Category Archives: Temple football

04.11.16
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First Game Week Of Season

cherryandwhite

When you roughly have only a dozen games per season (and hopefully a couple more this one), it is more than OK to count the Cherry and White Game as one.

It is and it isn’t.

The great Paul Palmer—in my mind, the greatest Temple football player of my lifetime—messaged me a couple of days ago and said he did not play in a single Cherry and White game, so take this game for what little it is worth.

The actual game itself is not as important as getting Temple fans together. In my mind, Temple fans are the greatest fans in the country. You know, the few, the proud, the Marines? That’s Temple fans. It takes a leather neck and a leather heart to be one as I have been for nearly 40 years now. It’s easy to be a fan of Alabama. That team goes to a bowl every year. Try being a fan of a team which wins a bowl once every 32 years.

That’s hard.

So getting together with the guys who have been through these wars will be a special reunion. It is never near the absolute heroes who were getting shot at on Wake Island or Iwo Jima, but the verbal insults hurled by Fordham fans (“Temple sucks”) hurt in their own small way nonetheless.

I will admit that the Temple sucks from lowly Fordham probably was the low point.

Temple doesn’t suck anymore and let’s keep it that way.

If anything, Cherry and White represents hope for the future and the one game where there is a metaphysical certainly that no one will yell “Temple sucks” after it is over.

Wednesday: Practice Concerns

04.09.16
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Who Is Marshall Ellick?

 

Evidently, Marshall was a QB in high school but catches some passes at the 3-minute mark.

Every morning the local Allentown television station, WFMZ, throws a question in with its weather report and the one Tuesday morning was: Philadelphia is a one-day drive from what percent of the United States’ population?

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Marshall Ellick last year.

The answer was 40 percent and the weather guy, Matt Broderick, made clear he did not mean one of those kind of 18-hour drives where you have to stick toothpicks in your eyes to keep from driving off the road, just a leisurely eight-hour or less one. It is one of those reasons Temple is in a prime position to be a football power, so close to so much talent and located in a transportation hub and world-class city like Philadelphia.

With so much of the population so close, it goes to figure that Temple will get its share of not only top talent inside that circle, but guys who are overlooked.

Redshirt sophomore Marshall Ellick might be one of those guys.

The same day Philadelphia was the answer to a trivia question on TV, Temple football head coach Matt Rhule noted that one of those guys within that drive, Marshall Ellick, from Richmond, Va., came out of nowhere to be a candidate for a starting wide receiver job.

Marshall Ellick?

There are not very many things that surprise me about Temple football, but I have to admit Marshall Ellick’s name being a candidate to start at wide receiver is one of the biggest camp surprises in recent years. According to the participation charts, Ellick, who wears No. 84 now (and wore No. 14 in last year’s spring game and No. 24 last fall), was in a few games on special teams and caught no passes.

This was surprising not just because of Ellick’s lack of recent playing time, but because there are so many other guys who apparently have a head start on him. Guys like Ventell Bryant, Romond Deloatch and Cortrelle Simpson.

He is 6-2, 205, ran a 4.5-40 in high school (maybe he’s faster now) and is a walk-on who has a chance, some say very good, to start. As far as stories go this spring, it’s hard to beat that and just a reminder to print out a program before you leave the house on April 16.

Monday: First Game Week of 2016

Wednesday: Practice Concerns

Friday: Good Guys vs. Good Guys

Sunday (4/17): Post C and W Thoughts

Tuesday: Only a Play Away

04.07.16
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5 Questions That Need To Be Answered

 

Jahad Thomas looks good catching the ball.

After every spring practice, Temple head football coach Matt Rhule gets approached by reporters asking him a battery of questions. They are usually informative ones, like listing the injured and the players who look good so far. You know Pravda is going in there lobbing up softballs, and that’s been their modus operandi since Rhule was hired in 2012 so that is probably not going to change. On the other hand, Temple video person Morgyn Seigfried needs to be given props for asking some of the best questions that can be seen every day on the Temple video site. Still, there have been a number of tough questions that have not been asked and need to be answered, so hopefully Seigfried or someone like Marc Narducci will get around to asking these five before the April 16 spring game.

