Category Archives: Temple football

10.20.25
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Tulsa Week: Some solid evidence out there

The guys from The College Football Experience discuss Temple once again.

A year ago, the Temple football program was in turmoil with talk of a leadership change and still was able to beat visiting Tulsa.

By double digits, 20-10.

Each season is a new deal, especially in the era of the transfer portal and NIL and both teams hired new head coaches.

Temple hired K.C. Keeler, a legend, who won his 275th career game on Saturday. Tulsa went the younger route, hiring Tre Lamb, who was head coach at East Tennessee State.

Pretty sure we all know who made the better hire and it wasn’t just because Keeler recognizes that the Owls play and look a lot sharper when they wear the Cherry helmets.

Temple is now 4-3 (really should be 5-2), while Tulsa is 2-5. One of those wins was against Oklahoma State. The other was against Abilene Christian.

Both teams played Navy which is a point of comparison.

Navy went to Tulsa and won, 42-23, while it was lucky (and got some help from the refs) in surviving at Temple, 32-31.

That doesn’t mean Temple is going to win by 20 or so on Saturday (3:30 p.m., ESPN+) but if the Owls dot their I’s and cross their T’s, they should be able to come home with a two-game winning streak.

One, they have a staff that was able draw X’s and O’s well enough to play a competitive game against Navy. Two, Tulsa doesn’t.

Also, unlike that Navy game, the Owls are going to have to be focused in an environment that could put them to sleep.

Now that staff will have to turn its film study to a Tulsa team that likes to throw the ball deep and the fact that the Owls faced a lot of that on Saturday in a 49-14 win at Charlotte should help them adjust. What they have to do is play the ball and not the man because the few times the 49ers were able to move the ball, they were helped by face-guarding penalties against the Owls.

Another good Tuesday practice should help clean up those kinds of mistakes and help the Owls take another step forward.

Wearing the Cherry helmets with the White uniforms again wouldn’t hurt, either.

Friday: Tulsa Preview

10.18.25
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Temple: Killing two monkeys with one rock

Took a philosophy course because I needed an easy elective due to pulling 60 hours a week putting out The Temple News back in the day.

(It was a daily then.)

Had a bearded professor who smoked a pipe in class and described a situation where two problems were solved at the same time.

I raised my sleep-deprived hand.

“You mean, like killing two birds with one stone?”

Chalk up another win to the Cherry helmets, which looked particularly good with the White uniforms today. Let’s keep the best helmets in college football going forward.

The guy with the beard took a puff of the pipe, stroked his beard, waited about 10 seconds, and said:

“What an unfortunate way of putting it, Mr. Gibson, but I guess you are right.”

It’s one thing killing birds with stones and it’s another thing to take out a couple of monkeys with a rock and that’s exactly what Temple’s football team did today.

Two monkeys off the Temple football back. One, the first road win since 2019 and, two, the first time the Owls have won more than three games since the season prior to that one.

All because of a 49-14 rout at Charlotte. (Should have been 56-14 because the Owls fell on a scoop that could have easily been a score, but we’ll let that slide.)

Kyle Pagan of Crossing Broad bet 2x as much as I did way back in July. God bless him and everyone who had confidence in this team.

Important milestones if you put your money where your mouth was back in July, like I did. Way back on May 28, I picked the Owls to win six games and get to a bowl.

When challenged by a poster on OwlsDaily.com about that way back in July, I put my money where my mouth was and bet the over 3.5 wins.

My response to his post was this: “If I had $100,000, I would have bet that but since I only bet what I can afford to lose, I put $50 on the Owls.”

I’m $57 richer today.

Would have been $100K richer if I had the money to bet back then.

My reasoning then was simple: One, the Owls upgraded not only at the head coaching level, but also at the key coordinator positions.

In 2025, I reasoned, the Owls would pick up one or two more wins because they wouldn’t have the plethora of pre-snap penalties they had in the three years under Stan Drayton and the three years before that under Rod Carey.

Building on that reasoning was the way K.C. Keeler approached his important role as CEO of the program, which meant plugging some roster holes with key pieces.

Add those two things and it was easy to come to the conclusion that Temple could make the jump from three to six.

