Category Archives: Temple football

08.10.16
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We’re Talkin’ Practice

Houston’s Tom Herman says the two toughest lines he will face will be Oklahoma and Temple, not necessarily in that order. Morgyn Seigfried interviews the Wildboyz here. 

When it comes to practice, I have the same thought process as Allen Iverson. It’s a necessary evil, but both he and I are not particularly interested in it.

A good story requires an antagonist and a protagonist and, for the next couple of weeks, this one will be without the antagonist. The only big story that comes out of camp the next couple of weeks will be injury-related, so no news is good news. Any great catch or great play is minimized because, as Iverson says, it’s not a game. The antagonist arrives on Sept. 2 in the form of Army and we will have that good guy/bad guy story and away we go.

Still, the way the Owls practice probably is a good indicator of how they will do in the games because attention to detail matters in both settings.

Oguike

Washington Post’s Neil Greenberg had Praise Martin-Oguike drafted LAST year.

That’s probably why head coach Matt Rhule was good to set the tone on Saturday by demanding more. In his post-practice comments, he mentioned that “last year didn’t exist” and, in reality, it doesn’t. One of the great things about college football is that with a new year comes new expectations and some years those expectations are higher and some are lower. To me, last year wasn’t all that great past the ND game and this year’s team should play with a chip on their shoulders because of it.

Outside of Temple, the expectations for Temple are lower this season than last. They do not see what we see. They see Temple with key losses (Matt Ioannidis, Tyler Matakevich, Robby Anderson, Tavon Young, Kyle Friend) and think Temple will take a step back. We see players more than ready to step up (Greg Webb, Avery Williams, Marshall Ellick and Nate Hairston) in those same positions and think Temple will take a step forward. They don’t see that Temple has one of the best defensive lines in college football (Houston’s Tom Herman’s words, not ours) and the Wildboyz should be making more plays than ever. (One of them, Praise Martin-Oguike was so good a Washington Post mock draft had him going in last year’s sixth round of the NFL draft. They didn’t even realize he was coming back to Temple.)

I will say one thing now. The step backward year will be next year, not this one. This is the step forward year, even if it is only one step from 10 wins to 11. It could be two or three steps, but I’m confident this is the step forward year.

Only time will tell.

In the meanwhile, between that time and the real games is practice and now is the time to get those players in the best positions to make those steps forward.

Friday: Beyond Unfinished Business

08.08.16
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Roster Testament To The Process

Since Temple rosters are best read like newspapers, holding them in your hand and not viewing them on a laptop, I hit print and eagerly awaited to put thumb to paper looking for new names and hoping no old ones were missing.

Much to my surprise and delight, for the first time I can recall, there were no subtractions.

Even someone who I thought might not be on the roster, true freshman Tyliek Raynor, is right there. (Really cannot count Kip Patton in this because his departure was known before the fall roster was updated.)

tickets

Hopefully, this ticket will be for the AAC title game in Philly this year.

This is a testament to head coach Matt Rhule’s process.

The bottom line is that this might be the deepest team in Temple history, deep at every position except the most important one—quarterback. The Owls can afford a season-ending injury (and let’s hope they have none) at every position but, if they lose P.J., err, Phillip Walker, it’s hard to see them winning 11 or 12. So light some candles for Phillip.

Fortunately, my early-summer candle lighting worked for other players, notably defensive tackle Greg Webb. The two-time Hutchinson (Kansas) Junior College first-team All-American was not on the roster until this week, which leads me to believe he did well academically in Temple summer sessions. That’s important because he will have to be a contributor along the interior of the defensive front with returners Averee Robinson and Freddy Booth-Lloyd.

I like the fact that Sean Chandler is now listed as a safety for a couple of reasons. One, his break on the ball is sensational and that’s a trait better suited to the middle of the field than the corner of it. Two, in part-time duty, both Artrel Foster and Nate Hairston performed admirably at opposite corners last year. Now it is full-time duty. Hairston is the fastest man on the team and has been since Khalif Herbin departed for medical reasons. Chandler showed some speed deficiencies in the bowl game when he let No. 25 of Toledo—not exactly a Travis Sheldon—get behind him for a touchdown.

