimensional chess while the rest of the AAC plays checkers?

Geez, you’ve got to hope so.

Masterman, a Public League magnet school located only a few blocks south of Temple, fields a perennial national chess powerhouse but a lot of those kids would be hard-pressed to figure out Temple’s next move on the AAC recruiting board.

On the surface, it looks like Stan Drayton’s “plan” was to recruit a lot of JUCOs to fill holes–namely on both sides of the line–and sprinkle a P5 transfer here and there.

Meanwhile, the rest of the AAC is filling their holes with accomplished P5 and FCS transfers and, in the case of Rice, stealing a big-time quarterback from a fellow league member.

It appears Temple has replaced that big-time quarterback with a game manager.

Looks like the rest of the AAC has their strategy in a row and Temple is all over the map but maybe, just maybe, this unusual plan works.

If it does, it will look something like this:

Antwain Littleton, the sprinkle P5 transfer, will have a breakout year behind a lot of accomplished JUCO transfers and Temple holdovers looking to prove people wrong.

With a running game for the first time since NFL draft pick Ray Davis was here, Rutgers’ transfer QB Evan Simon becomes a game-manager and hits an explosive downfield play-action pass here and there to keep the defense on their heels. Maybe Simon is tall enough to see over defenses and avoid those pesky Pick 6s that caused the Owls losses at USF and at home to Rutgers in recent years.

He certainly doesn’t have the high ceiling E.J. Warner had here but he might not have to if Littleton runs over the AAC.

On defense, the Owls’ go two-deep on the line for the first time since D.J. Eliot was here and get after the passer enough to cause turnovers. Temple was last in the nation in turnover ratio last year and moving up just to the middle of the pack will make the defense twice as good.

Nobody expects Temple to go from a three-win season to a nine-win season but going from three to six should be doable no matter how risky the strategy looks now.

Stan Drayton, it’s your move.

Friday: Historical Perspective

06.16.24
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QBs: The Best of The Rest

Some pretty good questions led to some funny (curious, not hah-hah) answers and one last week on the OwlsDaily.com message board was one that many Temple football fans are asking.

“Are the Owls still looking for a transfer portal quarterback?”

Had to laugh at the response, which was basically they are still looking for a quarterback but not going to take one just for the sake of taking one.

How is that different from what they did with the RU backup?

Since E.J. Warner left in December, the Owls let a lot of good quarterbacks get away to programs who are still perceived to be inferior or backup jobs at P5 schools. Two come to mind immediately: Reese Poffenbarger (from Albany to Miami) and General Booty from Oklahoma to UL-Monroe.

Sean Boyle is still one of the remaining uncommitted quarterbacks in the portal.

Yes, UL Freaking Monroe.

Both had the kind of background and accomplishments none of the current occupants of the QB room have at Temple.

As soon as Cam Ward was signed by Miami, the Temple coaches should have been all over Poffenbarger convincing him that a year as a starter at Temple was preferable over a year as a backup at Miami. Hell, if he really wanted to play for the Canes, he could have done that next year after Ward left for the NFL.

Seems to me to be a wasted year.

Sean Boyle warming up for West Virginia last year.

As far as Booty goes, the former Texas first-team all-state quarterback probably would have liked to have a shot at his former Oklahoma team on Aug. 30 instead of being sentenced to a year in Monroe, Louisiana. He would have not only been supremely motivated in Temple’s opener but might have brought the Sooner playbook with him and given it to Temple DC Everett Withers (assuming EW knows how to read it).

Water under the bridge now but the bridge to QB success still exists for Temple.

West Virginia’s Sean Boyle is available and, if that name sounds familiar to Owl fans, it should. Sean was a great offensive lineman for Al Golden and, while this Sean Boyle is not related, he brings an impressive background. He was an original Charlotte commit before flipping to West Virginia so he’s not adverse to playing in the AAC. He’s what the Owls need with an inexperienced OL, a guy who is able to make plays with his feet as well as his arm.

Other quarterbacks still in the portal include Oregon State’s Travis Throckmorton, Appalachian State’s Charles Wright and South Carolina’s Tanner Bailey.