Keeler, in my mind, already has proven himself to be the best head coach we’ve had here since Wayne Hardin. Ironically, that was the guy who told him that we didn’t have enough scholarships for him back in the late 1970s and then turned the conversation to golf.

Keeler didn’t want to talk golf but headed to Delaware.

Now he’s back where he should have been in the first place. In my opinion, he’s the best coach at Temple since Hardin because he’s had to do it with a transfer portal and NIL that Al Golden, Matt Rhule, Bruce Arians and even Hardin didn’t have to deal with. Arians deserves a lot of credit because he had two winning seasons against Top 10 schedules but he got to keep all his players then.

Temple ran into trouble after Golden and Rhule and Keeler has righted that ship.

Killing two monkeys with one stone is impressive enough.

If somehow he is able to run the table with this team and this schedule, a big Gorilla is in sight and that might be an American Conference championship game.

Let’s get greedy.

Monday: Tulsa Week

10.16.25
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Temple-Charlotte: Long past time for a trick play

Halfway through the season one thing Temple fans know about both offensive coordinator Tyler Walker and head coach K.C. Keeler is that they don’t like trick plays.

Walker has shown an innovative offense with a lot of motion that causes both defensive coordinators and defenses in general to scratch their heads.

CBS Sports and Emory Hunt made Temple a highlight game and like the Owls. Great photo of Temple center Grayson Mains here. The Owls’ offensive line led the way for 518 yards of total offense against Navy and deserved the win.

What he hasn’t shown is a “trick play” and, by that I mean, a throwback pass to Kajiya Hollawayne (a quarterback at UCLA), who draws the defense to him and leaves JoJo Bermudez wide open on the other side of the field for six.

Saturday (3:30 p.m., ESPN+) would be a good time to dust that one off because the Owls need a booster shot after being made sick by a heartbreaking loss to Navy.

When asked about trick plays two weeks ago, Keeler said he was hesitant to use them “when we’re not playing well.”

He didn’t say anything about the first play of the game.

Not going to be an easy game for the Owls because it’s Charlotte’s Homecoming in this compact 15,000-seat stadium.

The Owls have played six games and, on five of them, the first play of the game has been a standard handoff to Jay Ducker. I know that. You know that. The bad guys certainly know that.

None of those handoffs have gone for more than 3 yards.

Why not fake that handoff to Ducker, toss a throwback to Hollawayne and have the former UCLA quarterback hit Bermudez in stride for six?

Why not indeed?

This is how wide open JoJo Bermudez would be on a throwback pass from Hollawayne.

That would get the sideline pumped.

Mentioned this to Evan Simon’s dad the last couple of tailgates and he agreed. Also brought it up with Grayson Mains’ dad and he didn’t hate the idea.

Don’t know if these dads enough pull with their kids for them to draw this up in the dirt like a sandlot play but it wouldn’t be a bad idea for this game particularly.

This team is hurting (hell, I’m still hurting) from the toughest of tough losses and getting off to a spectacular start would just be what the doctor ordered.

That doesn’t mean a 3-yard handoff to Jay Ducker.

Showing the world that the Owls have bounced back means a touchdown on the first play of the game. Nothing ventured nothing gained is a great saying for a good reason.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis

10.13.25
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Game Week Key: Shaking it off

Colby Dant brings up what we all saw (and the refs didn’t), a false start on the 2-point conversion.

Not going to lie, it’s going to take me a long time to get over Saturday’s 32-31 loss to visiting Navy.

So many things were thrown out the window with that loss:

One, a realistic shot to open 6-0 in the conference;

Two, any hope to appear in the American Conference title game;

Three, building on the momentum of the UTSA win;

Four, any chance to capture a lot of those 26,854 Homecoming fans who left bitterly disappointed.

Give a lot of those fans who attended their first game of the year an exciting win over an unbeaten team and chances are they will be back for one of the two remaining home games.

Or both.

Charlotte weather for Saturday: 77 and sunny. Posting this now just to see how much the weather can change in six days.

Instead, I heard a lot of “same old Temple” comments walking down the steps at Lincoln Financial Field after the game from people I only see once a year.

I know it’s not the “same old Temple” and you know it’s not the “same old Temple” but, to them, most of what they’ve seen are bitter losses and this is just another disappointment they don’t want to deal with in the future.

