Category Archives: Temple football coaching staff

01.18.19
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New Staff: Substance Over Flash

 

knowles

From left, Knowles, Rice and Stewart sound like a law firm who are ready to defend the Owls on that side of the field this fall.

The pieces to the puzzle that is Rod Carey’s new staff are mostly there, it’s just a matter of fitting them together.

What we do know is this:

There will be a decidedly FBS flavor for the one taking over compared to the mostly FCS one that left the Edberg Olson Complex for Atlanta over a month ago.

That’s a departure from the previous University of Florida coordinator who took over and represents a trend in a more positive direction for the program as a whole.

When Steve Addazio came from Florida to take over Temple prior to the 2011 season, he brought with him a national champion defensive coordinator (Chuck Heater) and a national champion quarterback coach (Scot Loeffler). When Geoff Collins came from the same school, he bought the Gators’ equipment guy and coordinators from Kennesaw State and Coastal Carolina.

rushmore

Pat Kraft promised the players he wanted stability and both he and Rod Carey delivered it with this “Mount Rushmore” of Temple stability, Fran, ADM, Foles and Gabe. This speaks volumes about both Carey and Kraft.

Big difference and it showed in games the Owls had no business of being close in (the first Villanova game) or losing (UConn and Army, 2017) and Villanova and Buffalo (2018). Two years in a row, Collins’ FCS coaches were badly outcoached by Villanova’s FCS coaches.

While you could argue with the results on the field, the equipment was top-notch.

Rod Carey’s additions from Northern Illinois have much more solid football credentials. Mix in the Temple holdovers, including former Baylor assistant head coach Fran Brown, and this has the making of one of the best Temple staffs in a long time.

We don’t know who the offensive coordinator will be, but hopefully it will be a guy who helps the Owls get back to the Temple TUFF style of offensive football that was run under both Al Golden and Matt Rhule, more of a running game mixed in with a play-action passing one.

The addition of Jeff Knowles as defensive coordinator is probably the best get by Carey so far. Knowles had the NIU defense in the top 35 in the country last year and coached three years at North Carolina State. In his first season as defensive coordinator this past fall, the Huskies were second in the FBS in sacks with 50, trailing only national champion Clemson. The Huskies were ranked 11th in the nation in rushing yards allowed per game (109.2), 10th in team tackles for loss per game (7.9) NIU had six all-Mid-American Conference selections on its defense

Melvin Rice, the DB coach, coached last year at NIU and four years at Minnesota and DL coach Walter Stewart played at Cincinnati (so he’s very familiar with Temple) and had one of the best pass-rushing units in the country at NIU last year. Joe Tripodi, who holds a masters from the Harvard of the Big 10 (Northwestern), is the new OL coach. Craig Harmon, who was the QB coach at NIU, also comes over as Carey’s staff meshes with the Temple holdovers.

While Manny Diaz’s poaching of Temple strength coach David Feeley–who he never met before arriving on Temple’s campus one month ago yesterday–was particularly troubling, the Owls get the NIU strength coach Brad Ohrt, who played on the Appalachian State team that beat Michigan and has been with the Miami Dolphins and USC, among other squads. For all that Feeley did with Temple, the Owls were still pushed around in the Buffalo and Nova games and Ohrt did not allow that to happen to NIU against Buffalo.

The Owls should be strong next year.

In more ways than one.

Monday: Red Flag On The Field

 

 

12.21.12
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Dead period: We’re still alive

Whoops.

“What are you doing here?” Coughlin asked Rhule. “Go home.”
“Well, coach I have a lot of things I have to do yet.”
“No, go home. Your family comes first.”

Is it the end of the world if there is no Temple football news?
No, thank God.
Fortunately, as we learned this morning, the abacus used by the Mayans for their calculations was just a little, hopefully a lot, off.
On Monday, Temple head coach Matt Rhule said this would be a “dead period” but he was referring to the recruiting world. No contact with recruits is allowed until the end of the holiday period.
I love reading the gossip column by Dan Gross in the Philadelphia Daily News but his last column of the calendar year was Dec. 15. Since Tom Cushman, Mark Whicker, Gary Smith, Ray Didinger and Stan Hochman left the DN, Gross’ column is the first thing I turn to in my DN.
There’s nothing grabs my attention in that sports section anymore.
If they were on top of things, and they aren’t, they’d interrupt eight pages of their non-stop ad naseum Philadelphia Eagles’ coverage for a story on Rhule’s developing staff.
In the absence of hard news, substantive rumors will have to suffice.
The latest “Gross-like” gossip is defensive coordinator Chuck Heater stays in his current position and adds the title “assistant head coach” to the job description. I think that’s quite likely and Heater’s retention would be welcome news. The first sign that was going to happen was that Chuck remained at Temple to both interview for the head coaching position and keep the recruits together.
Like most things he does, Heater performed those duties flawlessly.

Bill Cubit made it to the semifinals in 2010, not the finals.

The second sign was that Steve Addazio hired Don Brown as his defensive coordinator. Hopefully, Heater told Daz he was planning to stay at Temple before that.
When Temple beat UConn, 17-14, and shut out the Huskies in the second half, I found myself standing next to Chuck by one of the buses post-game.
“I don’t know what you did or said at halftime, but you are a genius,” I told him.
“No, it wasn’t me, it was the boys,” Heater said. (Yes, Chuck did use the word boys.)
In my mind, Heater was the best defensive coordinator in the country in the 2011 season. Temple finished third in the nation in scoring defense, behind only Alabama and LSU. Temple did not have Alabama and LSU talent.
I saw a lot of Temple’s defensive problems in 2012 as being Daz-oriented.
A nonsensical run-first, second and third approach resulted in a lot of three-and-outs and a tired defense. Two suspensions to linemen gutted front five depth. Daz kept the team’s potentially best defensive player (in my mind, at least) on the bench as a Scout team quarterback.
Bringing Heater back and giving him Kevin Newsome and allowing him to work out the X’s and O’s of a 3-4 defense would be a big plus for Temple.

Future Owl kicker Jim Cooper, Jr. in this week’s SI.

Another lively development in the dead period was future Owl kicker Jim Cooper, Jr. featured in this week’s Sports Illustrated Faces in the Crowd. He’s the first  future Temple football player featured there since Kevin Harvey played at Paulsboro. You are not likely to read about that development in the Daily News, either.
The latest offensive coordinator rumor has former Western Michigan head coach Bill Cubit, the former OC at Rutgers, coming home to Sharon Hill and helping Rhule out. I like that move, if it happens.
Cubit is an offensive mastermind and would allow Rhule to concentrate on being team CEO, which is really a full-time job.
Speaking of that, hate to say it, Matt, but I’m rooting against the Giants the next two weeks.
In the presser Monday, Rhule told a story about his wife getting sick and Giants’ head coach Tom Coughlin telling him to leave and go home.
“What are you doing here?” Coughlin asked Rhule. “Go home.”
“Well, coach I have a lot of things I have to do yet.”
“No, go home. Your family comes first.”
Well, Temple is his family now.
Somehow, I think the Giants can get along for the final two games without an assistant offensive line coach. Heck, the Eagles fired almost their entire staff over the last few weeks and they seem to be doing just fine.
Err, maybe that’s a bad example but you get my drift.