Category Archives: Temple football

11.12.22
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TU-Houston Football: Tune and Fine Tune

Anyone who has watched Houston football the last couple of years knows Clayton Tune is an NFL quarterback biding his time in college football.

Nobody who throws 30 touchdown passes–as Tune did last year–escapes the notice of NFL scouts. Tune has the size (6-3), arm and escapability that the NFL is looking for but he was outplayed in a statistical sense by someone who is going to be a very good college quarterback and might never get a sniff from the NFL.

Yet Saturday’s 43-36 win by Houston over Temple showed the difference between a very good college quarterback and an NFL one. E.J. Warner, whose size will keep him out of the NFL, outdid Tune in every area but the most important one.

The scoreboard.

Tune almost single-handedly led his team to the win and hit on a clutch touchdown pass that won it with 42 seconds left in regulation.

That was the story from the Houston side.

From Temple one, this game showed that the Owls have a lot of “fine-tuning” to do before the Owls can get the signature win that has escaped them so far in the Stan Drayton Era.

I was confident Temple would cover the 20-point spread (see my exchange with “College Football Picks” above). I wasn’t as confident the Owls could take this across the finish line. I was right both times but would have gladly accepted being half-right if the Owls could have avoided the loss.

After taking a 36-35 lead with 1:22 left in the game, Job One for the defense is to keep everything in front of you. How the Owls let a guy beat their defense by 10 yards for the game-winning touchdown was a real head-scratcher.

Had that guy caught a pass over the middle, broken a couple of tackles, and made his way into the end zone would have been one thing. Letting him get behind the defense cannot happen.

Period, end of story. Can’t happen. Shouldn’t have been allowed to happen.

Drayton called it a “misfit” and we have not heard that word since the run-game defense was torched for 300 yards in the 27-16 loss to Tulsa, It’s not just the kids. It’s the coaches. Some terrible play-calling on a first-and-goal from the Navy 5 cost Temple a win two weeks ago.

Another “coaching misfit” came on Saturday when the Owls, up 7-0 and driving, decided to call a bomb on a 4th-and-2.

Why?

You need two lousy stinking yards to move the sticks. That’s a simple pass-and-catch from E.J. Warner to Adonicas Sanders. If the Owls call that, they might go up 14-0 and put themselves in a better position to win than going down 14-7.

Before this, there were a lot of “misfits.” There were at least a couple in other areas at Houston. You can’t fumble a kickoff, which the Owls did. You can’t miss an extra point, which the Owls did. You can’t go for two early in the game, which the Owls did. You can’t do it and expect a win that would send a message to the nation that Temple football is back.

All those things can’t happen going forward and it’s one of the things that Temple is going to have to fine-tune before it can register a signature win.

There are two opportunities left to achieve that goal.

The next one is Cincinnati.

Eliminate the turnovers and the coaching and player “misfits” and that’s just the kind of fine-tuning that will finally put Temple back on the national football map. Cincinnati is good but, like Houston, beatable.

Tune won the last game. Fine-tune and Temple could win the next one.

So close.

By Saturday, we should know how far away.

Monday: One Priority

11.11.22
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There is a small pathway for Temple to beat Houston

In my lifetime, I have watched only a very few masters in their crafts.

Wayne Hardin coaching a football game certainly is one. Leonard Bernstein conducting a philharmonic orchestra is another. Carl Sagan talking about the planets and Stephen Hawking discussing physics certainly were other examples.

This week I was again drawn to Steve Kornacki talking about politics in general and vote counting in particular. As late as 11 p.m. Thursday night, Kornacki said there is a small pathway for both the major political parties to control each chamber of the Legislative branch. Kornacki breaks down political races every bit as well as Hardin coached football, Bernstein waved the baton, and Sagan and Hawking had a handle on their respective fields.

Kornacki must have been reading my mind because that was exactly my thinking about this Saturday’s Temple at Houston college football game (3 p.m., ESPN+). It has been all week.

There is a pathway, albeit a small one, where I can envision the Temple Owls pulling off an upset as a 20-point underdog.