Navy coach Brian Newberry touched on the fact that Temple is improved but, to the casual Temple fan who comes only once a year, that matters little.

Brian Newberry: “Hats off to Temple.”

My recovery period is not nearly as important as that of the Temple players and that will be the key to a successful season. Now a successful season means a bowl game, which I lot of us would have signed off on back in August. My prediction of 6-6 is still in play.

“Let’s see. I could burn Navy’s two timeouts here with two knees, milk another 40 seconds with one more knee and then kick the field goal to win the game. Or I could just score a touchdown and leave it up to our defense. Tough call.” (Photo courtesy Zamani Feelings)

If the kids can “shake it off” they can do that and more. They just had no room for error if the hope was to be in the American Conference title game and they already made that error with the coaching staff refusing to take three knees and kick the game-winning field goal at the 1 with 1:16 left.

Temple enters Saturday’s game at Charlotte (3:30 p.m., ESPN+) as a double-digit road favorite and when was the last time that happened in a conference game?

Hint: It was before The Rod Carey Error and that ended four years ago.

The Owls are also the 49ers Homecoming Game, which means their version of Temple’s Saturday atmosphere should provide that team with a boost just like Temple’s biggest crowd backed the Owls.

The Temple players’ assignment–should they embrace it–is to make sure Charlotte head coach Tim Albin doesn’t have the ball on the Temple 1 with 1:16 left and a chance to burn the Owls’ final two timeouts to post his version of an upset.

There was a clear path to 6-0 in the conference with a win over Navy. Thanks to the three knees thing and a false start on the 2-point conversion that wasn’t called, that path no longer exists. With Navy, Tulane, Memphis and USF in this conference there is no room for error.

Which means going up at least 24-14 and making that 31-14 instead of 24-17.

Easier said than done.

You can write a book about the number of teams, including Temple, who turned a bitter loss into a sour season. This year, you need to look no farther than 250 miles away where Penn State lost a heart wrenching game to Oregon and the hangover showed in losses to UCLA and Northwestern.

Temple is going to have to avoid a similar hangover.

Again, easier said than done.

The defense is going to have to play like the defense that played in the second half against UTSA and not the defense that played in the second half against Navy.

Which means shaking off a lot of disappointment.

Maybe kids are more resilient than us old folk but they had more blood, sweat and tears invested in Saturday’s bitter defeat than we did so it would be understandable if they wonder why bother?

Knowing that they have to is the urgency of this moment. We won’t find out until Saturday if they meet it.

Friday: Charlotte Preview

10.11.25
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First- and second-guessing turned out to be the same

With 1 minute, 16 seconds left in a 24-24 game, Temple quarterback Evan Simon hit Kajiya Hollawayne at Navy the 1 and Hollawayne was fortunate enough not to score.

I say fortunate because that gave Temple some time to play with and an opportunity to burn Navy’s last two time outs.

A gift, really.

No way the team on the right should have lost to the team on the left.

There were a couple of Navy fans in front of me and I leaned over to one and said:

“If I’m you guys, I would let Temple score here. If I’m Temple, I take three knees, make Navy take two timeouts and kick a field goal to win the game.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

America’s next Military leaders never had an opportunity to pull a France and surrender because Temple scored a touchdown on the next play and it looked like the Midshipmen, as they have all night, put up a fight.

That meant Temple gave the ball back to Navy with that 1:16 still on the clock.

I leaned over to my Navy fan friend and said, “That’s too much time with this quarterback.”

He tried to console me.

“Temple has a good quarterback, too,” he said.

“Yeah, I know but it won’t make much difference because he’s probably not going to get the ball back.”

We all know what happened after that. Blake Horvath, who in my mind is every bit the quarterback (and probably more) than Oklahoma’s John Mateer in the Heisman Trophy race, did what Heisman Trophy winners do and negotiate the length of the field.

Navy, 32-31, game, set and match.

By my calculations, a first-down knee and a second-down knee kills both Navy timeouts. A third-down knee takes the clock to about 40 seconds or less.

A fourth-down FG from extra point distance wins the game, 27-24.

Or at least gives the ball back to Horvath with 40 seconds and no timeouts as opposed to 1:16 and two timeouts left.