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Look at the Temple fans in Houston.

  1. Will The ‘Dog Stare Offense’ Be Scrapped?

In the 24-13 loss at Houston in the AAC championship game, the Owls wasted 20-25 seconds on every play looking over to the sidelines for a call in the fourth quarter. Down 11 points with 7:18 left, the Owls needed to conserve every second of time but they instead gave a clinic on how to waste it. How is this problem being addressed?

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Ryquell Armstead.

  1. What Is Up With The Run Game?

The Owls have added former offensive coordinator George DeLeone as their “run game” coordinator, the first-ever coach in the program to be designated as such. Why did Rhule feel the need to hire a run game coordinator and how does he mesh with new OC Glenn Thomas?

 

  1. What Is The Plan For Karamo Dioubate?

On the day Temple got a signature from incoming four-star defensive lineman Karamo Dioubate, he was offered by Alabama. Is the plan to play Dioubate inside, where he is needed, or outside, where there is an overabundance of talent?

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Jahad  Thomas

  1. Will Greg Webb Be Eligible?

Greg Webb, a four-star defensive tackle who originally signed at North Carolina, and could not academically qualify there or at Temple last year. Will he be eligible to play in the fall? If so, he is an immediate impact starter and could lessen the blow of losing Matt Ioannidis.

 

  1. Could Jahad Thomas Be Moved?

It’s no secret explosive running back Jahad Thomas, who is only 5-10, 170, wore down at the end of last season. Of his six 100-yard games, four were in the first seven games. Is there any possibility of moving Thomas to the slot and making room for Ryquell Armstead at running back?

Saturday: Who Is Marshall Ellick?

04.05.16
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Stadium Funding: The Other 99 Percent

sanders

Bernie Sanders’ HQ are inside the doors at the corner of 10th and Diamond.

When it comes to funding the new stadium, Temple University has done relatively well with the 1 percent, getting roughly $26 million from donors who rate near the top one percent of wage earners who currently are alumni.

It’s the other 99 percent that have not been mined yet, so the inspiration for that might be literally across the street from Temple football’s current headquarters.

Without getting into the specifics of politics, Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders—who is speaking at the Liacouras Center on Wednesday night–has opened his Pennsylvania North Philadelphia campaign headquarters at 1000 Diamond Street, directly across the street from the Edberg-Olson complex. If the stadium fund-raisers take a page from Bernie’s fund-raising book, here is what they could do to grab the remaining private funding:

Set up a GoFundMe account and email every single Temple grad. The pitch could be something like this: “We’ve raised several seven-figure donations, but we want every Temple grad to feel like they are a part of this so, like Bernie, we are asking for $27 from each of you. Twenty-seven dollars, not 1 million or even $100,000. We want to start a stadium funding revolution.”

Link the GoFundMe site through the university’s main site and away we go.

Hopefully, the Temple fans respond a little better than they did with the private GoFundMe site for Matt Rhule’s Jetpack which was put up after the Penn State game and has raised $0 dollars so far.

That site was supposed to be a joke, but a similar site for a stadium could be genius.

Thursday: 5 Questions That Need To Be Asked

04.03.16
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First Scrimmage: ‘We’re Not Very Good’

 

Sometimes you have to read between the lines when you listen to some of these early football interviews.

The biggest takeaway from the first scrimmage interview with Temple head coach Matt Rhule—which Morgyn Siegfried does very well—is that “we’re not a very good football team right now.”

Taken on its face value, that’s not good.unfinished

Listen more, though, and Rhule will say that Jahad Thomas didn’t play and Jager Gardner was banged up, but Ryquell Armstead was healthy and making plays all over the place. Those three guys are the keys to making the run game work and it takes just one to make it work. If the run game works, then the rest of the offense works because P.J. Walker’s fakes into the belly of any running back make passing plays much more effective.