In other words, trading Chandler to the middle of the field strengthens both the middle of the field and the corners. It’s a trade that will help both ballclubs, somewhat like the Cole Hamels for Jake Thompson trade the Phillies made a year ago.

Good depth is available at the corners in redshirt freshman Kareem Ali and Derrick Thomas, who is probably the fastest 6-foot-6 man ever to play at Temple. (The slowest was the late great Walt Montford of the basketball program.) Look for Thomas to play some red-zone corner and be an effective counter to the corner fade pass.

Wednesday: We’re Talkin’ Practice

08.05.16
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Media Day Takeaway: The U Word

 

It’s a new team and probably a better one than last year’s version.

Unfortunately, many of us have heard the “c” word and the “b” word and the “f” word but it took until AAC Media Day earlier this week for Temple football fans to hear the “u” word for the first time.

Unbeaten.

That’s a pretty sweet word and it rolled off quarterback Phillip Walker’s tongue like a double-layered cake.  As far as I can recall, that’s the first time a Temple player has uttered the “u” word in any formal setting, although I’m sure a couple of guys might have dreamed about it out loud during an off-season weightlifting session.

Asked by a media member what the team’s goals were, Phillip said: “League championship, unbeaten season …”

Unbeaten season? Why not?

aacchamps

For most of my adult life, I never associated “unbeaten season” with Temple as an achievable goal. This year it might be on that top shelf of reachable things.  At the very least, an unbeaten regular season is in play. A few months ago, I wrote I believed this team had all of the ingredients to break the school record for wins with 11 and that should be the minimum goal (with the maximum one being an AAC title).

If you can win 11, you can win 12 and that’s what Phillip Walker is talking about. Every year, I’ve been following Temple, the Owls usually lose a game or two they should not or win a game or two they should not. To reach an unbeaten season, though, pattern will have to be broken. This year might be the year. (The exception was the 1979 team, which lost to only two top 10 teams by a grand total of 16 points. Also, the 1974 team lost only to a much higher-ranked Boston College team.)

First, they will take a lot of confidence from a 2-0 start into Penn State. They will also take a proven four-year starting quarterback there against an untested rookie. Win there, and that opens a wide path for 7-0 going into USF, which is at home this year. Forty thousand crazed Temple fans can make a difference in that one. I don’t buy this fallacy that USF has “too much” for Temple this year. USF lost to Western Kentucky, so let’s pump the brakes on comparing them to Alabama. Of course, Temple lost to Toledo.

Win there, and it’s an Autobahn ride to 12-0.

Since all of the above puts the title game in Philly, 13-0 is also possible. Now 14-0 or 15-0, that might be another shelf no vertical leap can reach but it is fun thinking about.

Monday: Roster Thoughts

08.03.16
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Temple’s No. 1 Foe: Brutus

softcoretemple

A Temple watch party within driving distance of the game last year.

Over the last few days, there has been speculation about Temple being, err, cherry-picked by the Big 12 as part of that conference’s proposed expansion.

My reaction to that is pretty much the same as my feeling about an on-campus stadium. Two words: Not happening.



If the Owls averaged
45-50,000 fans
in Lincoln Financial
Field over the past
few years, they would
be in the Big 12 right
now and this would
not even be a discussion.

One, is because of outside influences that are dead set against Temple having a stadium. There are just not enough votes in City Council and there never will be to get the necessary street approvals the university needs for a stadium. Two, the university’s own proposed price tag—building a stadium for the dirt cheap price of $128  million—suggests that it does not have any money for the necessary accoutrements needed (health care center, community center, playground) to bribe the community into giving the stadium its approval.

The fault for not being seriously in play for the Big 12 lies elsewhere: Softcore Temple fans. You know the type. This is the guy who lives within an hour of Lincoln Financial Field, makes only one  (or less) home games a year, but spends the afternoon or evening on his couch with the potato chips on the coffee table, the remote in one hand and the other feverishly typing comments on the computer about the game on Owls Daily or Owl Scoop.