Maybe Horvath takes the ball all the way down the field. Maybe he doesn’t but, what he actually did with those 40 seconds was to get the ball to midfield.

That’s where the game would have ended all things considered.

Afterward, Temple head coach K.C. Keeler said he “wasn’t comfortable” with taking knees and anything could happen but, to me, after a first down on the 1, you can pretty much safely take a step back and down the ball without a disaster.

The alternative was worse.

Keeler also said there would be second-guessing and “I get that” but, when the second-guessing also includes the first guessing a Mike Philadelphia had with a Joe Annapolis guy while this was unfolding, that’s where I don’t buy it.

I’m thinking we weren’t the only two people in the stadium having that same discussion with 1:16 left.

Every NFL team would have done the same thing which means great coaches, even Hall of Fame ones like Keeler, occasionally make mental mistakes.

Just like the one a pitcher for the Hometown baseball team made a couple of nights ago. This hurts a whole lot worse.

Monday: Game Week

10.09.25
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K.C. Keeler is the last hope for Philly Sports

On probably one of the worst nights in Philadelphia sports history, we are on the eve of … maybe … one of the best ones in Temple football history.

The Phillies lost on a monumental brain cramp by a relief pitcher who didn’t even know what a 10-year-old Little Leaguer knows. The Eagles were blown out by the worst team in the NFL one year away from being the best team in the NFL.

If all the Temple alumni and students head inside instead of hanging out to tailgate, they will make the difference for the kids on the field.

K.C. Keeler might be Philadelphia sports’ best hope.

There is a vulnerable unbeaten college football team left and it’s up to the Temple Owls to hand them a loss. Navy (5-0) is in town (4 p.m., ESPN2) and every Temple fan within an hour of the stadium needs to put down the remote and head to Lincoln Financial Field.

Yeah, I know the Joe Sixpack guy living at 8th and Bigler doesn’t care much about Temple football but this is all Philadelphia has right now and you’ve got to take the wins where you can get them.

We’re focusing on Keeler right now because he not only beat a UTSA team that hung with a potential national champion this year (Texas A&M) but he has the Owls buttoned down in areas that even the Phillies or Eagles neglected in the last few weeks.

As much as Jalen Hurts looks disinterested in winning (or even making a play), that’s how invested Temple quarterback Evan Simon is in winning. Put it this way: Does Hurts sleep at the Eagles practice facility? No. Does Simon sleep at Temple’s?

Yes.

In a town that appreciates that kind of commitment, Temple is this weekend’s only hope.

There is a big Navy presence in town this week with the 250th anniversary of the Naval Academy with the festivities centered on Philadelphia, not Annapolis.

Yet there is a bigger Temple presence in this town because the Owls are expecting around 30,000 of their own fans for Homecoming.

Say, a crowd of 30K Temple fans vs. a crowd of 12K Navy fans.

That’s the ceiling. The floor is 20K Temple, 15K Navy.

Either way, the Linc should be rocking. It doesn’t matter whether the announced crowd is 35K or 42K.

The “buttoned down” part is that Temple hired the Rice DC who held Navy to its lowest point total in 2024 in a 24-10 Rice win. Brian L. Smith knows how to stop a triple option and he’s been preaching gap integrity for two weeks.

Navy head coach Brian Newberry said as much this week when he said that Smith is the kryptonite to the Navy offensive scheme and that Temple has better athletes than Rice which makes this Saturday scary for the Midshipmen. The Owls need to contain Navy quarterback Brian Horvath, who loves throwing it to No. 22 (Eli Heidenrich). He can outrun Air Force’s corners but he won’t be able to outrun Temple’s.

If the Owls listen, and do their jobs and take care of their assigned gaps, the Owls win. If they go outside their jobs and “try to make a play” they lose.

It’s as simple as picking a ball up and throwing it to first base. The Phillies nor Eagles got that message Thursday night.

In a day or so, if the Owls do, Philadelphia sports gets to celebrate a big win and K.C. Keeler becomes a Hometown Hero.

For a guy who is from here and for a school that was always here, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Very Late Saturday Night (pushing Midnight): Game Analysis

10.05.25
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Why I don’t care (much) about attendance

This is the Temple student second a dozen years ago. There is a shocking lack of a student section now. They went away with six straight losing seasons. They will hopefully return sooner than later.

