Nobody has scoops anymore and, now, more than ever, Temple fans are looking for scoops around what has been an under-performing program for the first four games of the Geoff Collins Era.

The falloff has been dramatic from a year ago. Temple, arguably, was the most over-performing team in college football in 2016 because the Owls were a nation’s-best 12-2 against the spread. That meant the public perception of Temple was raised to stratospheric levels. Against the spread this season, the Owls are 0-4 and darn near a real 0-4.

The public perception is Temple is back to being the “old Temple” and that the last two years were a flash in the pan. That is not good.

If not now, when do things change?

In a search for the news that should be happening (but is not), our alter-ego Scoop Jackson wrote these three fake news stories that we only wish were true:

By Scoop Jackson
After an embarrassing loss to USF, Geoff Collins said that he will shake up his Temple football staff in an attempt to turn things around.
“I’ve promoted Adam DiMichele to offensive coordinator and given Dave Patenaude the recruiting and quality control responsibilities that Adam has now,” Collins said. “Adam is a guy Temple fans are familiar with and he will bring that ingrained Temple TUFF attitude to the offense. Adam said he’s going to open up the playbook and get away from the three plays we’ve been running all season–the fullback dive, the pitch to the tailback, sideline patterns to wide receivers. Adam showed me a film where he faked a kneel down, got up and hit Bruce Francis for a 50-yard touchdown against Navy at the end of the half. I like that kind of stuff.”
For his part, DiMichele promised fun.

“I won’t be yelling at the guys on the sidelines like Dave did,” Adam said. “Football is supposed to be fun. We’re going to incorporate things we did at Temple under Al Golden and Matt Rhule–jump passes to the tight end, shovel passes, things like that.

“The big thing coach Collins and I have is love of our kids. It’s OK to love them, but loving them means you put them in the best position to succeed.  I think we’re going to do this by doing things like giving all four quarterbacks a shot in the game. I sucked in practice, but Al Golden had a hunch and gave me a chance in a real game and I proved to him I was a gamer. I have a feeling one of our kids needs that same chance. I also believe that we should be getting the ball to Isaiah Wright in space. When you have a talent like Isaiah, got to get him in the game at a number of positions. I’m thinking tailback for Isaiah might be his best position this year. A little swing pass to him out of the backfield now and then and a couple of carries as a tailback will do so much to open up the offense and make everything else work. We haven’t seen that so far. We will now.”

By Scoop Jackson
Mostly, at every Temple press conference, Geoff Collins is asked why Anthony Russo–the team’s most highly-regarded recruit at that position for the last 20 years–is not given a chance to play.
Usually, Collins will say all four quarterbacks are above the line but that Russo did not get in because he didn’t have time to prepare him.
Nobody bothered to ask a follow-up question until Donald Hunt of the Philadelphia Tribune asked him this: “If Russo is above the line and you said you hate depth charts, why can’t he play? I noticed he is the only position player who is ATL who doesn’t play. Why?”
“I’ll have to be honest with you, Don,” Collins said. “Dave Patenaude hated his guts. Dave recruited Logan to play at Coastal Carolina and wouldn’t have had a sniff at recruiting a kid like Russo so he buried the kid. Now that Adam’s in charge and understands what it takes to throw 35 touchdown passes in a single year for a great Pennsylvania high school program, maybe the kid will get a chance.”

 By Scoop Jackson
The War Drums are the only ones beating at Temple football practice these days because Geoff Collins has banned the real ones.
“Rookie head-coaching mistake,” Collins said. “When I said after USF that this loss was on me, this is what I meant. That time we could have been practicing our pass blocking schemes and fake field goal attempts were spent on things like listening to a kid from the Temple band play the drums and Nick Sharga play the guitar. Love our band and love Nick, but we should be using the limited time we have practicing football.”
Sharga, arguably the team’s best linebacker, was set to practice with the ones on defense the day he was sent to the top of the E-O to play linebacker, err, guitar.
“Yeah, my bad,” Collins said. “I told Nick we were only going to use him 15 plays on offense and thought he would be more valuable playing the guitar that day. We’re going to the 5-2, putting FBL over the nose, making Dogbe and Julian the tackles and putting our two best linebackers on the field, Nick and Chappy. That should cut down on the crossing patterns underneath that had been killing us. The 5-2 will give us constant pressure on the quarterback without blitzing and that pressure will lead to quick throws under duress that will allow our great secondary, including Champ, Delvon, Artrel and Mike, to return those throws the other way for six. That’s the new plan. It should have been the old one.”