To me, it’s OK to do that for a road game but I see that happen much too often for home games. It’s not the fault of those people you see tailgate every week, but the fault of those people you see once a year.

Temple, to me, has a hardcore fan base of 20-25,000 and a much larger group of fans who will follow the Owls on TV but not to the stadium. The reason West Virginia is in the Big 12 now and Temple is not is because Mountaineer fans make it to the stadium. If the Owls averaged 45-50,000 fans in Lincoln Financial Field over the past few years, they would be in the Big 12 right now and this would not even be a discussion. The Temple administration can point to the TV market and success on the field, but those thousands of empty seats is a handicap hard to overcome.

As it is, we are on the outside looking in and will probably be pressing our noses against the window while others are chosen. As Shakespeare wrote in the play Julius Caesar: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars  but in ourselves.”

Friday: Media Day Thoughts

Monday: The Updated Roster

Wednesday: We’re Talking Practice

08.01.16
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What The Eff?

field

Hands off our players.

Memphis v Temple

Kip (80) gets TU love after scoring.

Anyone who read this blurb on Philly.com had to have one reaction: “What the Eff?”

Kip Patton was that rare talent end who had the speed and the athleticism of a wide receiver in a tight end’s body.

There is a rest of the story, as Paul Harvey might say, that neither the article mentioned nor any of the first 24 comments suggested. Patton is transferring from Temple to Tennessee Tech and the new Tennessee Tech head coach is his former offensive coordinator  at TU, Marcus Satterfield.

The optics of this are just not good.

I’m sure Satterfield will deny any charges that he is “poaching” a Temple player, but it sure looks like that. If Patton was transferring to Tennessee or Vanderbilt or even Tennessee-Martin, I would understand it. But transferring to Tennessee Tech should not have been allowed. Where there’s smoke, though, there’s fire as Temple walk-on Yeedee Thaenrat—a former Father Judge player and Rutgers’ commit—is following Satterfield to TT.

The last time I worried about a Temple player leaving with a  Temple coach that player was P.J. Walker and that coach was Steve Addazio, who recruited him to Temple. At the time, I hoped that Daz would have enough integrity to keep his paws off Walker or any other Temple recruit that year. Much to his credit, Daz did have that much decency.

The same cannot be said for Satterfield, no matter how innocent (or guilty) this transfer might be. All the best to Patton, but the optics of this situation is very bad for Temple University, Tennessee Tech and Satterfield himself.

What the Eff, indeed.

Wednesday: Temple’s No. 1 Foe Not On Schedule

07.29.16
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New Site For Spring Game?

 

springer

The new Temple soccer stadium (drawing here) is fully completed.

Buried in a roundup of AAC spring football games was tidbit: “South Florida held its spring game at its soccer facility before 3,500 people.”

Funny, because that the exact number Temple estimated that was squeezed into the Edberg-Olson Football Complex for its spring game.

The USF game comfortably sat 3,000 people in Corbett Stadium with very few people standing. The Temple spring game had a couple of hundred people sitting in portable seats brought in the for occasion, with the rest of the fans trying to move their heads to get a view of the action.

USF soccer stadium. Tampa, Fla. Sept. 6, 2012.

This USF soccer stadium was the site of school’s spring  football game.

That all could change by the middle of next April as Temple will also have a soccer complex that seats 3,000 people. In roughly the same amount of square feet the university plans to build a football stadium, it will open a soccer/field hockey complex in the middle of next month. Both will have separate seating of 3,000—a nod to the Title IX regulations that call for equal facilities for men and women’s sports.

Still, if USF can hold its spring game at a soccer facility, so, too, can Temple.

The people who tailgate will just have to move to closer open lots, but the people who come to see the football will do so with an unobstructed view of the action. It will be a stopgap for the spring game until the school can build a football stadium, if indeed it ever does, but it will represent a considerable upgrade of the spring venue Owl fans have been used to for the last decade or so.

Nothing has been decided, but moving the game a few blocks seems to be a no-brainer.