“I’ve seen the light
And I’ve seen the flame
And I’ve been this way before
And I’m sure to be this way again … “

_ Neil Diamond, 1974

Log onto a message board to read Temple fans reacting to a joyous football win and, inevitably, some Debbie Downer will say something like this:

“Great win, but somebody has to do something about attendance.”

College football’s attendance problem includes not only Temple but UCLA and almost every American Conference school with the exception of ECU, Memphis, Army and Navy and scores of others across all conferences.

Invariably, said Mr. Downer will post this during a game thread from some place outside of the stadium while watching the game on TV. Many of them sitting on a couch and eating potato chips less than an hour’s drive from the stadium.

Translation: “I don’t like the problem, but I can’t be bothered to be part of the solution.”

Speaking as someone who has been to all three home games, I don’t have time for people like that. While I’ve been to all of the games, the slow erosion of the Temple fan base is completely understandable, and I don’t blame a single fellow fan for not attending. This fan base has been beaten down by consecutive 1-6, 3-9, 3-9, 3-9 and 3-9 seasons.

You can only do so much hoping for next year to improve before you say I’m out.

I never did, but a lot of my former tailgate buddies from the Halcyon Days of Al Golden and Matt Rhule who shall remain nameless did. One guy liked to go in an hour before the game because he “wanted to see the punting” and I found that humorous. I haven’t seen him in years and hopefully he’s still alive.

It took Al Golden a couple of years to go from crowds similar to the 12,131 who showed up for the UTSA game to at least a couple of times a year topping 30,000 and it will at least take K.C. Keeler that long to build it up.

When you spend six years tearing that down, it’s not going to take six weeks to build it up.

Maybe one or two years of winning. Maybe even three.

A sampling of Temple Homecoming Crowds

Six years of losing isn’t the only thing working against Temple attendance. The NIL and the transfer portal haven’t helped. When a fan base feels they are at an unfair disadvantage against foes they used to have a fair advantage against, that contributes to lack of interest in the product.

The problem is not specific to Temple. Look at UCLA which, like Temple, got a big win in a largely empty (larger than needed) stadium. The Bruins have lost for awhile but beat Penn State, 42-37. One of the reasons was because they were able to spend $3 million on a quarterback but that’s a P4 team with no fans.

A P4 team able to pay big-time money without fans.

Temple used to have a large and loud student section. It will be nice to see that come back.

The good news is that Homecoming looms and Temple regularly brings in 30,000 of its own fans for that one occasion. Many of them don’t even like football but love the university which gave them a great education and want to renew that experience at least once a year.

Temple, like Neil Diamond in that great song, has been this way before and it is sure to be that way once again. Interest has ebbed and flowed and been there in the past and will be there in the future again following some sustained winning.

Maybe if this biggest crowd of the year likes what the Owls are selling they will want to come back for one or two more games this season.

At least that’s the hope.

Maybe even Mr. Downer will put down the chips, get off the couch, stop complaining about the crowd and become a solution to the problem.

Friday: Navy Preview

10.04.25
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It’s official: Keeler is ahead of schedule

Leave it to first-year Temple head football coach K.C. Keeler to set the bar high and then do a Fosbury Flop over it by the fifth game.

As early as mid-summer, Keeler said he wanted his team to be thinking about championships this year, not some far-off year in the future.

Owls sing the school fight song afterward holding the best helmets (Cherry) in college football. (Photo Courtesy of Zamani Feelings.)

It’s official now. Keeler and the Owls are ahead of schedule because, while many had the Owls beating UMass and Howard, nobody had the Owls beating Oklahoma, Georgia Tech or UTSA in the pre-season prognostications.

By this week, though, some pretty knowledgeable college football observers–Gary Segars, Bud Elliott, Colby Dant and Ryan McIntyre–had saw enough of how hard the Owls played and how well Keeler coached in that first four to pick them to win outright today (see our Friday post for the receipts).

And they did, 27-21, at Lincoln Financial Field, rallying from a 14-3 halftime deficit to pull it out against a pretty darn good team.

How good?