First, Temple will have to prove Saturday’s 54-28 win over USF last Saturday was not a one-off. That is, after a month of hovering around producing 10 points a game, the Owls figured something out and now can play what head coach Stan Drayton calls “complementary football.” Meaning the offense will need to contribute at least a third, with the defense a third and the special teams a third.

That’s been out of whack until now.

My theory is that it isn’t a one-off because the offense showed signs of being a representative outfit for the entire second half against Navy. Give them at least as much credit for that because the Owls were able to move the ball effectively against a defense that played well enough to beat a very good East Carolina team and “hold” SMU to 37 points fewer than Houston did.

That’s important because the Houston defense is the weak spot of that team. It allowed USF 27 points and SMU 77 points and, if indeed the Temple offense is a “1 1/2 off” and not a one-off, the Owls have a puncher’s chance. If the Temple defense was porous, it wouldn’t make a difference but the Temple defense has been consistently good for eight of nine games. It doesn’t need to play out of its mind to beat Houston. It just has to avoid playing like it did at UCF. Houston has been good, but not overwhelming. It “only” beat Rice, 34-27 and Rice lost 56-23 to a 2-8 Charlotte team. It beat USF (42-27) by a less impressive score than Temple did. In a 77-63 loss to SMU last week, it lost three more starters to injury on top of the three starters it did in the game before. That has to take its toll. Maybe the loss of available bodies will finally hurt a Temple opponent. Temple, on the other hand, is relatively healthy.

The outcome won’t be determined by the Houston team that shows up as much as the Temple one. Is the 54 points more a reflection on Temple or USF?

There are some clues. The 54 points came after a nice second half at Navy by the Temple offense.

So, on offense, one game is an anomaly. More than one game is something else and, three games–if the Owls can keep trending upward–could mean something special and send a message to the rest of the college football world that Temple is back.

Those precincts have yet to report but from what I’m seeing, there is a lot of Cherry on that map. Votes for the Owls have not been counted but will by 6:15 or so tomorrow night.

If the good guys have one more than the bad guys when all the points are counted, that’s all that matters.

Late Saturday: Game Analysis

Our Picks This Week: Only four games stood out to us as “mistakes” by Vegas. Indiana (a team that beat a very good Western Kentucky team) getting 40 points at Ohio State is way too much. At most, I see this as a 48-14 OSU win. Fresno State has improved from its one-point loss to UConn and UMass is playing out the string for Don Brown this year like Temple did for Rod Carey last year so both Fresno and Arkansas State should cover hefty spreads. San Jose State is a sneaky good team and should beat San Diego State closer to 24-17 than the 2.5 spread.

Record this year: 22-17 ATS.

11.06.22
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The reaction: Admiration but not respect (yet)

 Regarding visual artistry, no one quite matches Temple University’s official team photographer, Zamani Feelings. The guy shoots from different angles and gets shots no one else does that are pretty breathtaking.

Telling a story, though, the champion is a fan in the stands and former Temple player Mike Edwards.

When the entire fan base was wondering if junior running back Bernard “The Franchise” Pierce would be coming back for his senior season (which would have been in 2012), a shot Edwards took captured the moment and removed all doubt.

The pre-game discussion about Pierce in the tailgates was split. Half of the guys thought had he come back for his senior year at Temple he would earn first-round money the next season. The other half said Pierce needed the third-round money now. Nobody thought he’d be higher than a third-round pick if he left after his junior year so we were looking at keys to his intentions and we got it later that day.

Pierce went over to then-head coach Steve Addazio and hugged him as if to say his Temple home career was over. Daz wasn’t happy and went out and convinced ACC Preseason Player of the Year Montel Harris to transfer to Temple in an attempt to replace the production of an NFL third-round choice.

Harris was the last Temple player to do what Edward Saydee did in a 54-28 win over USF: Gain almost a quarter of a mile on the ground. In 2012 at Army, Harris went for a school-record 351 yards and seven touchdowns in a 63-32 win.

Saydee didn’t reach that number, but getting 265 and three touchdowns was pretty darn good. On Saturday, Edwards captured the pretty neat photo at the top of this post.