That news is sweet music to the ears of Owls’ fans.

If only fake news were true in this case.

Friday: Houston Is A Problem

Sunday: Game Analysis

Tuesday: Fizzy’s Corner

Thursday: Tracking Wright’s Touches (it could be a short post)

Saturday: Game Preview

Not sure of the exact time, but the Temple football season ended somewhere in the second half in the third game of the season.

Sure, the schedule says there are still nine games to play in a 12-game season but anyone who knows anything about football and watched this team has seen enough.

This is around a five or six-win team now and I don’t see anyway around that. I hate to admit when I’m wrong, but my projection prior to the season of  eight-to-10 wins for this team is way off. It’s all over but the shouting and a lot of that shouting will be done by Temple fans who have been used to double-digit win seasons.

The blame rests not with the kids but with the coaching staff.

The capper came when Temple called an option play on a 3d-and-21 down-and-distance situation in a 29-21 win over a UMass team the Owls should have smoked, 31-6. It does not matter what the play was, but the result was a 4-yard gain and a punt. It was playing not to lose and not playing to win and that is always a bad strategy. This team has played not to lose for the last two games instead of putting the foot on an inferior opponent’s throat.

The play call speaks to the tone deafness of this rookie coaching staff the silence has been deafening for three games now.

Sad, because the kids deserve better.

There are enough holdovers from a 10-4 championship season to have expected a much more successful season than what we are looking at now. In a nutshell, this is what we have seen so far.

• Against Notre Dame, the Owls were blown out, 49-16, against a team which finished 4-8 a year ago. Yeah, I know it’s Notre Dame but the last we checked this was the same 4-8 team that lost to Navy and Navy was the same team that got blown out by Temple in the AAC championship game. New head coach Geoff Collins blamed the 422 yards rushing on “misfits” but he did not mention that most of the misfits were the guys he hired as assistant coaches.
• Against Villanova, the Owls could score only 16 points on a team that got absolutely torched for 35 points by Lehigh. Let that sink in for a moment.  Lehigh. Then Collins had the gonads to call Villanova “a really good team.” Sorry, Geoff, Villanova blows and so did your game plan against that “really good team.”
• Now we get to Massachusetts, a team that was beaten by Old Dominion, Hawaii and Coastal Carolina. Here’s the weird part. Temple hired last year’s offensive coordinator from Coastal Carolina and this year’s Coastal Carolina offensive coordinator–with Coastal Carolina talent–scored more points on UMass than last year’s Coastal Carolina coordinator with Temple talent. Maybe the Owls hired the wrong Coastal Carolina OC. He still hasn’t figured out that Isaiah Wright needs 20 touches a game, not the four he split between the last two games.

Something is very wrong with this picture and it has been that way for three games. One or two games might be an outlier, but this looks like the norm for the balance of the season.

Yes, it’s 2-1 but that’s the softest 2-1 in Temple history. Get me four more wins in the next nine games and I will be pleasantly surprised, but I do not see it getting any better going forward. It’s not the kids. It’s the coaches and I expected much better. The USF game could get very ugly fast unless major issues are addressed on both sides of the ball.

We have, oh, just four days to do that and nothing I’ve seen in the last four weeks gives me a whole lot of confidence that anything will be addressed at all.

Monday: A Blueprint

Wednesday: USF Preview

I can’t believe how much coach looks like Dan Klecko in this photo.

Like many Temple fans who attended that rainy Cherry and White Day, a particular T-Shirt caught my eye among the many they were peddling along merchant row.