UTSA hung with Texas A&M before losing, 42-24, and, at the time Keeler said he wanted his Owls to be thinking championships, some people actually picked the Roadrunners to win the American Conference. After that loss to the Aggies, UTSA head coach Jeff Traylor said: “We have championship fiber.”

It’s one thing to say you have championship fiber and it’s another thing to show it and the Owls were the team who showed it in the second half, outscoring the Roadrunners, 21-7.

They did it with an offensive line that kept Evan Simon clean and a defensive line that put the other guy on his backside and running for his life on the few occasions they didn’t. Going into the season, Keeler said this was the best defensive line he’s ever had and he won 271 games as a head coach coming into the season so he had some good ones.

Then he said he “never saw a group improve as much” as his offensive line, the product of “iron sharpens iron” for both spring and summer ball. They opened holes for both Jay Ducker (the MAC’s leading rusher in 2021) and Hunter Smith (the Sun Belt’s leading rusher in 2023). Smith’s 54-yard run for a score put the Owls up, 17-13.

That aged well.

On a beautiful 82-degree afternoon in South Philly, the Temple fans who made it found out that Keeler wasn’t blowing smoke. Nothing wins more football games than putting the other guy on his ass and the Owls did that in the second half.

Going into a two-game home stretch that included UTSA on the front end and Navy on the back end, the thought process was this: Split the two and the Owls have a chance at a bowl. Sweep both and the Owls have a chance to face Memphis in the league title game.

Might as well set that bar a little higher in one week and jump over it. That’s all Keeler ever wanted and that’s more than Temple fans could have ever expected.

Monday: What We Don’t Care About

10.03.25
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Temple-UTSA: Some educated guesses

Only a couple of things are certain around 1 p.m. or so at the Sports Complex in Philadelphia on Saturday.

The Philadelphia Flyers will be playing indoors next door and the Temple Owls will be hosting UTSA outdoors at Lincoln Financial Field on a jammed packed day of Philly sports. My guess is 17,000 plus fans in both places. Between 1-4 while things are being settled in those two places, about 45,000 Phillies fans will arrive on the scene for some pre-game tailgating.

They will probably find Lot K closed and all Temple parking. Those fans can make a difference by making noise and standing on third down when the Owls are on defense.

If anyone tells you they know what the outcome of the football game will be, they are lying. The ball is a funny shape and takes odd bounces and this one figures to be close. If those balls bounce Temple’s way and the fans can make a difference, everybody leaves happy.

In between, there are some educated guesses on both sides.

It’s amazing to me that two separate betting sites have this game at a projected 28-27 Temple score and the line has remained with USTA a 6.5-point favorite. Both Gary Segars of Winning Cures All and the guys at The College Football Experience (including Colby Dant and Ryan McIntyre) like Temple.

TCFE has gone as far as to lock things up for Temple.

Bud Elliott of CBS Sports “The Cover Three” Podcast picked Temple OUTRIGHT on the Moneyline.

This can go either way but this win is right out there on the table for Temple to taste and so the Owls must do what they have to do to put a fork in it.

This is just the kind of game first-year Temple head coach K.C. Keeler has preached about for the last nine months. Almost every day Keeler said the conference games are going to be a “50/50” ball and the team that plays the cleaner game will come out on top.

Should be a beautiful day for a good chunk of the 250,000 Temple alumni living within an hour of LFF to make the trip to support the Owls.

So far, Temple has played pretty clean. It is one of only three FBS teams with no turnovers through four and there are 129 other FBS teams.

Now it’s time to move on to the next thing as former Temple head coach John Chaney famously said:

“Take care of the known and don’t worry about the unknown.”

So far, the “known” about UTSA is that it can run the ball with Robert Harvey, Jr. (is there a Robert Harvey Sr. of any note?), who is the leading rusher in the country.

So Temple needs to stop that known and do its best against the unknown.

That element is in good hands with Temple DC Brian L. Smith, who has had major success against UTSA. Last year, Smith held UTSA to 13 points through three quarters in a Rice win. Contrast that to former Temple DC Everett Withers “holding” UTSA to 51 points in that same season. To me, that’s the biggest improvement of the K.C. Keeler hire: Bringing in a DC with a history of success versus the handicap that Temple had the last two years, a DC (Withers) with a history of failure just because he was a friend of the head coach at the time. In 2021, Withers gave up nearly 40 ppg as DC at FIU. In 2023-24, Withers came pretty darn close to that at Temple (38.7 ppg).