So many stories in that one photo. 1) Saydee leaving both teams in the dust; 2) Adonicas Sanders way in the back with his finger in the air; 3) Isaac Moore celebrating a job well done with a block; 4) Stan Drayton reliving his All-American running back past by running for the touchdown, too; 5) A vertically challenged person holding what looks like a medical bag on the sideline (presumably oxygen for Saydee); 6) the smiles of the Temple players on the sideline.

That pretty much seems up the Temple reaction in one snapshot. As Henrik Ibsen first said, a picture is worth a thousand words.

The outside reaction, though, was somewhat less impressive. One UCF fan offered his congratulations and said he “admired” the Owls because they tried hard in a 70-13 loss.

Vegas, though, has not shown respect just yet.

If you thought the win over USF might bring down the point spread for Saturday’s game at Houston to low double digits (which I did before I checked), you’d be mistaken. Houston opened as a 20-point favorite despite having a defense that gave up 77 points on the same day Temple dropped a 54-burger on USF.

The message was loud and clear. The nation does not respect Temple quite yet and the Owls are going to have to go out and get it.

Just like Daz got Montel Harris.

Friday: Houston Preview

11.04.22
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Temple will have to play for the die-hards Saturday

Photo in post below courtesy of Zamani Feelings

Perhaps the best thing to happen in Philadelphia sports this week was the worst thing to happen for Temple football.

The Phillies won that first game in Philadelphia on Tuesday which meant that a Saturday night World Series game would be played and have the attention of the entire city including the “casual” Temple fans who make up at least half of the fan base.

I had a chance to visit the campus yesterday and picked up a copy of The Temple News. The story on the front page wasn’t about being excited for the Temple football game against visiting USF on Saturday but about how much Temple students were into the recent success of the Phillies. The Temple football game wasn’t even mentioned, not even farther back in the sports section. They were interviewed about what they were going to do the rest of the week and their plans revolved around the rest of the World Series.

This city loves a winner and, even though the Phillies lost on Thursday night, they will still be playing for something meaningful on Nov. 5. Temple will be playing out the string on Nov. 5 and whatever games are left after that.

Those are the hard, cold facts.

Even though the Temple game is at 2 and the Phillies game is at 8, that has to affect the attendance from the perspective of people driving in from the suburbs or catching a weekend regional rail schedule where the trains to the suburbs are two hours apart (pre-pandemic, for example, they have spaced only an hour apart on Saturday). My guess is that a lot of people will say bleep it and stay at home to watch what might be the last baseball game of the season.

That means the Owls will be playing in front of roughly 10-12,000 die-hard fans at Lincoln Financial Field in search of their first league win.

The Owls made their bed by first not winning the Homecoming Game against Rutgers–their best chance to keep a large following–but also by sleepwalking through the subsequent games.

Some terrible offensive coaching last week (a pass targeting their second-best pass-catching tight end was dropped and zero thought in play calling with a first-and-goal at the 5 in regulation when Temple had to score to win) robbed them of their first real chance of a league win.

Now they have perhaps one more. Vegas had USF favored by 3.5 points going into the game and some money went Temple’s way as the Owls were bet down to three as of Thursday night.

That’s a tepid acknowledgment that USF is bad, too.

Who will win?

Who knows but for this Temple fan I’ve been hoping for the offense to show up for a month now and all hope has gotten me is three points against Memphis, 13 points against UCF, 9 offensive points against Tulsa, and 13 offensive points against Navy.

Those are the kinds of numbers that get an OC fired at a place like, say, Rutgers (which happened earlier this year). For some reason, first-year head coach Stan Drayton has not felt the same sense of urgency that coach Greg Schiano has at Rutgers.

At some point, the post-game analysis needs to shift from “they lost but played hard” to “they found a way to win.”

Saturday, in front of a sparse crowd at the Linc, would be a good time for that narrative to be born.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis

Picks this week: After an unbeaten Thursday night, going to sit this one out due to nothing jumping out at me as a mistake by Vegas. Record for the season: 22-17 ATS. (If I was going to bet, would take the under 39.5 in the AF at Army game because the under is 42-9 in the last 51 service academy games.)

10.30.22
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Drayton probably is wondering what might have been

Temple was the only team in the AAC to have two four-star quarterbacks to start the season. Drayton probably didn’t figure on finishing it with a first-year freshman but this is where we are.