Monday: What The Eff?

07.27.16
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The Washed Masses

sportingnewsowls

The Sporting News has the Owls’ No. 1.

 

One of the benefits of Temple blowing the doors off Penn State and hanging with Notre Dame until the last play is a renewed respect for the program.

While you might have fans on other websites with a superficial knowledge of college football and not an insider’s view of the Owls saying the team “will take a step back,” journalists who do some real research have picked the Owls to finish in first place in the American Athletic Conference.

Call them the “Washed Masses.”

sbnation

SB Nation says title goes through Philly.

This post is to give both The Sporting News and SB Nation props for giving the Owls that kind of respect.

These are just two, although we saw one other preview that had the Owls finishing No. 22 in the country. I’m sure there will be more when the magazines with later deadlines hit the stands.

For now, though, The Sporting News is picking the Owls to win the AAC and SB Nation simply says that the road to the title goes through Philadelphia.

Aside from personnel issues (which we covered in Monday’s post) that seem to indicate that the Owls will be strongest in the areas where some of the best players have left (linebacker, center, wide receiver and cornerback), the schedule falls into place perfectly for the Owls. The toughest conference team on the schedule, South Florida, is home and it doesn’t take an overly sharp memory to recall that the Owls handled South Florida, 37-28, the last time they made it to Philadelphia.

UConn, Memphis and Cincinnati should also be tough, but the Owls beat UConn, 27-3, last year—at a time they were in a freefall—and Memphis has a new coach who probably will have growing pains. Cincinnati comes to Philadelphia and that should also make a big difference.

Now they just have to do it. September cannot come soon enough.

Friday: New Site for The Spring Game?

07.20.16
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Owls: Recharging The Batteries

recharging

The team that toasts marshmallows together wins championships together. 

One of the fathers of the players mentioned to me a few years ago that being a Division I football player was a 365-day-a-week job.

As someone who took the Fox Chase Regional rail into Center City for many years past the 10th and Diamond complex, I nodded affirmatively. All of those years, mostly Al Golden ones, I marveled how the players worked out in the elements, be it snow in January, driving rain in April or 90-plus degree heat of July. In none of those months did the Temple Owls have a scheduled game.

I believe grind is the word we’re looking for here.

That same grind did not exist with Bobby Wallace, who lived in Gulph Shores, Alabama for two-plus months in his time at Temple coach. Not coincidentally, with Wallace gone and Golden here, the grind turned into winning and it was all worth it.

Even with a tough taskmaster like Golden, though, he understood that the grind needed to be interrupted by recharging the batteries from time to time. Golden did it on site with things like Youtube singing videos and having the team go over to the Student Pavilion for some full-court basketball. Golden had a Masters in Sports Psychology at Penn State, so he was applying what he learned.

Recently, though, Matt Rhule took it to another level when the Owls went upstate for some camping. How does this help the Owls beat, say, Penn State? Simple. The team that bonds together off the field sticks together on it.  From all reports, the Owls bonded nicely on the camping trip and extended the bonding to the numerous Community Service duties they have done since.

The grind is real, but mix in a little bonding with the grind, and that cannot hurt. As always, we will be able to tell for sure by December.

Friday: Temple Wins Internet

07.13.16
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Don’t Mess With Phil

pjtm

Last year’s team leader and this year’s.

According to the website Songfacts.com, there is not a single song about a guy named Phil.

The closest thing we could find is “Don’t Mess With Bill” by the Marvelettes but, if Phillip Walker wins an AAC title with the Temple football Owls, there could be one about him around the beginning of the new year.

Phillip?

Yes, the four-year starter at quarterback officially changed his name from P.J. Walker to Phillip, at least if his twitter page is any indication.

 

It might be nothing but the whim of a college student, but it might represent the transformation a lot of us expect from the four-year starter at quarterback. During his freshman year, I thought he established himself as a future star with 20 touchdowns against only eight interceptions in a year where he did not start until after the Idaho debacle. In his sophomore year, he was as poorly protected as any Temple quarterback I’ve ever seen—more to coaching schemes than the offensive line—but he still managed to squeeze out a bowl-eligible season.