Smith has revamped the scheme and put personnel in positions to win.

The other known is that UTSA is terrible against the pass and Temple quarterback Evan Simon is pretty good for the pass and the Owls must exploit that secondary.

Temple must also continue to run the ball well with the 2021 MAC leading rusher (Jay Ducker) and the 2023 leading Sun Belt rusher (Hunter Smith) controlling the game and the clock, all the while keeping Harvey and company off the field.

That’s the way we think things will go down. Because we don’t know for sure is the reason why we will show up and support and will be standing and making noise on third down.

All other Owl fans should do the same.

Very Late Saturday Night (pushing 11 p.m.): Game Analysis

Monday: What We Don’t Care About

Friday: Navy Preview

09.28.25
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Game Week: How good is UTSA?

UTSA has had an up-and-down season but hasn’t faced the quality of competition Temple has.

In between worrying about getting a parking pass and navigating traffic on Saturday, the next-in-line question for Temple fans should be this:

How good is UTSA?

Evan Simon cuts last year’s game down to one score with this bomb to Dante Wright. With Jay Ducker and Hunter Smith being able to establish a running game, Temple should be in this thing until the end. If the players take care of things one play and a time and not watch the scoreboard, Temple could win handily.

For fans, not players nor coaches because it would behoove the Owls to practice and prepare for the Roadrunners like they are as good as Georgia Tech or Oklahoma.

Spoiler alert (players, please turn away): They are not.

Even though Vegas has the Roadrunners as a 6.5-point favorite, I fully expect that to be bet down to 4.5 Wednesday and maybe a field goal by kickoff.

Let’s examine what they’ve done so far:

They got blown out by Texas A&M, 42-24. The Aggies are a good team, maybe as good as Oklahoma and slightly better than Georgia Tech.

However, UTSA’s last game–a 17-16 win at Colorado State–might provide more clues. Off that result, you can pretty much say the Roadrunners are on a par with the Rams and the Rams are really not good. Colorado State got blown out by Washington (38-21) and barely beat Northern Colorado–Northern Freaking Colorado–and that score was 21-17. They also lost to possibly the worst P4 team alive, Washington State, 20-3. Northern Colorado barely beat Houston Baptist and lost to Indiana State, two teams I think most college football experts would agree are far worse than anyone Temple’s played, including Howard and UMass.

So however good UTSA looked against Texas A&M and that wasn’t much, that was canceled out by how bad it looked at Colorado State.

If UTSA lets a team like that hang around with it, that bodes well for Temple. Temple has to sell out to stop the run because Robert Henry Jr. is the leading rusher in the country, but TU DC Brian L. Smith understands that a lot better than we do so we think that will be part of the gameplan. He understands a lot about UTSA and has beaten them before at Rice, something UTSA head coach Jeff Traylor acknowledged this week.

“I know the defensive coordinator is from Rice, who’s given us a pain in the rear end for the past five years.”

On the other side of the ball, it should be interesting to see how Temple’s new Mr. Outside (Hunter Smith) combines with Temple’s Mr. Inside (Jay Ducker) to both control the clock and set up deep play-action passes for Evan Simon. With the departure of Terrez Worthy over the weekend, Ducker is now No. 1 on the depth chart and Hunter Smith is No. 2. That means Temple has the 2021 leading rusher in the MAC and the 2023 leading rusher in the Sun Belt topping a deep running back room that also includes Joquez Smith.

This is not Oklahoma coming to town (1 p.m., ESPN+) on Saturday. It’s not even Georgia Tech.

Temple has been sharpened by that iron and, other than one Texas A&M game, the Roadrunners have been sharpened by, let’s say, plastic.

What Temple learned in its Georgia Tech game was that, after spotting the Yellowjackets a 21-0 lead, the Owls played even with that team the rest of the way.

If the Owls have learned their lesson and applied it in the bye week, this is win No. 3 for Temple.

If not, it’s another disappointing loss.

Stan Drayton might let that happen. I’m guessing K.C. Keeler won’t.

Friday: UTSA Preview