Category Archives: Temple football

08.13.21
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Owls need to get the RIGHT work done

https://twitter.com/i/status/1425610736475201556
D-Line sacks and stopping the run will be the key for the Owls’ success this season.

One of my favorite sayings from Bruce Arians was what he opened almost every practice with:

“Get your work done.”

Because Bruce invited me to a few Temple practices, that was always a part of his mantra before allowing the guys to get on the Geasey Field astroturf.

Sprinkled in, of course, with a few expletives to put an exclamation point and a sense of urgency on the message.

That’s been pretty much the mantra for every Temple coach since, a few more successful than the others.

From what I’ve seen so far from this Rod Carey year, the Owls are getting some work done.

How successful they will be in my view is what kind of work they get in and how that work translates to on-the-field performance. I feel confident about the running backs, offensive line, linebackers, and corners but the defensive line MUST make a giant leap forward.

Owls DL needs to get back to forcing these kind of takeways on a regular basis.

One of those Bob Beamon Jawns as the kids might say.

Quite honestly, just from what they showed me last year, I don’t see the Owls moving off that 2-10 most NEUTRAL observers have them finishing this season. That was a shockingly non-competitive team I saw and I’m not sure I can blame it all on COVID, like Carey seems to be doing.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that there are so many moving parts that don’t factor into the above equation.

Pass rush, for instance.

One of the most maddening things about last season to me is that the Owls didn’t put the bad guy’s quarterback on his ass as much as they should have or even as much as those winning Temple teams of the last decade did.

Manny Walker, their 2020 P5 transfer, gave them two whole sacks and he was the team’s leader. To me, he was a big disappointment.

Not good.

The moving parts are there this summer and they are named Will Rodgers III and Lancine Turay. Rodgers had nine sacks at Washington State and Turay was a big-time recruit the Owls would have had no chance at two years ago who has been moved to the outside.

The middle of the defense allowed too many inside runners too many yards up the middle yet we’ve been hearing good things the last couple of weeks about tackles like Nick Bags and Kevin Robertson. People like Joe Klecko, Dan Klecko, Averee Robinson and Freddie Booth-Lloyd probably were shaking their heads in disbelief a year ago watching their beloved Owls get gouged up the middle.

The stuff we are hearing from the Bronx is the Owls got their stuffing the run game together.

Geez, I hope those things are true because even if the Owls are able to score 30 points a game, they will never win more than a couple if they give up 35 per to teams not named Akron and Wagner.

Getting after the passer and stopping the run is the real work that needs to be done now.

Come Sept. 2, we will find out if that work earns a paycheck or it was another exercise in going through the motions.

Monday: Al Golden Unlocks the Key for Temple success

Friday: Camp Surprises

Monday (8/23): History of Rebounding

Friday: Rutgers fans

08.09.21
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2021 Temple football: Best WRs, OL in G5

On a team most neutral observers have listed down in the 100s, it’s been pretty clear for awhile that Temple two of the best units not only in the AAC but in all of G5 football.

Specifically, offensive line and wide receivers.

Despite finishing 1-6, the offensive line allowed a league-low 1.7 sacks per game in 2020. It returns four starters and a junior college All-American comes in to replace the oft-injured Vince Picozzi, who was the other starter. Really, if you count tight end David Martin-Robinson (and you should) the line returns five starters not only from 2020 but from the 2019 regular season when they finished 8-4. They proved to be good run-blockers more during the 2019 season than the 2020.

Pretty impressive but not as impressive as the wide receiver group, led by Temple’s all-time leading single-season record-holder Jadan Blue. As good as Blue is (and he’s an NFL player), Randle Jones on the other side is slightly faster and has been called a “flat-out stud” by head coach Rod Carey.

There’s plenty of depth, too, with a productive Power 5 portal transfer in Purdue’s Amad Anderson Jr. Anderson caught 36 passes for 362 yards and three touchdowns for Purdue in a couple of seasons and, with Blue and Jones, should get a lot of single-coverage opportunities. (Hell, you can’t double-cover a single Temple receiver because that opens things up for the other two.)

What does this mean for the team’s bottom line?

Not much if the defense and special teams can’t be fixed.

That’s something that Carey should be placing a priority right now during two weeks of practice in the Bronx.