Physically, by all accounts, Temple head football coach Stan Drayton is on the mend from his recent viral illness and will be joining the team this week.

Mentally, though, he must have spent the last week wondering what might have been this year in a 2-6 season that looks like it’s most likely headed for 2-10.

If that didn’t make him sick, it certainly could not have made him feel well.

Going into the season, a lot of things had to go right for the Owls to win more than they have and right at the top of that list was quarterback Dwan Mathis.

Had Mathis played like the four-star quarterback he showed ONLY in the Memphis game last year–three touchdown passes and 349 passing yards in a Temple win–this Owls’ team might have had more success.

Instead, though, Mathis played like he had in all of his other five starts last season and was pulled for good in the 31-14 win over Lafayette. He needed to play well in one of those two games and he didn’t.

Other than catching a couple of passes, he hasn’t been back since.

What if, though?

Mathis at his best opens up the offense in a way E.J. Warner at his best doesn’t. He brings that element of running and throwing at a high level that Warner brings to only one side of the football.

Drayton has to take a peek at these other big-time teams and, almost to a man, the great ones have someone at quarterback who is a threat both running and passing the ball.

While Temple fans could have foreseen Mathis not playing well, fumbling the ball away once against Duke and twice against Lafayette had to be surprising. Maybe it’s the byproduct of wearing that green jersey and not getting hit for nine months leading up to the opener but it’s a move Drayton had to make.

When asked about it in the post-game, he said “putting the ball on the ground twice” was the reason he pulled him.

It’s kind of surprising, though, that Temple hasn’t seen much of Mathis or even Quincy Patterson since. Patterson especially being inserted into the game on Saturday with a first-and-goal at the 5 and THROWING a pass off a ball fake might have worked better than anything Everett Withers tried with Warner. That’s because Navy’s scouting report had to dictate selling out for a run when Patterson was in there because that’s pretty much all he did prior to that. The element of surprise was held by Temple and the Owls chose not to use that card.

It could have been their ace in the hole but Drayton wasn’t there to make that decision. He will be around for the last four and it should be interesting to see what decisions he makes or if it makes a difference at all.

Friday: USF Preview

10.29.22
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Temple’s OT loss at Navy came down to one play

Slice it and dice it any way you want, but Temple’s 27-20 overtime loss to Navy came down to one play of one series.

Getting a first-and-goal at the 5 in the last minute of regulation, the logical move for a quarterback who has been hurried the entire day and an offense that can’t get yards on the ground is to roll the quarterback out and try to find a moving receiver target in the end zone.

What did Temple do instead?

Run straight into the teeth of the Navy defense for one yard to set up a second and goal at the 4. A lousy, lousy first down play call considering the personnel available. It wasn’t the only lousy play call. You have a former high school quarterback on your roster (Trey Blair) and you call a reverse pass for someone who never threw a pass in a game before (Amad Anderson)? Lousy call. How about a halfback pass using Blair instead? You have a proven pass-catching tight end (David Martin-Robinson) and you call a key third-down pass to the other tight end who caught only one ball all year? Don’t be surprised when he drops it. Lousy call. Incredibly bad roster awareness. Good coaches scheme to the individual talents of their players and it’s painfully obvious Temple doesn’t have enough good coaches or, worse, they don’t know what their players are capable of doing.

Now back to the most important play call of the day. Not scoring a touchdown on first-and-goal at the 5 is letting down every single kid on the team.

Talk all you want about the subsequent plays in the series, but a fake to the running back on the FIRST play, not the second one, and rolling the pocket could have bought quarterback E.J. Warner the time he needed to find someone–anyone–open in the end zone. No matter how many backup offensive linemen you might have on the field, any self-respecting offensive coordinator has to find a play to scheme a touchdown on a first-and-goal at the 5. Even if he doesn’t find someone, getting Navy on a hold in the end zone is a better outcome than a 1-yard gain up the middle.

Run on first down and the defense assumes that you’ve got to pass on the next two and adjusts the defense to suit that reality.

Navy takes the field

The difference there is the difference between winning and losing. Or Temple being up by 24-20 against a triple-option team that had to to the length of the field for the game-winner with a backup quarterback.

