Category Archives: Temple football

11.24.23
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The worst of all 3-9 seasons

For the third-straight year, Temple University finished an abysmal 3-9 in football.

That’s the only thing that matters.

Not injuries, not coaching staff changes, not losing recruiting battles.

Not nothing.

This team without E.J. Warner has been a complete and utter joke. Congratulations to E.J. If this is the end, it was a pleasure to be a fan of yours (I won’t be once you leave but that’s the same thought process I have for every Temple player who leaves the nest.)

The bottom line is the bottom line.

Temple lost, 45-21, on Friday to a Memphis team that it lost to, 24-3, a year ago.

Whatever was gained on the offensive end was more than offset by the loss on the defensive end.

That’s been the story all season.

Basically, it was the same thing on a different day. This happened to be on a Friday in front of an ESPN audience. Most embarrassments came on a Saturday in front of ESPN+ viewers. A Thursday ESPN show ended up in a 48-26 loss to Tulsa (a team it lost 29-16 in 2022) and multiple Saturdays resulted in worse outcomes. Every single game against same opponents Temple performed at a worse level in head coach Stan Drayton’s second season than it did in his first.

Think about that.

In Al Golden’s first season, he was 1-11. In his second, he was 4-8.

In Matt Rhule’s first season, he was 2-10. In his second, he was 6-6.

That’s the way this thing is supposed to work.

It didn’t this year. Every opponent on Temple’s schedule in 2023 performed at a higher level against the Owls than they did in 2022.

The only outlier was the Navy game.

That’s not supposed to be the way things work when you spend $2.5 million to hire a new coach.

In the press conference afterward, Temple head coach Stan Drayton blamed injuries.

He didn’t blame a coaching staff that sat on its hands in the portal instead of bringing in 20 potential new starters from P5, JUCO and FCS teams. The only starters that needed to keep their jobs were quarterback E.J. Warner, linebacker Jordan Magee and (under a DC who knew what he was doing) LB Layton Jordan.

He didn’t point the finger to himself for not conducting a nationwide search for a defensive coordinator instead of picking the first friend to come to his mind. A great defense gives you a chance … chance .. to stay in every single game. D.J. Elliott outperformed Everett Withers in all but one game of Drayton’s first year without the benefit that goes with that additional year.

That’s more of an indictment of Withers than it is praise of Elliott, who is now the LB coach of the Philadelphia Eagles.

A poor defense can get you blown out on any given day.

An argument can be made of the three consecutive 3-9 seasons, this is the worst. First, the 3-9 Carey season at least had a win over a ranked team (Memphis) and this one did not.

Last year’s 3-9 team showed some fight in their last two games and this one did not.

Afterward, Warner was asked if he was leaving and said: “Please don’t ask me that.”

(If that doesn’t mean he’s gone, I don’t know what does. I hope he stays but I’m not an idiot. My educated guess is that he ends up at a place like James Madison in a couple of weeks.)

If no big firing is made on Monday (and we’re talking DC here because we don’t expect Drayton to be fired), Temple is telling the nation that finishing 3-9 every year is perfectly fine. Drayton is telling you he prefers a comfortable friendship with Everett Withers over winning football games at Temple.

That’s not perfectly fine with me. Nor should it be with you.

Otherwise, every Saturday next year will be the same Groundhog Day it has been every Saturday for the last three seasons.

A reminder that the opener next year is with Oklahoma, not Bucknell nor Akron. The urgency to get big-time players in here should have been last offseason, not this one.

Monday: 5 Immediate Fixes for Temple Football

Friday: At Least We Had This

Monday: The Nuclear Option

Friday: A Big Announcement in Lieu of a Big Announcement

11.20.23
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Memphis looking for a new Philly tune

Stan Drayton’s seat can cool off considerably if he is able to win on Friday.

In about four days, Memphis’ football team will be trying to do something it hasn’t done in Philadelphia in nearly a decade.

Win a game.

They will enter Friday’s noon game (ESPN) has a 12.5-point favorite and the only surprising thing is that the oddsmakers see it as that close.