All with better upsides than Evan Simon and Forrest Brock. This is not a question of who has the most NIL money. Almost all of the 130 teams have their starters by now but Temple’s biggest carrot is offering one of the few starting positions left and it is a buyer’s market for the Owls, not a seller’s one because this is desperation time for the players still remaining in the portal. Why Temple hasn’t been buying is a head-scratcher.

As far as quarterbacks go, Stan Drayton has fallen on the ball since Warner left and it would not be shocking if he didn’t pull the trigger on a portal guy now.

These guys are in the portal today but may be gone tomorrow. Time’s a wasting and why Drayton hasn’t jumped on one of these quarterbacks is a pretty good question.

There are no funny answers.

06.09.24
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State of The TU Football Union: Stuck in 1987

Thanks to Joe Tolstoy, who released this video yesterday, the first time I’ve seen it in 37 years.

The closest thing to a Temple football State of the Union address is what head coach Stan Drayton had to give to a group of supporters at the 1912 Club last week.

The biggest takeaway was Drayton’s statement that he expects the Owls will be a “totally different football team.”

Sometimes, different doesn’t mean better but Drayton went on to say that the team will be bigger, faster, stronger with greater depth on both sides.

Drayton will not be judged on what he says, though, but what he does. He knows the bottom line has to go from three wins to six wins. Or better. Three to four wins or three to five wins won’t cut it. This is his third year. Time’s a wasting.

Temple fans will see a five-win season as a fifth-straight losing one, not a significant bump from a trifecta of three-win seasons.

So, what has he DONE so far?

It looks like he’s used 1987 solutions (recruiting JUCOS to fill key holes in the lineup) when the 2024 solution is to get P4 backups looking for playing time. Drayton has done that with RB Antwain Littleton, who made an impact at Maryland, but with few other spots on the roster.

So far, no quarterback in sight with nearly the explosive ability of E.J. Warner and that’s a piece that doesn’t look like it’s coming.

What worked in 1987 probably won’t work in 2024 but that’s on Drayton.

The advantage Drayton has over back then is that his schedule is ranked No. 127.

The 1987 Owls of Bruce Arians also had three wins but played the 10th-toughest schedule in the country and won at No. 16 Pitt, 24-21, beat Toledo (13-12) and played relatively competitively in a 27-13 loss at No. 14 Penn State. (Pitt lost to Temple that year but shut out Penn State, 10-0.)

Back then, Arians filled areas of need with JUCOs.

Now Drayton, who played Division III in those days, is reaching back and going with an old solution in a brave new world.

He’s going to try to do it with mostly JUCOs.

That’s the State of the Temple football union and, while it doesn’t look good now, Drayton will look like a genius if the formula works.

For his sake, and Temple’s, I hope next year’s State of the Union address takeaway will be “I told you so.”

06.06.24
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Teams with Temple’s resources poised to do better

Had to laugh at one of the responses to my last post demanding do better in football. He responded saying that college football has devolved into a transactional business and that Temple football can’t compete because it can’t match the transactions.

What that comment missed was the fact that there are teams in the same boat as Temple but they are paddling upstream while the Owls are letting the tide take them downstream.

Same money. Same boosters. Same transactional problems.

The smart guys figure out a way to win with roughly the same NIL money. The dumb guys write down excuses they will mention on the way out.

Mike Farrell Sports did a nice job with this theory mentioning that the G5 schools most aggressive at the highest-profile positions will probably leave the Temple’s of the world behind.

General Phillip Sheridan (err, Arthur Johnson) appoints General Custer (err, Stan Drayton) a couple of years before Little Big Horn.

While Temple “settled” for the second-best quarterback from the 130th-best FBS offense, a team like FAU went out and got QB Cam Fancher from Marshall (who was available to Temple for the four months immediately after E.J. Warner took the lateral move to Rice).

In that story, Farrell mentions that Sam Houston State, Bowling Green and Colorado State–all with coaches making a fraction of what head coach Stan Drayton makes–upgraded their rosters with a slew of P4 talent to move to the head of the G5 class this season.