Chalk it up as another lesson for an offensive coaching staff that really should have the experience under their belts to not make the same mistakes they’ve been making at other places.

Stan Drayton when he gets better from this recent sickness will have a lot of difficult decisions to make this offseason and one of them should be to go in a new direction in the way of coaching staff leadership on the offensive side of the football.

Danny Langsdorf has come up microscopically small not only Saturday but the entirety of this season and it’s painfully obvious new leadership is needed on that side of the ball.

That said, the other two areas of the team–special teams and defense–contributed to Temple’s loss.

Temple’s offensive woes mean you can’t muff a punt that leads to a Navy touchdown. Defensively, in overtime, Temple has to be aware that there is literally no chance that a backup quarterback that had not completed a pass all game would complete one to beat Temple.

Temple’s defense had to be aware enough to sell out to stop the run from the 25 in overtime, kick the field goal and win the game.

For all of the apologists who say this is a moral victory (none exist in my mind), just remember that a local FCS staff with an entire team of FCS players was able to hold Navy to seven points this season.

If our local FBS team with the luxury of having FBS players was able to do the same, we’d be writing about a 20-7 Temple win today.

Whatever decent effort the players gave yesterday should have resulted in a win. They can mostly thank their coaches that it did not. Stan Drayton is the CEO and, even though he was home watching on TV, he is responsible for repairing this mess.

Monday: What Might Have Been

10.28.22
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Navy-Temple: Transitive property proven wrong?

Notice how Delaware bunches up five players near the line of scrimmage, a 3-3-5 configuration and one LB two yards behind the center to take away the fullback. Every subsequent game Delaware changed back to its normal 4-3. Temple chief of staff Everett Withers has said the Owls won’t change their base defense to counter what Navy does and that’s not a good sign.

Manny Rojas would have been a good guy for the Temple coaching brain trust to consult on a professional level this week.

Rojas is the defensive coordinator at the University of Delaware, who not only beat Navy, but held them to seven points in a 14-7 win earlier this year. It might have been nice to pick his brain and ask how the Blue Hens held Navy’s potent rushing attack to less than 200 yards that day. (Or they could watch the film and see where Rojas played six defenders near the line of scrimmage, put his best down linebacker over the center and took away the fullback, and made Navy go sideline to sideline.)

Doubt it because coaches like to think they know everything and the game plan Temple will bring to Annapolis will probably be the one formulated in the coaching offices at the Edberg Olson Football Complex. Those game plans have been dreadful so far.

Judging by that approach and also comparative scores, this could get ugly.

Fortunately, transitive property rarely is a thing in college football where each game is different and the odd shaped ball bounces in strange ways.

However, humor us here just in case.

The way it goes for Temple at Navy (3:30 p.m., CBS Sports) is simply this: UCF beat Temple, 70-13; East Carolina beat UCF, 34-13 and Navy beat ECU, 23-20.

By that logic, Navy should come away with a historic 81-point victory over Temple by about 6:30 tomorrow night.

That won’t happen since college football has seldom proved the theory of transitive property and the way that Navy approaches the game–taking huge chunks off the clock with long scoring drives–does not lend itself to 81-point wins.

Still, there are plenty of reasons for Temple fans to worry about this particular game.

One, head coach Stan Drayton has been sick all week and Chief of Staff Everett Withers is the next logical choice to step in for him should Drayton not be able to make the game. Withers sat in for Drayton in Monday’s press conference and on Wednesday night’s Stan Drayton Radio show. Both times Withers said Temple will not change its base defense to counter what Navy does. That kind of stubbornness is what got ECU beat in a shocking home loss to Navy. Withers didn’t wither, though.

On both occasions, Withers referred to his role at Temple as the “coach of the coaches” and, if true, Drayton will probably delegate the ultimate authority to someone who has been head coach at places like North Carolina, James Madison and Texas State if he can’t make it. If Withers steps in and becomes Temple head coach for a day, he will be the first person to hold that job having been fired at three other places previously holding the same top job.

And Temple has played football since 1884.

Wonderful.

Get well quick, Stan.