History plays into part of it, both recent and distant.

The distant part is that in 2019 Memphis brought into Philadelphia a team that eventually finished 12-2 and won the American Athletic Conference championship and lost, 30-28.

Two years later, the Tigers played a Temple team that openly rebelled against head coach Rod Carey in his final year and came away with a 34-31 loss.

One of the current players for the Owls, Amad Anderson, was the star of that game, taking a pitch and going 59 yards for a touchdown to seal it. Because a lot of key players for Temple hit the portal the prior year and many were threatening to do so the next, Carey’s hot seat was blazing by the final game of the season that new athletic director Arthur Johnson had to use an extinguisher to put out the fire. It was a costly piece of equipment as Temple is in the last year of paying Carey $2 million not to coach the team.

Our picks this week: Two in the bag already as another coach, Chris Creighton, at a much harder place to win than Temple (Eastern Michigan) delivers with another bowl season. Could not believe that EMU was getting 6 and they won outright.

The Temple team that beat 12-2 Memphis in 2019 finished 8-5. The Temple team that beat Memphis two years ago finished 3-9, while Memphis finished 6-6.

The last time Memphis won in Philadelphia, a familiar face here won it for the Tigers as current Eagles’ kicker Jake Elliott drilled a 31-yard field goal with no time left for a 16-13 win in 2014.

The recent history for Memphis is that the Tigers are 8-3 while the Owls have the exact opposite 3-8 record but the fact that Memphis “only” beat USF, a team that the Owls should have beaten, by 59-50 two weeks ago indicates the Owls might have an outside chance. Better yet, Memphis struggled to beat Navy, 28-24, and that was a team the Owls hammered, 32-18, three weeks ago.

The Owls can win. They probably won’t.

That’s only if they play a perfect game, no turnovers and no key penalties and, for Temple, that has been the biggest if of the season.

After a season of imperfection week after week, even envisioning that scenario seems preposterous.

Whether or not it sets the throne Drayton sits on ablaze is a story for another day.

Late Friday Night: Memphis-Temple Analysis

Monday: Season Recap

11.18.23
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Kill Switch: Oh, what might have been for Temple

Less than a month apart, two of the most underperforming college football programs in the country made major football hires late in 2021.

On Nov. 29, New Mexico State hired Jerry Kill.

If Arthur Johnson was director of football operations at TCU instead of Texas, Jerry Kill probably would have been hired and Temple might be sitting on a 9-3 season at this point.

Exactly two weeks to the day later Temple hired Stan Drayton.

Temple was bad in 2021 but New Mexico State was much worse.

The Owls finished 3-9 but the Aggies were 2-10. In that 3-9 season, the Owls beat a ranked team, Memphis, while the Aggies best win was over a FCS team, South Carolina State.

Both needed a new coach and the New Mexico State brass thought hiring a proven program-builder was a better way to go than hiring an unproven running backs’ coach.

What happened since?

Temple went 3-9 in Drayton’s first season and, after a 34-24 loss to a bad UAB team on Saturday, will undoubtedly go 3-9 for the third-straight season. Kill had the Aggies 7-6 his first year and, since an August loss this year, New Mexico State is 9-2 including a 31-10 win over SEC power Auburn on Saturday night.

Did Kill say before the game with Auburn that “they recruit better than us and someday we hope to recruit like them” like Drayton did after the Miami loss? No. He hired a 33-year-old wunderkind DC who actually had a history of stopping modern offenses instead of a 60-year-old “close friend” retread who couldn’t stop a nosebleed. He devised a game plan to have his lesser talent beat Auburn’s better talent.

No thanks. I’ve seen enough heartbreak for one year.

That’s what great coaches do.

Oh what might have been for Temple if only Arthur Johnson was “director of football operations” at the last school Kill was at (TCU) instead of another Texas school.

Worse, Temple could have had the Kill switch to turn off the losing easily. Kill signed for $550,000 at New Mexico State. Drayton signed for nearly four times as much at Temple. You don’t think he would have taken the Temple job in a heartbeat over New Mexico State?

Hell, he still probably would.