Still, good defense or no, when the Owls have the ball there is a chance … a chance .. that they can turn the Lincoln Financial Field scoreboard into an adding machine.

If so, the season could be more exciting than the experts say and that something is better than nothing.

Friday: Some areas of concern

Monday: Camp surprises

Friday (8/20); Rutgers fans

08.06.21
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Expansion: All talk, no action

Temple is about as likely to build a stadium as this is to happen.

Lately, we’ve been having an explosion of expansion mania in college football.

The Big 12 commissioner, Bob Bowlsby, accused ESPN of conspiring with the AAC, of all conferences, to take break up his group.

ESPN has denied it.

Over a month now and that’s all it’s been: All talk.

This time, it seems like something might happen. Does, say, Kansas going to the Big 10 help Temple?

No.

Nobody really knows what’s going to happen, if anything, but I will take a guess.

The current Group of Five schools largely remain in the G5 and the current Power 5 schools largely remain in the P5.

That’s it.

Notice the missing school from all this realignment talk …

The only change I see is that the schools in the P5 will consolodate into four mega conferences. The leftovers from the Big 12 are more likely to join the PAC-12 than they are the AAC.

The AAC won’t be absobing the remnants of the Big 12. There won’t be a Power 6.

Why?

Money talks and the 64 schools in the P5 have never shown one iota of sharing that money with any newcomers.

This whole thing reminds me of the talk about Temple’s ill-fated football stadium.

Back in March of 2012, a big football contributor was willing to tell anyone he saw at Temple basketball’s NCAA basketball game with North Carolina State that the stadium was a “done deal” — meaning that it will be built.

Knowing the North Philly neighborhood like I do, I said: “Wake me up when the first shovel hits the ground.”

Almost a full decade later and the first shovel has never hit the ground.

Now it’s a done deal the other way.

Temple has signed a 10-year Linc lease extension and not a single official affilated with the university wants to talk about the status of the stadium. That kind of tells you all you need to know.

That’s kind of the way I feel about all of this expansion talk. Wake me up when Temple joins a Power conference.

Until, then, like the stadium, it’s a nice thing to dream about while smoking a pipe.

Monday: Two reasons for optimism

08.01.21
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Adam DiMichele: Sorry to see him go

Adam DiMichele’s final game as a Temple Owl.

Before too much time passed, we wanted to note here that Adam DiMichele is no longer with the Temple program and we’re sorry to hear that.

The news was official less than two weeks ago when Adam sent out a tweet saying goodbye.

Maybe someday we will hear the real story about why a guy who has been here since the beginning of the Al Golden Era left but it won’t be this year and maybe not next.

As soon as I found out, I texted someone I knew inside the E-O simply this: “What’s the deal with Adam DiMichele?”

“What do you mean?”

“He resigned 27 minutes ago.”

“Oh no. I know he wasn’t happy but I didn’t think it was that bad. I’m bummed. He’s a real good dude.”

Whatever the deal is, we simply know this. Of the four coaches Pat Kraft specifically asked Rod Carey to keep (Fran Brown, Ed Foley, Adam DiMichele and Gabe Infante), three of them are gone and Kraft isn’t here to protect a single one.

Sad, because DiMichele was a part of the turnaround from the beginning. He played for Golden and coached under three uniquely different personalities, which suggests he gets along with everyone. He was quarterback with three Philadelphia teams (Eagles, where he threw a touchdown pass in a preseason game to a guy named Gibson), Soul and Owls.

Adam’s career stats at Temple.
P.J.’s career stats at Temple.

DiMichele was one of my five favorite Temple players of all time (Paul Palmer, Joe Klecko, Tyler Matakevich and P.J. Walker were the others).

Stat-wise, DiMichele didn’t compare to Walker but there were extenuating circumstances. Because Joe Paterno never released him from his Penn State scholarship, DiMichele was eligible only three years to play at Temple, not four. Plus, he missed half a season with a broken leg.

The fourth year he would have been the quarterback of a great Temple team that finished 9-3. That team had everything but a quarterback. DiMichele would have been that quarterback and both his stats and an insanely good legacy here would have been cemented.