 

If the run game is working, then Walker’s fakes to, say, Jager Gardner, bring the linebackers and the safeties closer to the line of scrimmage and the seams in the passing game become that much more open for guys like Adonis Jennings, Ventell Bryant, Cortrelle Simpson, Romond Deloatch, Kip Patton and Colin Thompson. If Jahad is still banged up, more reason to split him out and make him an explosive stretch-the-field receiver where he will be less banged up. It’s not like the Owls are thin on game-breaking running backs.

Small gains in the run game lead to explosive plays in the passing game.

Then, listen to the defensive coaches interview and a whole different viewpoint emerges. “Our chemistry is ridiculous,” was one comment Jared Alwan made of the linebackers and he meant ridiculously good, not ridiculously bad.

The truth is somewhere in between “we’re not a very good football team right now” and “we’re going to be very good by April 16.”

And, hopefully, better by September. It’s all coachspeak right now until then. In my mind, this is a 10-11 win team and nothing anyone says other than an injury to Walker changes that paradigm.

Tuesday: Temple’s 99 percent

Thursday: 5 Questions That Need To Be Asked

04.01.16
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Moody Blues

 

… and I thought Temple dropped softball ….

With the hiring of an architect, Moody Nolan, the endless speculation about what the new on-campus stadium will look like can finally come to an end.

Temple Football Forever was given a working concept of what the stadium will look like and, while it admittedly is preliminary, this is what they were able to come up with:

architect

“We’ll be working on this concept and refining it, of course,” our source said. “What you see here is a generalization based on something novel.”

If what you see above looks like a crude Roman Coliseum, our source says that the resemblance is on purpose.

“Dr. (Neil) Theobald asked us what we could give him for $100 million for the stadium and $26 million for retail. I said to Neil, ‘Well, we won’t be able to put seats in.’ Neil said, ‘We’re OK with benches. That’s fine.’

artwork

An art firm has been commissioned to paint this on the rolldown retail security doors in an attempt to “blend the project in with the surrounding community.”

“We then broke the bad news to him. We won’t be able to do seats,  or benches for $100 million, but we can give you concrete seating, just like the Roman Coliseum had. Neil didn’t look happy, but we sold him on the general concept and have the retail blend in like the outdoor markets in front of the old Roman Coliseum. One of the retail stores will be called Animal House and it will sell themed items like sandals and Cherry and White togas. We could make it a Roman/Greek themed Stadium by calling it the Apollo of Temple. The President said that idea was already tried, but could be revived.

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The old Geasey Field scoreboard.

‘It was a hard sell, because the President kept saying the Board of Trustees would not go a penny over $126 million so that made it tough. We said we can just move the current Geasey Field scoreboard over to the new stadium to cut corners.

 

“We finally sold the President when we said we would not only blend our theme in with the design of the stadium and the retail, but we would blend the rolldown security doors on the retail stores with the surrounding community. We’ve even commissioned an art firm to paint the row houses of the community on those doors so the project looks like an extension of the neighborhood.”

 

There will be a fun element the retail.

“Much of the Roman/Greek theme will be playing up the whole Apollo of Temple concept. The President thought that could be fun. Temple will be the only fan base in the country with a toga party tailgate. So we’re going to pour the concrete as soon as we can and hope to get this thing done in 18 months after that. The only thing we’re concerned about are the fans getting butt hurt over the deal.”

“You mean, because there are no seatbacks or video boards?” I said.

“No, because they are going to have to sit on concrete for three hours every week but the President said something that made sense. He said, ‘If the Romans could sit on concrete for three hours watching Chariot races, then our Temple Tuff fans shouldn’t mind the concrete at all for football games.’

“After that we shook hands and said, ‘Done deal.’ ”

Happy April Fool’s Day everyone.

Sunday: The First Scrimmage

Tuesday: Funding Ideas For Stadium

Related:

Big 10

Urban Meyer

Devonte Watson

 

03.30.16
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5 Potential Punt Return Candidates

 

Unfortunately, this Khalif Herbin TD in 2014 was the last for the Owls on a PR.