Phillip will have all of the TU QB records, with the possible exception of rating, by the end of the season.

Phillip will have all of the TU QB records, with the possible exception of rating and Walter Washington’s rushing numbers and TDs, by the end of the season.

Last  year, he became more than a game manager but less than a star thanks, in part, to some help by a coaching staff than limited empty backfields (and opportunities for the bad guys to blitz) and inserted a blocking fullback (Nick Sharga) on a regular basis. Sharga was in there ostensibly to block for lead back Jahad Thomas, but he also picked off more than one blitzing linebacker headed straight to the quarterback.

This year, I think he graduates from that gray area between game manager and star to fully-fledged star. The only way that doesn’t happen is if the Owls go back to four- and five-wides and hopefully they learned that lesson two years ago.

Don’t mess with Phil, coming soon to a record store near you.  It might not be by the Marvelettes, but it will be Marvelous.

Friday: Checking All The Boxes

07.11.16
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The Easiest Money In All of Sports

First week has the Owls favored by 19. I would stay away from that.

First week has the Owls favored by 19. I would stay away from that, but Indiana covering the 4 at FIU looks tempting, as does Paul Johnson covering the same number at Steve Addazio.

 

For a lot of us, probably me included, it is a good thing we don’t live in Las Vegas.

We would either be living in a poor house or a mansion but probably not in between.

I don’t feel a great urge to gamble much, but when I see certain things involving Temple football—like last year’s ambush of a bowl game in Boca Raton or last year’s opener in South Philadelphia—the urge is strong enough to walk to Las Vegas and place a few sheckles on an event. (I know tons of friends who do bet online and leave their credit card information offshore, but I am not willing to do that.)

back

I would never bet against the Owls, but the administration put the team in an impossible spot with really nothing to win by beating Toledo last year and a few dollars would have eased my pain for that loss I saw coming a mile away.

This year’s “easiest money in all of sports” involves the Owls’ third game of the season, a Sept. 17th date at Penn State. The Owls are 6.5-point underdogs and they shouldn’t be. Looking at this objectively, which I can do (see last year’s pre-Toledo post), I cannot see how this should be anything but a pick-em at worst and a slight Owl lean at best.

That’s why grabbing the 6.5 now is a gift you can thank me for later.

My reasoning is simple. Two relatively easy tuneups, Army and Stony Brook, ease some talented newcomers into the lineup to help the holdovers and bring them up to speed. Penn State has a tough, emotional, game at Pitt the week before and that will take a lot out of Nits. (They don’t think it will be emotional, but Pitt will hit them in the chops and they will respond but the fight could be bloody.)

This year’s version of the Owls’ defense—which returns three starters at linebacker in Stephaun Marshall, Avery Williams and Jarred Alwan—return. Despite the loss of Tyler Matakevich, this should be a better linebacker group. They are faster and better at pass coverage and, in Alwan’s words, their “chemistry is ridiculous.” Ridiculous, as in good. The linemen in front of them—Haason Reddick, Karamo Dioubate, Avery Robinson, Greg Webb and either Praise Martin-Oguike or Sharif Finch—represent the fastest Temple group in the last decade. There is solid depth behind them with guys like Michael Dogbe and Freddy Booth-Lloyd, who can easily fight themselves into the starting lineup.

With a four-year starter at quarterback in Phillip Walker, and an All-AAC running back like Jahad Thomas, the offense should not have too much difficulty moving the ball against Penn State. On the other side of the field, Penn State will have a rookie quarterback facing a four-year starter.

Mix all of that in, and a don’t think a home-field advantage is going to be enough to rattle these Owls. In fact, I think the South Florida game at home later in the season will be much tougher to win.

Wednesday: Don’t Mess With Phil

Friday: Checking Off The Boxes

Monday: The Andres Blanco Of Temple

Wednesday (7/20): Recharging The Batteries

Friday (7/22): Owls Will Internet

Monday (7/25): The Unwashed Masses