Another reason for fans of the Owls to be concerned is that the same Navy defense Temple will play tomorrow held Tulsa to just 25 yards rushing. Temple, err, “held” Tulsa to 300 rushing yards.

That could mean a couple of things.

Temple’s defense could have a whole lot more trouble with Navy’s rushing game than Tulsa’s or, two, Temple–which had 89 rushing yards AGAINST Tulsa–could struggle even more getting yards against Navy.

A third reason to worry is that this same Navy team beat Temple, 38-14, last year, and Temple has fared worse in two of its three AAC games this season than last year (falling to a UCF team by 57 that it lost to by 42 last year and losing to Memphis team by 21 that it beat last year). To be fair, the 27-16 loss to Tulsa this year was better than the 44-10 loss to Tulsa last year.

You read that right. Rod Freaking Carey has outperformed Stan Drayton in two of the league three comparisons we have to go on. It would be nice for the Drayton staff to use the next five games to jump over that ridiculously low bar.

Maybe this is the day Drayton turns things around.

Or the day he hands the reins over to Withers, who does it for him.

Either way, Rojas probably could have made a significant contribution if asked. His email is rojasm@udel.com

Or he’s just one phone call away and there are still a few hours to place it.

Picks. Like ECU to cover the 3 at BYU and former Temple assistant Mike McIntryre, now the FIU head coach, covering the 6 against visiting La Tech tonight. Also laying the 8 with BC at UConn due to the fact that BC will probably bring more fans to the game than the Huskies will.

Record: Last week: 5-5. Season: 22-17

Update: Former Temple assistant Mike McIntryre inherited a 1-11 FIU team (part of that record thanks to Everett Withers) and now has them at 4-4. Coach of the year material. So we won on FIU and ECU and lost on UConn (as first-year coach Jim Mora Jr. also has done a better job than Drayton with less to work with). Neither of those two guys worked with Arthur Johnson so they are there and Drayton is here. Record for the season: 24-18.

Late Saturday: Game Analysis

10.24.22
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Dancing on their own: The Temple Owls

This is the happiest I’ve seen the Broad Street Subway since Sept. 5, 2015.

Disc jockeys in this town like Jerry Blavat and Pierre Robert made a national reputation by taking a chance on a demo song, playing it, and then watching it go to the top of the pop charts first here, then nationally, by call-in requests.

If the present-day Philadelphia DJs still took requests, chances are a song by the alternative pop star Robyn called Dancing on My Own would top the list at least this week. That’s the unofficial anthem of the Philadelphia Phillies, who will steal much of the thunder from the unbeaten Philadelphia Eagles over the next couple of weeks.

Jon Sumrall has Troy at 6-2 after three-straight losing seasons (one more than Rod Carey had).

Ironic the Phillies adopted it because the theme is heartbreak and isolation, about someone watching her boyfriend dance with a new girlfriend.

Today, the Phillies are feeling loved and included, while it is the Temple Owls who are feeling heartbreak and isolation.

That’s what happens when you lose to a team 70-13 one week, then turn around to watch that same team get spanked, 34-13, by a league rival you once owned the day after you lose, 27-16, to a two-win team.

If the team that beats you 70-13 gets beat the next week 34-13, what does that tell you?

At least Robyn was dancing on her own inside the club.

Temple proved it could win the AAC title here. With 1,564 players in the portal, it doesn’t need to wait more than one of two years to repeat

Right now, the Owls are on the outside looking into the AAC football club, pressing their collective noses against the window after being denied entry by the bouncer.

Or so it seems.

First-year coach Jim Mora Jr. is not talking playoffs, but certainly entertaining a realistic shot at a bowl game after a 1-11 season last year.

The reality of this season is that Rod Carey got fired for a lot of 63-21, 52-3, 49-7 and 61-14 losses. Then the school ate $6 million of Carey’s salary to hire a new guy and the new guy loses 70-13. You can talk about the change in attitude and culture inside the E-O but, until it shows up on the scoreboard on game day, that’s all it is.

Talk.

Maybe it’s not so much the coach as it is the players.

Or maybe it’s a combination of both.