There is no way you can convince me that UL Monroe– located in the highest crime city per capita in the entire United States–can get a General Booty transfer from Oklahoma to be its quarterback and Temple, located in a world class city (the only World Heritage city in the United States) has to settle for a Rutgers backup and a JUCO who got beat 55-0 by SMU last year as its triggerman at the most important position on the team.

General Booty is only about 10x better than Evan Simon and Forrest Brock combined and but he will play in Lafayette, Louisiana and not Philadelphia, Pa. Hard to believe, Harry.

In a roundabout way, that’s exactly what Stan Drayton told some boosters at a “Temple Takeover” event a couple of days ago.

It was almost a decade ago now since a magazine correctly predicted that the Temple Owls would be No. 1 in football. Now the Temple football coaching brain trust should be concerned that the Owls are being picked for last.

Drayton correctly identified the No. 1 issue for the Owls has being that triggerman but said that it’s between the guy with more career interceptions than touchdown passes vs. the guy who got beat 55-0 and gave no indication that there is any interest in a player currently in the portal.

Hmm.

There is a player currently in the portal who was named MVP in the New Mexico Bowl in 2022 and beat that team who beat his favorite 55-0 losing JUCO QB.

Not only that, but the quarterback also still available is the former high school quarterback teammate of Drayton’s projected No. 1 RB, Antwain Littleton.

We won’t name names because a head coach getting paid $2.5 million per year by Temple should know who is in the portal and who played with his RB starter.

The fact that he has not indicated to any Temple boosters that help is on the way is really discerning and should temper any enthusiasm for Temple’s chances in September.

The message Drayton conveyed to the Temple faithful at Little Big Horn (err, The 1912 Club) was that the Cavalry in the form of a big-time quarterback was not arriving and the Owls will have to circle the wagons around the current meager QB ammunition they have now.

Captain Frederick Benteen and Major Marcus Reno figured that out in 1876 and were smart enough to watch from a distance as a clever enemy scalped General Custer.

If anyone is surprised at the imminent outcome, they never took a post-Civil War history course at Temple.

Watching a massacre is never a pleasant experience.

06.02.24
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Temple: The Unluckiest School in the history of sports

Yankee Stadium’s tribute to Lewis Katz, Temple great and part owner of the YES Network.

On the precipice of winning a national title in basketball, John Chaney recruited two of the top big men in the nation only a decade apart.

Robert Liburd, the 7-foot-2 High School Player of the Year in New York City, and Marvin Webster Jr., the 6-11 power forward and stretch five and son of the great Marvin Webster, were two of many McDonald’s All-Americans (others included Kevin Lyde, Donald Hodge and Mark Macon) who committed to Chaney.

Liburd and Webster tragically dropped dead before they ever got on the court for the Owls.

That robbed John Chaney of his national championship IMHO.

Fran Dunphy’s best recruit was Trey Lowe out of Trenton, N.J. and he never made an impact because of a car accident. Lowe was a top 150 high school talent who maybe might have worked his way into being a top 15 college talent.

That robbed Dunphy of his deep NCAA tournament run.

With some of that knowledge behind me, I got to thinking Temple sports was cursed but it really hit me the day Temple was the only football team to get kicked out of a major conference in 2002 when the Big East pulled the plug.

Fortunately, Temple made its own luck when Bill Bradshaw hired Al Golden (not a buddy) and Golden beat that conference’s Fiesta Bowl rep, UConn, 30-10, in 2010.

More luck was made by a Golden disciple, Matt Rhule, who beat Penn State, 27-10, in 2015 and got the Owls on night prime time TV after the program was celebrated all day on the major networks as Philadelphia turned out big time for ESPN College Football Game Day.

Unfortunately, Temple’s biggest athletic booster, Lewis Katz, never got to see that day because he died in a plane crash on May 31, 2014.

He did, though, live long enough to see his beloved Owls accepted back into a major conference (also the Big East).

No prouder New Yorker than Lewis Katz to see this big sign in Times Square welcoming the Owls back to the Big East.

He did not live long enough, though, to see his AD hire a guy to be head coach who left 18 days later for Miami. That might have killed him.