It was white with Cherry lettering and the words simply said: “Temple Football: Mayhem is Coming.” I thought the $33 price tag was a little steep for a cotton T-shirt, but I plucked down the big bucks nonetheless because this was something different in usual Temple athletic fashion wear.

Wore the shirt all summer to the gym and a few people asked me about it. I said, “Mayhem is getting into the backfield, creating fumbles and interceptions and scoring on defense. This is what the new coach is supposed to bring to Temple.”

So far, so bad.

No Mayhem, except in the coaching box.

Not that many fumbles nor interceptions from the vanilla defensive packages the defense runs nor blitzes designed to create both. After the Notre Dame game, new head coach Geoff Collins said that the embarrassing total of 49 points were on what he called “misfits” and that 90 percent of the 422 yards rushing against the Owls came on 17 plays. That begs a couple of questions. One, isn’t the nine months of practice before the Notre Dame game enough time for cleaning up any potential “misfits” and, two, seventeen plays are a lot of plays. Just the fact that the Irish gouge you for big plays does not mitigate responsibility for allowing them.

The Owls have one tackle, Greg Webb, who started against Navy and was an immovable object (against an option offense that scored 76 on SMU the week before) who seems to have fallen out of favor with this staff. The Owls showed more defensive Mayhem against Navy in that one game last year than they have displayed in two this season. The Owls have another four-star tackle, Karamo Dioubate, who the day he committed to the Owls took a phone call in Buffalo Wild Wings (Roosevelt Blvd, Northeast Philly) from none other than Nick Saban trying to get him to flip his commitment to Alabama. KD said thanks but no thanks. KD wasn’t “above the line” so he did play not at all on Saturday. KD showed flashes of that talent as a true freshman last  year and looked to be primed to break into stardom by the aforementioned Cherry and White Game. KD is not hurt nor is Webb. Let’s get these two difference-makers into the UMass game.

It would seem to me if you are going to for Mayhem without blitzing it would behoove the Owls to have players on the field who are capable of creating it on their own. To me, Villanova was more appalling than even the Notre Dame embarrassment because the Owls’ defensive secondary which shined under the “Snowstorm Defense” was cut to pieces being led by a coordinator in Taver Johnson, who did not have championship level defenses in his past. Just what has Taver Johnson done to merit him being hired as DC at Temple? I’ve looked at his bio up and down and sideways and have not seen it. At least, with Chuck Heater, Temple hired a guy who was a National Championship defensive coordinator. Let that last sentence soak in for awhile.  With Phil Snow, he was a great DC with Arizona State and UCLA in the 1980s. With Johnson, his most impressive credential is that he is Geoff Collins’ friend. No national championships, no history as a great DC anywhere previously.

Ultimately, as the CEO of this Temple football operation, Collins is responsible.

There seems to be a subset line of thought that  “it’s only one game, give the guy a chance” excuses coming out after Notre Dame followed by “it’s only two games, give the guy a chance” coming out of Villanova. Let’s get this straight: No one is calling for Collins to be fired. Anyone who knows Temple knows this guy has a job at Temple for life, unless he wins eight games and then he lets Ed Foley coach the bowl game. Let’s not kid ourselves here. If the guy who “wanted to sign a 10-year contract” is out after year four, nobody makes it to five years at Temple with a modicum of success. By “give the guy a chance” I mean dissect if what he is telling you is bull or part of an overall plan. Give the guy a chance?

The problem with that logic is one game quickly becomes two games and, before you know it, eight games become 12 games. Hopefully, those same people are not saying “it’s only been a year” and still waiting to the kind of Mayhem Collins promised he would bring. How about it getting here by Friday? You’ll know it’s here with at least two fumbles recovered and one interception to the house. Anything less (and this is a very low standard) is a Ponzi Scheme designed to sell $33 T-Shirts.

Wake me up when Mayhem arrives. Until then, that nice $33 cotton T-shirt will remain in the closet collecting the same mothballs as the Mayhem we have been promised.

Thursday: UMass Preview