One of the most frustrating things to Temple football fans coming out of the 2014 season was the lack of a punt return game. After Khalif Herbin got hurt, the Owls’ top returner was John Christopher, averaged 2.0 yards per return. Last year, things improved significantly as Sean Chandler was the top punt returner with a 12.2 average as he returned 16 punts for 195 yards. Robby Anderson was next with nine returns for a 5.9 average. Neither scored a touchdown on a return.

Still, those numbers could not compare to Delano Green’s 2009 season, when he had 20 returns for 233 yards and a pair of touchdowns.

Chandler, though, seems to have that explosive first step needed but he is a valuable starter and the Owls might want to consider other options in the return game.

The possibilities are endless, and these are just five:

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Nate L. Smith

  1. Nate L. Smith

The leading punt returner in the history of high school football in the state of Pennsylvania, Smith has never been given a long look at the position at Temple and maybe this year deserves it. Playing for Archbishop Wood, he had a 62-yard punt return for a touchdown in the state title win over Harrisburg Bishop McDevitt. He was given only one chance to return a punt with the Owls and that was a 21-yard return that set up a game-tying field goal against AAC champion Memphis.

  1. Kareem Ali Jr.

Ali, a four-star recruit, is the son of a couple of speedsters, his mom, Tasha, a track star at Temple, and his dad, Kareem Gilliard, a speedy slot receiver at Temple. He put that speed to good use last spring as he was the team’s top punt returner in practices. Yet because he would not start, he was awarded a redshirt year. If he can duplicate the explosive returns of a year ago, he should be the guy.

Kareem

  1. Cortrelle Simpson

He was two-time Scout Team player of the week in 2015 (prior to Penn State and East Carolina) and has run a 4.33 40 at the Ohio State camp. He had an amazing 795 kick return yards as a high school player, almost all amassed over his junior and senior seasons at Lackey High in Indian Head, Md.

  1. Freddie Johnson

If the above three do not work out in the spring, the cavalry arrives in the summer in the form of North Ft. Myers’ product Freddie Johnson, a dynamic punt returner who is the county 200-meter champion.

  1. Randle Jones

The special teams MVP at North Miami High (primarily for kick returns), he is also a track star who plays wide receiver, like Johnson.

Friday: Early Architectural Drawing of New Stadium

03.28.16
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5 Greatest TU Spring Phenoms

 

myles

In the 2011 game, Myron Myles scored 3 touchdowns.

As Allen Iverson once said, talking practice is different than talking games and, while there will be a Cherry and White game on April 16, even that is still practice. The important thing is doing it in a game, but to get in a game, you’ve got to do it in practice.

That’s why everything that happens until the kickoff of the Army game in September has to be taken with a boulder, not a grain, of salt. Exhibits A through E are these five April phenoms who were were not as phenomenal when the real games started in the fall.

khalif

  1. Khalif Herbin

At Cardinal O’Hara in 2014, Herbin was the key player for the White team in a 10-9 loss to the Cherry squad. Herbin, the No. 1 draft choice of that squad, caught a 66-yard touchdown pass from Connor Reilly in the game. “The whole team recognizes what Khalif can do,” Temple head coach Matt Rhule said. By the end of the next season, he was gone, a victim of injuries.

 

  1. ventresVentres Stevenson

On April 26, 1986, a freshman running back named Ventres Stevenson was the best player on the field and, according to head coach Bruce Arians, “the outstanding player during our spring practice.”  He led the White squad to a 17-7 win over the Cherry squad. Stevenson finished with 86 yards on 16 carries, but finished the season as third string behind Heisman Trophy runner-up Paul Palmer and second-teamer Todd McNair, both future Kansas City Chief players. Stevenson later became a very good back for the Owls, but just not that season.

charlton

  1. Vaughn Charlton

In the 2008 game, Charlton—wearing the Orange jersey—led the Cherry to a 21-6 win at the Edberg-Olson Complex. The Orange jersey meant the quarterback could not be hit and that always made a difference for Charlton, who went 13-for-28 for 209 yards and two touchdowns. Senior Adam DiMichele went on to be the starter that season and only a Hail Mary loss at Buffalo kept the Owls from being bowl eligible. DiMichele thrived on contact and seemed to make some of his better plays after getting hit by defenders and spinning out of contact. Charlton had the tools but never reacted as well to contact.