Would that team have gone 12-0 during the regular season with DiMichele at quarterback? I think they would have. They lost, 31-6 against Penn State with Vaughn Charlton and Chester Stewart at quarterback and they probably would have beaten UCLA in the bowl game and those were the two best teams they lost to that season.

Maybe 13-0 including the bowl (although the bowl opponent would have been better than UCLA) is a stretch but 12-1 was definitely within reach.

No way this team would have been “only” 9-3 with a quarterback like Adam DiMichele behind center.

It would have been fun to find out.

We will never know the story of how his playing career would have ended but someday I’m confident we will hear the real story of how his coaching career ended here.

Someday, but probably not soon.

Friday: Expansion Mania

Monday: Optimism abounds

07.19.21
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What would Geoff Collins do?

According to the website coacheshotseat.com, two former Temple guys sit at Nos. 14 and 15, respectively.

While there seems to be some debate about how rosy the future is for Rod Carey at Temple, there is less debate about current Georgia Tech head coach Geoff Collins had he remained at Temple.

It would not have ended well.

Yikes …

Hell, my best guess has been since December of 2019 that it won’t end well for Carey here but Collins didn’t tee things up for Rod like Matt Rhule did for Geoff.

Carey probably has one more year, maybe two, to post a winning season at Temple or he’s out of here.

Collins would have been on a shorter leash had he remained here simply because his contract would have been up.

Collins recruited primarily from the South, eschewed local connections, and his two classes were mediocre at best.

Had he remained here would he have been able to switch gears like Carey did in the offseason, promote Gabe Infante and hire a guy like Preston Brown?

Doubtful.

So, in my mind and probably in a lot of other minds, Temple is slightly better off with Carey than Collins.

Put it this way: Carey beat Collins, 24-2, with AAC talent while Collins had the benefit of ACC recruiting classes.

Knowing Temple as I do, Carey will probably be able to survive a 2-4 win season as most of the experts expect the Owls to have. Look at it this way: Did Steve Addazio survive a four-win season at Temple?

He sure did until Boston College took the Owls off the hook.

Temple rarely fires head coaches who it owes money to and I doubt they’d start with Carey.

Collins, on the other hand, is feeling the heat in Atlanta and that comes with the Power 5 territory.

Maybe he can make a move to solidify his job by capitalizing on the new NIL rule, but that remains to be seen. The fans there are restless and a story published over the weekend illustrated why.

That’s Georgia Tech’s problem, not Temple’s. We have our own, of course, but things could have been worse.

Friday-Monday: Off the Grid (we’ll be in the Poconos this weekend and our only internet will be by phone so no stories)

Friday, July 30: Summer camp preview

07.16.21
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New Beginnings: Recruiting

National high school coach of the year Gabe Infante would be my first choice to replace Rod Carey should the wheels fall off this year.

Maybe after nearly three years of banging his head against a wall Rod Carey has figured out a way to succeed at Temple.

Better late than never.

For MOST of the first two years, he relied primarily on his Midwest recruiting connections.

Some nice players out there but, when they get to 10th and Diamond, there has been a history of culture shock.

Not every intersection is for everybody.

The good news is that there are literally thousands of urban kids–good players from good families–who are not only used to the urban environment but prefer it.

The Owls have an established gem on the Pennsylvania side of the river in Gabe Infante. Great head coach with multiple state championships under his belt and the kids love him.

Now they have Preston Brown.

Lose one Camden Brown (Fran), gain another.

Two-time South Jersey state champion Preston Brown (holding trophy) would be my second choice to replace Carey. If Carey goes 10-2 this year, I vote for Carey to remain at Temple.

I would argue Carey got the better Brown.

Hear me out here.

The Brown who went to Rutgers was never a head coach and never won squat as a head coach.

The Brown who Temple hired this week not only won one but multiple New Jersey championships as a head coach at Woodrow Wilson.

The kids love the Temple Brown as much and maybe more than the Rutgers Brown (no relation).

Plus, Carey has now surrounded himself with legendary state championship high school coaches in the very fertile recruiting ground (Southeast Pennsylvania and South Jersey) any Temple head coach must dominate. There are more FBS players in the fourth-largest market in the country than there are in 10 of the next 35 markets.