If that didn’t, surely what happened 18 days later–Pat Kraft hiring an Indiana buddy off a Manny Diaz rebound–would have.

Or maybe if Katz was here all of that would not have happened.

More bad luck.

If luck is the residue of design, Temple owns that, too.

Temple never learned from the bad Karma of the buddy system of hiring and allowed another buddy, Arthur Johnson, to hire another buddy, Stan Drayton.

Maybe that wouldn’t have happened if Katz was here but we will never know.

Now, in an NIL/Transfer Portal Era where the Lew Katz’s of the world are buying the best players, Temple’s luck might have ran out.

Temple needs a new Lew Katz more than ever and, sadly, there are no Lew Katz’s around or no one wants to step into that void. Those of us who do want to step in do not have the funds to own an entire TV network, as Katz once did.

So maybe Temple is the unluckiest school in the history of sports. Given what’s happened, I challenge anyone to find an unluckier school.

My fervent hope is that Temple’s luck has not run out. It is also my biggest fear.

Friday: Poor Survivors

Monday: State of the Union

05.31.24
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In the transfer portal era, the season is won between Dec. and July

I’ll take a QB and anyone who can rush the passer at this point

When I was a kid I used to hate hearing at the barber shop those old guys who used to say “back in my day” this and that used to happen.

Now as one of those old guys I’m beginning to get it.

A year ago at this time we wrote in this very spot almost on the same day that Temple did not do enough in the “recruiting” months to have a winning season.

Unfortunately, we were proven right for 2023.

Odd timing for a puff piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Stan Drayton but if he doesn’t get a QB and a big-time pass rusher in here in 30 days, he’s going to have to change those roller skates to ice skates because that’s how thin his ice is going to be in Philadelphia.

We still think that for 2024.

The difference there is Temple did nothing to improve from the end of May to the beginning of August and paid for that indecision BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THAT WAY AGAIN.

Temple football has one month to make up for the inaction of Dec.-May and it doesn’t look good simply because the Owls couldn’t afford to wait until June to get moving.

In my mind, Temple needs a proven QB (duh) and a couple of proven sackmeisters at the defensive end positions.

Football is not rocket science.

The teams who win are the ones who keep their quarterback upright while putting the other guy’s quarterback on his ass.

In my mind, Temple has done enough to keep any quarterback it has upright. The problem is doesn’t have a quarterback who can do damage while upright. It used to but that guy bolted for Rice.

The biggest question of this offseason is that 15-20 quarterbacks were BETTER than that guy and Temple sat on this situation and the coaching staff did absolutely nothing to get one after Clifton McDowell left for oblivion. One by one those great quarterbacks left for other schools and Temple is now down to about five who are better than Evan Simon.

What the hell are they waiting for?

Oddly timed puff piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer this week on Stan Drayton. If I’m the reporter, I’m not asking what he does to relieve stress I’m asking him how the hell he intends to turn 3-9 into 9-3. I’m asking him what makes him think Evan Simon and Forest Brock can be better than E.J. Warner.

I’m letting him know he’s rolling the dice of his career on a guy who got beat 55-0 by SMU while the guy who beat SMU 24-22 the year before is still in the portal.

I’m telling him I don’t give an F what goes on behind the scenes but I really care about what goes on during those three hours every Saturday afternoon and why Temple hasn’t won more than three games since 2019.

That’s what I’m telling him.

Defensively, Temple has NOT done enough to strike fear into the bad guys’ quarterbacks and that’s one of two reasons why another 3-9 is way more likely than 9-3.

Like it or not, this isn’t the “back in my day” time when, after a successful recruiting class three years prior and a redshirt year and a promising sophomore year, a fan could say, “hey, Temple is looking really good this year.”

This is 2024 and the indicators are all in what Temple has done in the transfer portal.

One month to get a couple of FCS proven pass rushers and a quarterback who has done something–anything–above the JUCO level on a consistent basis.

So far, the coaching staff is proving the race to pick up the Temple paychecks every Friday is winning over the race to get players who can make a difference.

Not a good sign at all for any current day barber shop talk.