Money talks, bullshit walks.

Kill was familiar with Temple and the recruiting area from the time he was an assistant at Rutgers while Temple was winning an AAC championship.

In an unremarkable opening press conference, the best promise Drayton made Temple fans was that he would “chase greatness.”

Kill said this at his introductory press conference: “I just like taking on challenges. It’s like building a house, and I like to do things. I like that. I like being the underdog. I like having a chip on my shoulder, and you get in with the players that have the same thing. …I like the process. I love the process.”

For Kill, the “process” hasn’t included the NIL but has included the transfer portal: “We just don’t have the big donors or the big money (for the NIL) but we do offer kids an opportunity for guys stuck behind P5 starters on those teams and FCS guys who have performed at a high level but want a bigger stage. That’s all we can offer at this point and it’s a formula that works for us.”

Temple fans when they hear Drayton is still bringing in high school recruits.

Meanwhile, Temple’s recruiting philosophy is stuck back in 1987 when you could build a team of high school recruits, redshirt them for a year, have them back up for another and then have them ready to play by the third.

Guess what? Nobody has the time for that anymore because if you don’t win by Year Three, you are out on your ass.

Two teams that reached a fork in the road a week apart in December of 2021: Temple and New Mexico State.

Make that two years in a row.

The Aggies could have picked an unproven running backs coach and probably would be looking at a third-straight 2-10 season.

Temple did and is staring at a third-straight 3-9 season. Kill was and is a proven program-builder. The best you could say about Drayton back then was that he was a huge roll of the dice at a time Temple couldn’t afford to gamble.

New Mexico State made a solid investment at a time when the Owls were spending their last chip at the crap table.

The Aggies made the correct call. One school’s blessing is another school’s curse.

Monday: Memphis Preview

Late Friday Night: TU-Memphis Analysis

11.17.23
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Saturday: A clash of coaching styles

Temple has more talent than a 3-7 team should have. Coaching, not so much.

From about 1 p.m. in the afternoon on Saturday until a little past 6 in the evening, Temple fans will be able to gauge a couple different coaching philosophies.

At 1, Adam Fisher takes his unbeaten basketball Owls to the Liacouras Center where they will host Columbia.

What did Fisher say in his first press conference?

“I’m here to win right away.”

A couple of hours later, Stan Drayton will take his 3-7 football Owls to Birmingham in an effort to avoid another 3-9 season. Make no mistake, if the Owls don’t win tomorrow (3 p.m., ESPN+), they will finish a miserable 3-9 for the third-straight miserable season. The last guy who finished 1-6 and 3-9 got his ass fired.

What did Drayton say in his first press conference?

“We want to chase greatness.”

Well, Fisher is winning right away and Drayton is still chasing.

Greatness is way ahead of Drayton, almost lapping him on the track. Fisher is just where he wants to be, winning right away.

Our picks this week: SMU covering against Memphis, Navy covering the 2.5 against ECU, Army getting the 4.5 against Coastal and FAU to keep it closer than 9.5 against Tulane.

Sometimes setting the expectations and announcing an urgency to win pays off. We won’t know if it pays off for Fisher for at least a couple of months, but this “chasing” bleep has got to stop and the sooner the better. Fisher went out in the portal and got guys he thought would be able to win right away.

At some point, if you are chasing greatness you’ve got to show the few remaining paying customers that you are at least gaining on it.

Ultimately, when the story of this season is written, the Owls’ offseason failure to improve a running game that finished 129th (out of 131 teams) in 2022 will prove to be their undoing.

From the end of last season to the beginning of this one, we harped in this space that there were great running backs to be had from places like Ball State, Western Michigan, Liberty and even freaking Alcorn State available and ready to transfer to Temple in the portal and watched while the Owls were perfectly content to settle for the freshman running back from Tampa and the holdovers from last season that put them 129 on the totem pole.

That’s how you got to 129 in the first place. Get me at least two 1,000-yard backs in the portal. All the Owls did was get another E.J. (Wilson, not Warner) who had half the yards Edward Saydee had.

That’s not getting it done in the portal.