Temple should have a huge advantage over the Cincys, Memphises and Tulsas and at least rival the UCF/USF Orlando-Tampa market. No Temple fan has been harder on Carey than me but, if anything, I’m objective.

There is no reason (none) that Temple should not compete for the AAC title every season.

The fact that Carey doesn’t feel threatened by the existence of Brown and Infante so close to his office speaks volumes for Carey’s confidence in himself and that he can do the job here.

Since I’m much more a fan of 10-2 than I am of 2-10, I hope Carey’s faith in these two great men pays off sooner than later.

Time is running out for Carey, but it is definitely on the side of Gabe and Preston. The fact that Carey doesn’t feel threatened by either guy makes me respect Rod more today than I did yesterday. Rod, I hope to hell that you succeed because 2020 reminded me more than anything that I hate losing more than I love winning.

Monday: WWGCD?

07.12.21
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Rod Carey knows how to beat the Big 10

Mike Locksley gets the no-look handshake from Rod Carey after beating the Big 10 in 2019
Sales of this sweatshirt go off the charts with a win at RU.

Rod Carey knows how to do two things:

Lose bowl games.

Beat Big 10 teams.

He’s 0-7 in bowl games.

He’s 5-2 against the Big 10.

Even one of the two losses to the Big 10 was a 20-13 loss to 12-1 Ohio State in 2015.

Presumably, in all seven of those games (not the bowl ones) Carey was working at a huge talent disadvantage.

That bodes well for Carey and the Temple Owls some 50 days from now in the opener at Rutgers.

Bum Phillips might have said it best of Don Shula in 1979: “He can take his ‘um and beat your ‘um.”

Gotta love the fake punt. Temple used to do that all the time.

That’s the ultimate compliment for a head coach, meaning he can take his players from either team and win the game.

Really, though, how much more talent does Rutgers have than Temple, considering the Owls beat Maryland, 20-17, two years ago for Carey’s last win against the Big 10 and later in the same year Maryland took Rutgers to the woodshed, 48-7?

It usually takes a long time for entire rosters to be recycled out of programs and that’s even the case with the transfer portal. There are enough Temple playmakers from the 2019 team to contribute in 2021.

So Carey is going to have to work whatever magic he did in that win over Maryland, plus beating an 8-5 Iowa team in 2013 (30-27), plus Purdue (55-24) that same year, Northwestern (23-15) in 2014 and Nebraska (21-17) in 2017. All the games except Maryland were on the road and all, including Maryland, came in September.

Carey knows something about putting the several months he gets to prepare for more talented opponents to good use.

The good news for Temple fans is that the core members of the NIU staff who made their fortune beating the Big 10 are still in place at Temple.

You have to assume that even this version of Temple has more talent than most of the NIU squads Carey took to Big 10 stadiums. Plus, this group at Rutgers isn’t as talented as Iowa in 2013 nor Maryland in 2019. NIU was a double-digit underdog in all four of its Big 10 wins under Carey and Temple will be probably a double-digit underdog at Rutgers.

Carey has been saying for 10 months now that COVID beat Temple in 2020 more than the six opponents did.

He gets his best chance to back up that statement on Sept. 2.

The fact that he has a pretty good history against the Big 10 provides some level of comfort and the mindset around here will change quickly if he proves his point that night.

We’ll worry about the bowl record later.

Friday: New Beginnings

Monday: WWGCD?

07.09.21
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Only one bigger opener than Rutgers

One of the great games in this fairly tight rivalry: Temple’s win in 1988

Arguably is one of the best words in the English language because we’re going to use it right here.

ARGUABLY the Temple vs. Rutgers opener on Thursday night, Sept. 2, is exceeded by only one other date:

Sept. 5, 2015.

That’s when the Owls beat down Penn State, 27-10, a score that was only somewhat respectable because Penn State grad Matt Rhule took three knees deep in PSU territory late in the fourth quarter and eschewed an almost certain touchdown that would have made it 34-10.

Nice catch by John Christopher

Most of us (including me) did not care one whit because of the euphoria of the moment, breaking a 74-year winless streak. Sticking around at the post-game tailgate until 9:30 was worth it, especially when the police tried to kick us out. A captain came over on his motorcycle and told his underlings: “Let these guys stay as long as they want. They waited a long time for this win.”

