About a year ago at this time, I was absolutely convinced the 2021 Temple football Owls would finish 2-10 and you could not move me off that block.

As excited as I was about Stan Drayton replacing the old guy for this season, I looked at six wins as the absolute ceiling for the 2022 Temple football Owls.

Even looking at it eight optimistic ways, doubling last year’s win total seemed the best we could do.

With the news on Wednesday, the freaking sky is the limit.

We speculated in this space very recently that Drayton promised an upgrade at the quarterback position but did not see it. We said a week ago that Drayton was “bringing in a couple of guys” to compete for the starting quarterback job with D’Wan Mathis and I said that even given “one of those guys was Elijah Warner, who is the other guy?”

That “other guy” is Quincy Patterson with his recent signing at Temple.

This is a game-changer. Hell, it’s a season-changer. This has moved the needle from “ceiling of six wins” to a winning season.

A winning season needs to happen this year. I’ll take 7-5 but I’m much more into 8-5 and 9-3 or better.

Patterson now makes that possible.

Owls were “acceptable” on defense, offensive line, wide receiver and even running back but Mathis’ history of fragility and his underwhelming first year with the Owls made quarterback the No. 1 priority.

Prior to last week, Florida Gator transfer Emory Jones and Pitt Panther transfer Davis Beville were considered slight upgrades Temple could get over Mathis.

Patterson (who seemingly came out of nowhere because he entered the portal last week) is a huge upgrade and Drayton seeing the flaws in spring practice and getting upgrades since at running back and quarterback is the biggest indication that this guy is pushing all the right buttons.

Patterson is just what the doctor ordered for Temple football.

Consider this: This man singlehandedly led Virginia Tech to a 6OT win over a North Carolina team that beat Temple, 55-13. That was an 8-5 Temple team that beat No. 21 Maryland, 20-17. (That Maryland team hammered Rutgers, 48-7, four weeks later.)

This is no Re’Al Mitchell or even a Mathis.

I hope Mathis is Temple TUFF enough to accept the challenge and compete for a job I feel he will eventually lose but, if he wins it, Temple is better off with the competition.

The reality is that since both Mathis and Patterson have now entered the portal twice they are both committed to Temple for another year or will have to sit out before transferring to the next school.

For that reason, the Temple quarterback room has morphed from the thinnest to the deepest in the AAC and that’s a very good thing for all of us.

Monday: The Golden Voice

Plenty of things that were once not only possible in sports but actually occurred have no shot of happening again.

Fortunately, horse racing proved that a $30,000 claiming horse with an 80-1 shot can beat the 4-1 and 7-2 shots and still win the Kentucky Derby as Rich Strike did on Saturday.

That was a great moment in sports history.

Other great moments, though, are slip-sliding away.

Robin Roberts’ 28-straight complete games for the Philadelphia Phillies?

No shot ever since somebody came up with a pitch count.

Maury Wills’ 104 stolen bases for the 1960s Dodgers?

No way.

Ted Williams’ .406 batting average?

Err, no.

Baseball, though, despite declining impressive stats is infinitely fairer to the have-nots than college football is.

Because college football is controlled by the big-name, big-conference, schools, the likelihood that we will ever see another Group of Five football team in the playoffs is as remote as all of the above baseball records being broken.

Heck, there is even talk of the Power 5 splitting away from the rest of the NCAA and starting its own version of March Madness.

That means no more terrific stories like the ones crafted by schools like Butler, George Mason, Loyola of Chicago, and, most recently, St. Peter’s. They were the Rich Strikes of college basketball.

If that happens, the basketball tournament loses much of its appeal. Hell, Mike Leach makes a good argument here as to why college football should be more inclusive, not less, after the Kentucky Derby result. Gotta give that guy credit because he is one of the few haves to advocate for the have-nots.

Temple football came within 16 points of a 12-0 season in 1979 and a likely national championship if they were able to find those points, but that kind of ceiling got raised so high it’s in another galaxy by now.

What is the current Temple football ceiling?

Certainly, an AAC football title is within reach, probably not this year, but certainly 2-3 years down the road.

The Owls will have to use their advantages (located in a big city with plenty of NLI opportunities) plus having a charismatic head coach who should be a great recruiter. By then, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF will be gone and, if Temple can’t compete for titles with the Memphises, Tulanes, USFs and Tulsas, the administration will have to do some serious soul-searching about its football future.

Heck, even with Cincy, Houston and UCF to compete against, it wasn’t all that long ago that Temple appeared in consecutive football title games and won one of them.

The formula remains the same: A committed, enthusiastic, head coach who can attract only 25 great players in a recruiting area that holds 46 percent of the nation’s population within a five-hour drive.

That standard existed roughly five years ago. For the future to mean anything, it must be revisited.

Friday: Your Next QB?

Sometimes it’s the thought that counts.

Judging by the thinking in the coaches’ room at the Edberg-Olson Football Complex, there is a plan going forward and that’s a good thing.

At least from a Temple fan perspective.

From this seat in the stands and on the sidelines the last year or so (including the spring game a couple of weeks ago), what we’ve seen so far of D’wan Mathis is promising but not enough.

We speculated in this space 18 days ago about the availability of Florida transfer Emory Jones and said he was “open to going anywhere” and Temple is one of those places now.

He is just off a visit to Arizona State so the Owls getting him is not assured but they have shown interest and are also interested in Pitt transfer portal QB Davis Beville.

If they can get one, they will be better off. If they can get both, it’s hitting the jackpot.

To me, Mathis is a guy who needs a fire lit under him to excel and either/or of the above two qualify as kindling.

If Mathis excels with the competition, Temple’s offensive productivity is better off. If either Jones or Beville beats out Mathis, then Temple is better off. Being the Temple quarterback is a job worth earning, not one that should be given.

Remember, Mathis came in here with more interceptions than touchdowns thrown at Georgia and his six touchdowns vs. four interceptions in his inaugural year with the Owls didn’t represent the kind of productivity we were looking for.

Former head coach Rod What’s His Name staked his future on Mathis, replacing a guy who had thrown 21 touchdowns and 11 interceptions in his last full regular season with a guy who went 6/4.

Not good.

Before the uneven Cherry and White performance of Mathis, head coach Stan Drayton said he was “bringing in guys” to compete and now it appears, as with most things Drayton, he is hell-bent on keeping his promise.

Jones and Beville are two interesting guys but, if they don’t come here, there are still several FCS starters in the portal looking to move up. Scholarships are running out and Temple appears to be making room for quarterbacks as deep sub Matt Duncan announced his intention to enter the portal.

Jones threw 19 touchdown passes at Florida and that was 17 more than Mathis did at Georgia and Beville was 14-for-18 in a 2020 game for Pitt.

Bring one of those guys to Temple and things really get interesting here.

The best-case scenario would be for Mathis to accept the challenge and win a starting job that was given to him a year ago. The worst case would be to keep things as they are now and have no viable AAC-level backups.

The new guy seems to understand that a whole lot better than the old guy and that means the Temple brain trust is using their heads for more than a hat rack, a welcome change from the most recent past.

Monday: The Next Big Thing