  1. Louis Angelo

With Louis Angelo calling the signals in the 2001 spring game, the Cherry beat the White in the most lopsided game ever, 36-0. Angelo threw a pair of touchdown passes. By the start of the season, Angelo was behind starter Mac DeVito and backups Mike McGann, Devin Scott and Collin Hannigan.  He did not throw a pass that season.

myron

  1. Myron Myles

In 2011, a freshman running back named Myron Myles—at least that was the name he was going by at the time—gained 133 yards and scored two touchdowns on 20 carries and led the White team to a 27-26 win over the Cherry squad. (Myles also caught a touchdown pass.) Bernard Pierce sat out the game, but, in the fall, led the Owls to nine wins and a bowl game. He was recruited to Temple from Wissahickon High as Myron Ross. Myles later transferred to Millersville, where his best game (114 yards) came during the 2014 season.

Wednesday: In Search of a Punt Returner

03.26.16
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We’re Talkin’ Practice

Learning to distrust the results of Spring Practice is a necessary step to move forward to the more important practice period—the four weeks prior to the opening game, in this case, Army. Still, there are battles to be won now and players who can win them.

Here are 5 Things We Should Know Coming Out of Spring:

thomascatch

1) Backup quarterback

This currently is being billed as the battle for the backup quarterback position, and for some good reasons. Two guys, Frank Nutile (pronounced NEW TILE) and Logan Marchi have been in the program for a couple of seasons. However, Anthony Russo arrives in July and all bets could be off.  If P.J. Walker, who has been rather durable all three seasons, goes down, head coach Matt Rhule cannot be blamed for burning Russo’s redshirt. If it’s for just a play or two, Nutile and Marchi are battling for backup quarterback. That is what this spring is for. Of course, one could play off the charts and change the dynamic.

natel

2) Starting Safety

This battle could get interesting. The defensive coaching staff has resisted the temptation to start Nate L. Smith, but the former George Washington and Archbishop Wood star has made plays during real games every time he’s asked. Delvon Randall should play the other safety, but Rhule moved Brodrick Yancy over to safety and that could mean that they have a plan for Yancy since Rhule called Yancy the “receiver more like John Christopher” than anyone on the team. They like his toughness and that could translate well to the safety position.

averee

3) Interior defensive line

The cavalry here arrives in July, with Karamo Dioubate and Gregg Webb expected to compete for starting positions along with Averee Robinson and Freddy Booth-Lloyd. Yet the Owls really need to build interior depth as many of their returning linemen either are or have started as defensive ends. There may be a few conversions out of necessity.

4)   Interior offensive line

Only two positions are set in stone, offensive tackle (Dion Dawkins) and center (Brendan McGowan). Bryan Carter, a starting offensive tackle, might be needed to return to DL, but that’s what spring is for. There are a number of promising guys, like Jovan Fair, who can earn starting spots.

5) Running back

I fully expect Jahad Thomas to run with the ones again, but it has to be enticing to split out that game-breaking ability and put it in the slot. That’s probably the position Thomas is better-suited for at the next level, so why not start him now. He’s a little (lot) undersize to be an NFL running back, but one good season in the slot earns him some camp looks. The only way he gets those is if Jager Gardner shows the kind of form that enabled him to run for 2,776  yards and 36 touchdowns as a high school senior. Ryquell Armstead and David Hood, who had half that many yards and touchdowns in their senior high school season, are also in the mix.

Monday: Five Biggest Owls’ Spring Phenoms of All Time

03.24.16
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Happy Birthday, Coach Hardin

 

Very classy tribute from Temple football video guys.