Worse, a great defensive end hit the transfer portal for the Big 10. The move there was to get three great defensive ends from lower levels. All the Owls did was get Davon Hood from East Tennessee. Nice pickup, but needed to attract two more Hoods to the hood.

That’s how you end up chasing the faster guys ahead of you. Go get me four Jamaican 400-meter relay guys and suddenly those guys are chasing you. That’s what you had all offseason to do. Fisher was pounding the pavement. Drayton might not have been getting a cheesesteak at Richie’s but he didn’t wear out any shoe leather, either.

Temple needs a Howie Roseman of the portal and it’s obvious the Owls don’t have that.

If the Owls beat UAB, an argument could be made that 4-8 is better than 3-9.

Not buying it.

Kyle Hunter picked up this tidbit: UAB is worst in the country in kickoff return yardage allowed. I wonder if this Temple coaching staff is even aware of this? If they are, tell Sam Martin to return those kickoffs. He might be able to recapture that magic and take one to the house like he did earlier this season.

If the Owls are clicking on all cylinders and leading late in the game, expect UAB head coach Trent Dilfer to be going ballistic and yelling at both coaches and players.

I have yet to see Drayton yell at an assistant coach, specifically his precious friend, Everett Withers, for their shortcomings and there have been many.

A guy named Settle might be playing basketball for the Owls but the football Owls certainly appear to settle for losing way too much.

Sometimes you get what you demand.

It’s high time Temple football demands more winning and less chasing.

Tomorrow would be a good day to start.

Late Saturday Night: UAB Game Analysis

11.13.23
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Losing is an attitude, too

When you lose, you open yourself up to this kind of mockery from the bad guys so my advice is don’t lose.

A long time ago, a former colleague of mine in Doylestown, Steve Wartenberg, wrote a book about legendary Temple basketball coach John Chaney.

Steve followed Chaney through a season and mostly ups and really pinpointed why Chaney was a great teacher, recruiter and coach.

The title was “Winning is an Attitude” and it encapsulated what it took to win and maintain that attitude. Wartenberg was especially impressed that Chaney surrounded himself with winners, recruited team captains of winners from champion high school teams and only hired assistant coaches who were winners.

That mindset trickled down to every single Temple basketball player.

Too bad Steve didn’t follow Temple football head coach Stan Drayton around this season. His sequel could have been “Losing is an Attitude” because for every reaction there is an equal and opposite one.

From jumping offsides after stopping one series in the fourth quarter to hitting a quarterback clearly out of bounds after stopping another series, those were losing plays. They ferment a losing attitude and Temple football clearly has one now.

In reality, though, the game should have never come down to that because Temple spotted South Florida a 17-0 lead.

It’s hard enough to win in big-time college football as it is. It’s almost impossible to win spotting another team 17 unanswered points.

An absolutely mind-numbing decision contributed to that deficit. Temple won the coin flip but instead of giving the ball to its best unit, the offense, it went on defense. That’s the conventional wisdom but Temple is not a conventional team.

Two problems with that.

If there was ever a Temple game where the turning point came BEFORE the opening kickoff, this was it.

One, you have a kicker who kicked the ball out of bounds FIVE prior times this season and you give him a chance to kick it out of bounds a six.

He took it. Hell, go for the record. (Tried to look up the record for kicking it out of bounds but can’t find it. Wouldn’t be surprised if this was it.)

That’s a losing decision right before the kickoff, especially considering the Bulls gave up over 50 points in three of their prior four games.

Two, the winning move there is “let’s give our best player the ball and have him give us a 7-0 lead and build off that confidence.”

Instead, USF gets great field position from the jump and attacks the weakest part of the Temple team: The secondary.

Not a surprise that the Owls had to use most of the afternoon to dig out of the grave they dug for themselves. Through no fault of the kids, the coaches gave themselves no room for error and the “normal” errors that kids make followed after that: three interceptions, a key lost fumble out of a long gain and those two stupid penalties.

It was an inordinate number of player mistakes but coaches should know their team better than that.

Had they got that 7-0 lead, who knows would have happened?