There were 30 new FBS coaches hired last year and Athlon Sports ranked Stan Drayton 29th. That might have been because he had never coached anything above a position but Drayton hasn’t proven those guys wrong yet.

Drayton still has a chance to prove the so-called experts wrong, but the reality is that he has not this year and probably won’t. Other coaches inherited the same or worse records a year ago and have done better than Temple has. Temple has some good players like linebackers Jordan Magee and Layton Jordan, defensive back Jalen McMurray and tight end Jordan Smith but it needs a lot of Magees, Jordans, McMurrays and Smiths and doesn’t have time to wait for high school recruits to develop.

Sadly humorous tweet from a fan watching the Temple-UCF game.

Other schools got good in a hurry by reaching that same conclusion and the solution is staring Drayton right in the face.

The same names Carey was being called by Temple fans could be attributed to past coaches at places like Georgia Southern, UConn, Troy and Duke but those places, unlike Temple, see new coaches prove themselves by the most important metric–the scoreboard.

Georgia Southern, also 3-9 a year ago, had only four starters returning on offense and two on defense and was able to beat a Big 10 team (Nebraska) and post a 5-3 record under former USC head coach Clay Helton. That guy also had the same number of months to build a roster and did so by bringing in 16 transfer starters from the portal.

UConn was 1-11 with only two starters on offense returning and three on defense yet first-year coach Jim Mora Jr. remade the roster to the point where the Huskies are 3-5 with a win over Fresno State and a decent chance for a bowl game.

Troy’s Jon Sumrall has his team with a 6-2 record after Chip Lindsay had three straight losing seasons there (one more than Carey did at Temple).

Duke also had a 3-9 record and fewer starters returning than Drayton did, somehow first-year coach Mike Elko is not taking long to turn things around there. The Blue Devils are 5-3, coming off a 45-21 win at Miami. That’s just four first-year coaches. Temple is not the only place in the world that had an awful coach ruin their program but those places hired guys who made an impact right away. Others, like Mike McIntryre (former Temple assistant) at FIU and Tony Elliot (Virginia) also have better records than Drayton does in the same time frame Drayton has had.

They did it by remaking the roster with high-end transfer portals. That’s the blueprint they left for Drayton to follow this coming off-season.

It’s something he probably should have done nine months ago but better late than never.

Otherwise, he’s setting Owls fans up for another year of heartbreak, isolation and dancing on their own on the subway going Northbound away from the Linc.

Friday: Navy Preview

10.21.22
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Game over, season over

If you’ve learned one lesson from every football game, it’s a good thing.

Temple learned four big lessons on Friday night in another embarrassment on national television, a 27-16 loss to visiting Tulsa and it is only a good thing if the Owls do something about it.

One, to win in big-time college football, you need a dual-threat quarterback.

Another, enough of Edward Saydee at running back. He’s just not fast enough or good enough to be the feature back at a school whose recent history includes Ryquell Armstrong, Jahad Thomas, Bernard Pierce, Matty Brown, Tanardo Sharps, Stacy Mack, Jason McKie, Sid Morse and Paul Palmer.

Four, drop the Temple TUFF moniker at least until you can put the “greater than” sign in front of the Navy moniker.

Navy tough > Temple tough.

The last lesson might have been the most important one of the night because, evaluating all of the available analytics, Navy was behind Tulsa in the next most-likely possible Temple win. After all, Delaware–a one-time whipping boy for Wayne Hardin–beat Navy, 14-7, in the first game of the season.

Navy has gotten much better with each game. Temple has gotten much worse.

That’s mostly coaching.

Ken Niumatalolo is a great coach. The jury is still out on Stan Drayton before we can answer that question truthfully. Navy held Tulsa to 25 rushing yards that day and Temple gave up more than 300 yards on Friday night.

If Navy can beat Tulsa, 53-21, and Temple can’t, what does that tell you about the rest of the season?

That Temple is going to finish 2-10, that’s what. That was even lower than the Whale Shit expectations of Vegas, which had the Owls at 2.5 wins.

Hate to take off the Cherry and White glasses, but that’s the truth.

On Saturday the fifth, South Florida comes to town. Do you really see the Owls hanging with a USF team that lost close games against ranked Cincinnati and Florida?