As an undergrad at Temple, Wayne Hardin was the only head football coach I ever knew at my school. As a result, winning was the only thing I ever knew. From the time I entered Temple to the time I graduated, Temple had four-straight winning seasons.
The Owls have not accomplished that feat since.

hardin

Joe Mesko (left), Hardin’s first TU captain, shakes hands with Roger Staubach, Hardin’s last Navy captain, last night  with coach and Steve Conjar in between.

Now that coach Hardin turned 90 yesterday, a group of his former players both at Temple and Navy honored him with a dinner last night in Florida, and it was a fitting tribute because they got to tell him again how much he meant to them and that was important.

I got to know coach Hardin as a reporter for the Temple News. Al Shrier, the then Sports Information Director, arranged for me an interview when I was a junior who was given the football beat.

To me, it was like getting to interview The Wizard of Oz.

One of the questions I asked him was about fun and football.

“The only fun in football is winning,” Hardin said.

That’s pretty much the way I felt then and my entire life and pretty much why I take losing so hard.

People talk about Bill Belichick’s coaching tree but, in reality, Belichick is one of the small branches on Hardin’s tree. Belichick’s dad, Steve Belichick, was a longtime scout and assistant for Hardin at Navy. When Hardin was head coach there, Belichick was just a kid. Yet Belichick tagged along at Navy practices and soaked up as much as he could.

Hardin was noted for outsmarting other coaches not only with everyday schemes but with trick plays and a keen eye on exploiting opponents’ weaknesses.

Patriots quick kicks, unique punt and field-goal rushes, certain trick plays — Belichick credits Hardin for many of them.

This from Comcast New England on Temple’s Garden State Bowl win:
“In 1979, when the Owls took on heavily-favored Cal in the Garden State Bowl at Giants Stadium, Belichick was in attendance. The Giants special-teams coach at the time, Belichick sat with then Giants assistant Ernie Adams, who now works alongside Belichick as the football research director for the Patriots. The pair of young and talented football minds were completely baffled as they watched Hardin toy with Cal’s linebackers, who were taught to read the guards in front of them.

“Ernie and I were sitting up there watching the game, and on the first series of plays, one guard pulled deep, the other guard pulled short,” Belichick said. “And they just folded around to get the linebacker, but they pulled. And the two inside linebackers ran into each other. I looked at Ernie, and he looked at me . . .”

Did Temple just screw that up, they wondered?

“Four or five plays later, same thing. The two linebackers,” Belichick clapped his hands together loudly, imitating the collision, “because they’re standing right next to each other. They went right into each other. [Temple ran] straight down to the safety for, like, 20 yards. They must’ve run that play six or seven times and it was 20 yards every time . . . At the time, I’d never seen that before.”

The result was the first bowl win in Temple history and a wide-eyed and impressed New York Giants’ assistant coach named Belichick.

Later, after graduating from Temple, I covered Hardin’s teams for Calkins Newspapers. While in the press box in State College, Hardin was driving Penn State head coach Joe Paterno crazy with similar schemes and play calls and Temple took a lead late into the third quarter against the heavily favored Nittany Lions. The Owls had several close calls before that game and it was only because Hardin was able to close the talent gap against the Nits with his brilliant mind. John Kunda, the long-time sports editor of the Allentown Morning Call, broke the silence in the press box.

tree

Bill Belichick is from the Hardin tree, but coach Hardin is from the Amos Alonzo Stagg tree. Must be a Redwood.

“Hardin’s outcoaching Joe again,” Kunda said.

The press box erupted into laughter, but it was a laugh of respect. I just sat there beaming with pride in the knowledge that the smartest guy on the field every Saturday was coaching my team and everybody in the room acknowledged something I already knew.

Fortunately, coach Hardin was there last year to see the Owls finally get that monkey off their back. Happy birthday, coach Hardin, and many more healthy and happy ones.

One thing I’m sure both the Navy and Temple guys agreed on last night were two words:

Beat Army.

Saturday: We’re Talkin’ Practice