Ironically, they didn’t learn from the success against Navy because they had the same decision to make a week ago and took the ball. That resulted in a 17-0 lead. This decision resulted in a 17-0 deficit, setting the stage for all the losing moments that followed.

John Chaney would be turning over in his grave.

Friday: UAB Preview

11.11.23
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Temple football: A mind-blowing loss

A lot of things had to go wrong for Temple to lose on Saturday and they all did

Not very much still blows my mind.

Watching a 1950s TV game show interview of a guy who was an eyewitness to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was one. Knowing that the grandson (not great-great or even great but regular grandson) of the 10th President of the United States is still alive (as of 8:30 Saturday night) is another.

If Harrison Ruffin Tyler, 95, was watching the Temple at South Florida football game on Saturday, that probably would have killed him.

Fortunately for him, he’s not a Temple football fan so he didn’t care enough to grab the old ticker on the way to dropping dead on the floor in front of his TV.

Many other younger Temple football fans did and I hope they survived because I can’t remember a more agonizing (or avoidable) loss in a long, long time.

The record will show that the final score was 27-23, South Florida, but there is more to the story.

Temple won the coin flip but, with one of the worst defenses in the history of college football, decided that deferring was the smart move instead of giving the rock to the best quarterback in the conference.

It wasn’t.

For the fifth time this season, the Owls kicked the ball out of bounds. This was exactly a decade after Temple had the best kicker in the nation, Brandon McManus, who drilled the ball through the end zone on 58 of his 70 kickoffs.

Never once did McManus, a former soccer player at North Penn, kick the damn ball out of bounds.

What happened to Temple football in 10 short years from having the best kicker in the nation to having the worst?

Brandon McManus kicking the game-winning FG at UConn in 2012. Kicking has become a disaster for Temple since and it should not given that Philly is a hotbed of great high school soccer talent.

The Temple cornerbacks do what Temple cornerbacks have done all season, allow completions on long passes, and the Owls found themselves in the same 17-0 hole Navy found itself in last week.

To their credit, the Owls fought back.

Not to their credit, some head-scratching mistakes made it impossible for them to win.

One of their most reliable players fumbled after a long gain.

They jumped offsides after doing the good work to stop USF on one drive.

They inexplicably hit the quarterback out of bounds when they could have gotten the ball back for the game-winning drive.

Who to blame?

Certainly the overpaid brain trust is right at the top of the list.

You don’t recruit a Purdue reject to kick off when there were about 20 great FCS kickers who would have LOVED a Temple opportunity. Kicking has become a disaster for Temple. The Owls had a great kicker in Brandon McManus and two very good ones in Austin Jones and Aaron Boumerhi but have had no luck since. Cam Price missed a chip shot FG and an extra point that was the difference in the game.

The Owls brought only 69 players to Tampa but whose fault was that? They left their RB of the future, Joquez Smith, home for an “administrative issue.”

Sorry.

Unless your best running back was stealing signals and suspended by the conference, you don’t leave him back in Philadelphia when he was supremely motivated to show the hometown folks in Tampa what they missed.

Do you think Steve Addazio wanted to suspend Matty Brown a ton of times? Yes. Did he? No. He wanted to win more.

Win. The. Game.

That’s the only important thing.

I never thought I’d want Addazio back. I do now.

Punish Joquez Smith next week, not this one. He might have run for 300 yards against this USF defense.

Have to win the game. Save the high and mighty stuff for later.

You’ve got to coach up that it’s NOT OK to hit a quarterback five yards out of bounds under any circumstances. This has to be done in spring practice, and May, June, July and August and not for yelling at the guy after the fact in November.

The other mistakes–the DMR fumble and the E.J. Warner interceptions–were more forgivable because those two guys have been warriors for the Owls all season and the errors were of commission, not omission.

There have been many mind-blowing losses in Temple football history. It’ll be hard to top this one for a long time.

If you had a grandson who attended this game, maybe he will still be alive to tell the story in 2123.

More people will believe he was there than the story he tells about it.