I don’t.

Very few others do.

Drayton can talk all he wants about each game being a “learning experience” but a lot of that learning should have been done before the season, not during it.

For example, the coaching staff should know down by 24-16 to go for the extra point and not the two-point conversion halfway through the fourth quarter. Going for the two, as Andre Ware correctly pointed out, should be reserved for the tying touchdown, not the penultimate one if that was indeed the mindset behind the decision. Even then, got to go for the extra point there and the extra point after the next touchdown to send the game into overtime. That’s Coaching 101.

When the coaches have to learn to do their jobs during the season, not before it, how can the players expect to learn their jobs?

The answer to those questions and the ones posted initially should be fairly obvious to any logical football fan.

Monday: Excuses or Reasons?

Saturday’s college football TV schedule
10.21.22
by

Temple-Tulsa: Heartbreak Ridge?

CapperTex is to college football computers what IBM’s Watson was to Jeopardy.

When we last saw the Temple football Owls on national television, the university’s reputation in the sport took a beating in a 70-13 loss to UCF on ESPN’s primary channel.

This should be the standard Temple home uniform. Way better than the black ones.

Same old Temple under Stan Drayton that existed under Rod Carey, the nation said, and the guys who play for Drayton gave little reason to argue with that assumption.

Now that the Owls are on that network’s secondary channel, ESPN2 (tonight 7:30), two major computer simulators have the team garnering respect but not the ultimate prize: A win.

The top NCAA football simulator has Tulsa winning, 24-21, generated by CapperTek. For those not aware, the top “human” handicappers against the spread usually rate in the 67-70 percentile. CapperTex’s artificial intelligence model has a 79 percent success rate.

If it is right and the Owls lose by three, that sets us all up for a heartbreaker. Tulsa opened as a 13.5-point favorite and the “wise guys” bet that down by a whole point over the last two days.

Can an Owl brother get a win here?

Possibly, because as good as artificial intelligence is, it does not account for the occasionally tipped ball interception or the stripped sack fumble.

The same model predicted Virginia would beat three-point favorite Georgia Tech on Thursday night, 31-27. Virginia won, but by 16-9. Maybe Tulsa wins by three more points than the computer expects, but maybe the Owls can do something about it.

Another model also has Temple covering the spread by losing “only” 38-26.

This CBS projection has the Owls covering the 12.5 spread by the slimmest of margins.

What does this mean?

Of all the remaining games on the Temple schedule, this is the Owls’ best chance for a win. There are a few reasons for this.

Our picks this week. We’re playing these separately for blog purposes but if all hit on a $10 parlay investment, $2,936.43 is the ROI.

Tulsa struggles in the run game, getting only 25 total yards rushing in a 53-21 loss at Navy.

That means the Hurricanes will be forced to pass against an Owls’ defense that has been very good against the pass in five of their first six games.

The game will simply come down to this: If the Owls can just do a decent job against the pass and the same kind of job Navy did against the run, they will keep it close.

If they can force a couple of interceptions against quarterback Davis (an odd first name, no doubt) Brin, they will post the upset.

Tough task?

Certainly.

Impossible?

No.

They will need to take the ball away twice to get the win. One fumble, one interception or two interceptions will do the job. On its end, Temple will have to protect the football.

If both teams play a clean game, Tulsa wins.

You read it here first.

At least now the Owls know what they have to do to avoid a broken heart. Knowing it and doing it is the difference between winning and losing.

Picks this week: In the graphic near the bottom of this post. Thought long and hard about the UL-Monroe at Army game but Army’s beatdown at the hands of an average Georgia State team convinced us that ULM can cover the 6.5. That’s the key play. San Diego State’s four-point win over a truly horrific Hawaii team convinced us that Nevada can win outright at home against SDSU. The Rice Owls are the best Owls playing college football this year (unfortunately) and should beat Louisiana Tech by a touchdown.

Update: Not a good week, won on Western Kentucky, Kent State, Rice, Louisville and Wyoming but lost on ULM, ODU, Texas State, UCF and Nevada. 5-5 for the week and now 22-18 on the season.

Tomorrow: Game Analysis

Monday: Excuse or Opportunity?