Monday: The Opposite of John Chaney

11.10.23
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If Temple wins, you can utter this four-letter word

New USF coach Alex Golesh and his players talk about Temple.

About a third of the way through a 55-0 beating at the hands of visiting SMU a few short weeks ago, Temple football was trending for a very bad four-letter word.

Mess.

Mike Edwards caught this great shot of Edward Saydee scoring one of his three touchdowns on the way to 265 yards against USF last season. Saydee had a nice game against Navy and should be able to get 100 against USF if that wasn’t a mirage.

Other four-letter words were worse.

Now, after a 32-18 win over a representative Navy team, Temple defensive lineman Jerquavion Mahone went on radio and associated Temple football with another four-letter word:

Bowl.

“All we’re thinking about is winning this season out and getting into a bowl game,” Mahone said on Wednesday night’s Stan Drayton Radio Show (97.5 FM). “We want to do it for all the guys who have been here through all of what we’ve been through for the last three years and we want to do it for coach Drayton.”

When someone is 6-4, 290 pounds, you tend to listen to what he has to say.

My guess is Mahone won’t pull a Quincy Roche and opt out of a bowl if he gets his way.

First things first, though, and tomorrow’s game is at USF (noon, ESPN+).

If the Owls win that one, they can think about beating UAB.

IF .. and that’s a big IF .. they beat UAB, it sets up a home finale the day after Thanksgiving where they can beat Memphis for a bowl game.

Must admit it would be sweet to go from an absolute mess to a bowl in a little over a month.

Whoa, Nellie.

If that happens, chances are that E.J. Warner will be the first Temple player in my lifetime carried off the field after a victory because they will need a Herculean three games from Warner to complete the trifecta. The team gave a preview of that by carrying Warner around the locker room after the win over Navy.

Beating USF is a hard-enough task but by no means is it impossible.

Temple fans even in this season like to look down on one-win UConn, a former rival, and say that this three-win Owl team is better and I think it is. Yet UConn “only” lost, 24-21, to USF and even with all the Owls’ problems, I think any team with E.J. Warner on it beats UConn by double-digits.

Now go ahead and prove me right with a touchdown win at USF tomorrow.

There is both good news and bad news here because the good news is that USF can’t stop anybody.

The bad news is neither can Temple.

Now the Owls showed some defensive fiersness against Navy, holding a triple-option team to zero first-half points. That really was the only reason Temple won the game because everybody knows that a triple option team no matter how good it is doesn’t come back from 17-0 deficits.

The Owls played a flawless first-half of defense by putting their best players in position to make plays. They had effective run- and pass blitzes and they need to do that going forward because they can’t get a rush from their base three.

If they do that against USF, they can cause havoc in the backfield and make a running quarterback put the ball up.

Our picks this weekend

When that happens, guys like Magee, Layton Jordan and Jalen McMurray have to use their talents to go get it and take it the other way.

Mahone will have to do his part by occupying blockers and getting a push up the middle.

The rest will be up to an offense that needs to utilize its most talented players–Warner and tight ends DMR and Jordan Smith–in mismatches against the USF defense. That doesn’t even include the guy who got USF head coach Jeff Scott fired last year, Edward Saydee. Weapons galore for Temple.

UConn didn’t have that kind of offensive explosiveness against USF.

Temple does.

If the Owls use it effectively, you can start saying a four-letter word about them and, for the first time in months, it can be said in polite company.

Late Saturday Night: USF Analysis

11.06.23
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Last three games: Have fun and play loose

One of the greatest plays in Temple football history, courtesy of Al Golden and Matt Rhule

One day, if it’s not too late, Stan Drayton will stand up and tell his players to have fun and play loose and hard on both sides of the ball.

Maybe he already has.

The Temple football Owls seemed to be playing very tight for the five-straight games they were dominated but, for some reason, they swarmed to the football–particularly on defense–and seemed to have a whole lot of fun in a 32-18 win over Navy on Saturday.

That was fun to see.

Playing tight never seems to work so maybe the attitude will carry over into how the coaches approach the game as well.

I don’t think Temple can finish 6-6–a Memphis team that beat Boise State and hung right at the end with Missouri looks like it is going to come to Philadelphia bent on revenge for losing to both Rod Carey and Geoff Collins in its last two trips to Philadelphia. Beating the Tigers might be a bridge too far for this talent grouping.

I think, though, if Temple can play fast and loose the rest of this season that UAB and USF are beatable. USF and the Owls both beat Navy by two touchdowns and, virtually this same Temple team beat USF, 54-28 a year ago. I’m not taking about being loose with the football as the Owls have to do a much better job with ball security but some imagination in the play calling would not hurt.

That means more “imaginative” plays on offense and more run and pass blitzing on defense.

This season can remotely resemble the 2008 season when the Owls won two of their last three to finish 5-7. In that season, the Owls often showed imagination on offense as a young OC named Matt Rhule would toss in five-to-seven trick plays to keep the Owls interested in practice and the bad guys on their toes.

Maybe a fake kneel down like Adam DiMichele pulled off (top video) would work. Certainly, it would work better than the Owls wasting their offensive timeouts at the end of each half in so many of their games this year.

Speaking of DiMichele, E.J. Warner passed the former Temple and current Nebraska assistant on the all-time yardage list on Saturday. Warner’s flea-flicker touchdown to John Adams against UTSA was this year’s most imaginative Temple play.

More of that please.

If the coaches inserted a few fun plays into every game plan, who knows? Maybe the so-called trick plays open up a run game that had been under lockdown all year.

Anything to keep the bad guys honest and watching the good guys making plays and having fun would be the perfect way to close out the year.

Friday: USF Preview

11.04.23
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Some much-needed respect

Respect is earned, not given, and, honestly, the Temple football Owls didn’t deserve much respect over the first eight games of this rapidly ending season.

When Temple wins, the Owls have more people talking about them than an Insurrection, Tucker Carlson and Trumpers.

It took until Game 9 for the Owls to earn it, though, and earn they did, with a 32-18 win over a Navy team that already did enough to earn respect on the basis of its prior games.

Had not one player fumbled twice on consecutive plays, it probably would have been 39-11 instead of 32-18.

The worst thing, though, about Temple’s five-game losing streak was reading so many of the comments that “Temple should drop football” and “give it up, we’re not good at this” because other schools lose games and don’t have to listen to that garbage.

Nobody on any Navy site is calling for the Middies to drop football and concentrate on basketball after the Temple loss and neither should anybody from Temple overreact the other way when adversity faces the Owls.

It was just seven short years ago that Temple pummeled No. 22-ranked Navy in the AAC championship game, 34-10, proving a couple of things.

Temple can win in this sport and a fan base that has something to cheer for will show up, as 10,000 Owl fans who traveled 120 miles proved that afternoon.

Just win, baby.

This slap made my day.

We’re not going to overreact either way today because the Owls looked so bad in those five games there is a strong argument to be made that the Navy game was an outlier. Even the other two wins were nothing to write home about. Akron hasn’t exactly set the world on fire since losing to the Owls and Norfolk State still has a Division II blemish loss on its record.

Here’s what we do know, though. Temple is a representative team with quarterback E.J. Warner in the lineup. In my mind, UTSA will win this year’s AAC title because it has a seven-year quarterback and a great coach but the Owls were still within shouting distance of that team late in the fourth quarter with Warner. Even coming off a concussion, Warner finished an insane 27 for 33 with 402 yards and four touchdowns against Navy.

For that, he became the first Temple player in history (I wasn’t around in 1934) to be carried by his teammates in the lockeroom.

I’ve never seen a Temple player carried off the field in my lifetime (Dick Beck and other Owls carried Bruce Arians off the field in 1988). If Warner wins four-straight to close out the season, expect him to be carried off the field after a win over visiting Memphis. (Temple has beaten Memphis the last two times it came into Philadelphia.)

As Temple head coach Stan Drayton said after the win over Navy, “You can’t spell Warner without a W” and E.J. slapped that W on the Lincoln Financial Field wall with some added gusto.

Scary, though, because what happens to the Owls without Warner? Obviously, all three backups are light years behind him so let’s enjoy the Owls while we have him.

Navy isn’t great, but is pretty good. The Middies beat both Charlotte (14-0) and North Texas (27-24). They hung with USF (44-30) and a really good Memphis team (28-24). Temple has both USF and Memphis left on the schedule. It will have to win those games plus scratch out a win at UAB to get a bowl bid.

Impossible?

No.

Likely?

Also no.

If the Owls are able to keep Warner clean and avoid fumbles, they have a shot and, at this point, this is all we can ask.

After being a national laughingstock for five-straight weeks, any morsel of respect is both needed and appreciated.

Monday: The Road Forward

11.03.23
by

Navy-Temple: Hard to beat logic

If you think Everett Withers has been burning the midnight oil devising a plan to stop the triple option, by all means place a huge bet on the Temple Owls tomorrow. I don’t think he’s that kind of guy.

There is little worse than wasted anticipation, a pizza stuck to the top of a home delivery box, a trip down the shore delayed by a flat tire and a Starbucks’ coffee cup that leaks are some that come to mind.

All happened to me in the past six months.

My biggest wasted anticipation, though, by far is this 2023 Temple football season.

It’s really hard to admit that you are wrong but the logic coming into the season was fairly clear: There was much good to anticipate. My favorite sports team, the Temple football Owls, had taken two bowl teams to the wire in the final two games of the year and probably should have won both games.

No worries, I thought. This was a learning experience and the Owls would use those lessons to leapfrog from a three-win mindset to a winning one. Bowl game here we come. “Temple football is back, baby. Watch out for my Owls. Even Everett Withers can’t mess this up.” That’s what I told everybody who saw me wearing the Temple swag on my bike rides, walks and jogs this summer.

What happened?

There were no significant offseason acquisitions when many needed to be had, particularly on both lines. Plenty of P5 guys who entered the portal last December and could have helped the Owls this season remained in the portal by the kickoff against Akron. If I knew that and you knew that, surely the brain trust being paid handsomely to oversee a multimillion dollar program in a $17 million practice facility certainly must have known that.

Think again.

They sat on their hands, transfer portal wise, and let everybody else in G5 college football pass them.

They downgraded a third of the game (defense) with one of the worst hires in the history of Temple football.

The logic that now dictates Temple football has come to this conclusion: Even Vegas is way off. Temple is 2-6 on the season but only 0-7-1 against the spread (the Norfolk State game was a push).

Vegas says the Owls are “only” 6.5-point underdogs against Navy tomorrow (2 p.m., ESPN+) but the new logic, like new math, dictates otherwise.

In the only common opponent comparison, Navy beat North Texas, 27-24. Temple lost to North Texas, 45-14.

Now you can say transitive property doesn’t work until you are blue in the face but Temple’s defense did all but bring those matador capes out and allow the Mean Green to score at will. Navy’s defense fought like hell and held that same team to three touchdowns.

Do you expect Temple’s defense, which hasn’t fought like hell since the second half against Akron, to suddenly start doing so in 24 hours?

Logic dictates otherwise.

Thanks to Stan Drayton hiring the inept Everett Withers, I’ve suffered six Saturdays this fall. If I’m going to suffer tomorrow, I’m going to get paid for it. Rather lose the $150 and see my Owls win.

The only thing Temple has to hold its hat on is the return of quarterback E.J. Warner but is that even enough?

Remember the last time we saw E.J. he had five touchdown passes and 472 yards (and no interceptions) against a very good UTSA team. All that got him was a 15-point loss.

To me, if Temple has a strength, it’s E.J. and the wide receivers.

If Navy has a weakness, it’s pass defense.

That’s the only logic pointing in Temple’s direction. Praying it is enough for a win hasn’t worked all season and I’m not anticipating anything different.

That flat tire on the trip down the shore taught me to expect the worst and hope for the best not only with my favorite sports team but with life in general.

After the last two months of seeing the worst, we are due for the best. I’m not holding my breath.

Late Saturday Night (pushing Midnight): Navy Game Analysis