Before that, we saw Matt Rhule place a big wet kiss on 90-year-old Wayne Hardin’s cheek in honor of Wayne’s 10-7, 31-30 and 26-25 losses to the Nittany Lions. We also received a text from Bruce Arians saying “way to go Owls, I watched the whole game.”

Why would this year’s Rutgers’ game be nearly as important?

Put it this way: The Temple WINNING brand, which has been 73-54 since 2009, took a big hit with a 1-6 season last year.

The fans’ confidence is shaken.

Hopefully, not the team’s.

What isn’t arguable is that Rod Carey is a bum to MOST Temple fans now. If he beats Rutgers, he will be a hero. Is that fair? Maybe not. Is it true? Most definitely.

There are few FBS football schools as close geographically as Temple and Rutgers (52.1 miles). SMU and TCU (45.2 miles), UCLA and USC (13.2 miles), NIU and Northwestern (74 miles), and Maryland and Navy (30.4 miles) but that’s about it. The crowd for the 1988 Temple-Rutgers game (31,219) was the largest for any game in the history of the old Rutgers Stadium (1938-1994). This is a geographical rivalry and Temple has been the better team at least for seven of the last eight years.

Let’s put it this way. As recently as 2019, the Owls beat a Maryland team that clubbed Rutgers, 48-7.

Have the Owls fallen that far that fast?

A loss would reinforce the current national notion that the Owls are just outside of ESPN’s Bottom 10.

Hell, after all that Al Golden and Matt Rhule did to get this program back on track, Rutgers might be more important than the Penn State game.

Looking backward, I don’t believe that.

Looking forward, I sure do.

If they kick us out of the Piscataway parking lot at 9:30, that would be fine with me. By my calculations for a 6 p.m. start, that would give me 15 minutes of celebration time and a new outlook on the season.

Arguably, it would be worth it.

Monday: Looking at it from the Carey perspective

07.05.21
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One time stats are for winners

Delano Green shows the current Owls how the program used to treat punt returns back in the day.

Maybe the oldest adage in sports is that statistics are for losers.

Not always.

Not this year.

At least for Temple football.

This is the only red flag Temple fans should care about.

That’s because for the Owls to post a winning season, a lot of the current players and leaders are going to have to post not only their best numbers but numbers significantly above what they’ve done in the past.

The good news is that there is some solid history among the single-digit players.

If, say, Jadan Blue can just surpass his numbers from the 2019 season (95 catches, over 1,000 yards, four touchdowns) that is really all the contribution he needs to make.

I think he can do it, particularly if Randle Jones stays healthy on the other side. (Meaning Blue won’t face double-coverage.)

If, say, Will Rodgers III can get the nine sacks in G5 ball that he took a couple of years to do on the P5 level, the Owls’ pass rush will be significantly improved and it needs to be.

The bad news is that there is no history of the most important players on the field putting up numbers.

Specifically, we’re talking about the most important position on the field: Quarterback.

Through very little fault of his own, D’Wan Mathis had more interceptions than touchdown passes in his brief stint as the Georgia starter last year. (We won’t say NO fault of his own because if Mathis threw five touchdown passes and over 300 yards in his first game as starter, he would have been the quarterback for the next week and maybe several weeks after that.)

To me, the key stats for a winning Temple season are simply this:

Mathis has to better Anthony Russo’s best year: 21 touchdown passes, 11 interceptions in 2019. Who knows? Maybe Mathis tosses 30 touchdowns and throws only eight interceptions but he’s going to have to have a career year either way.

Also, the running backs (presumably R’Von Bonner and Iverson Clement) have to put up Bernard Pierce-type numbers (1,500 yards and 25 touchdowns). Since that’s two guys and Pierce was just one, that should be doable since the Owls’ offensive line.

Also, it would be nice if the Owls were proactive on special teams (blocked kicks, punt returns like Delano Green’s) instead of being passive which they have been for the past two years under Rod Carey.

They’ve had no stats of note on special teams since Ed Foley left town.

That might be a lot to ask but when you are picked to win only two games, you’ve got to do a lot more than the pundits expect to get the results the fans want.

The benchmarks have been set and they are stats that translate into winning, not losing.

Friday: Starting gates

07.02.21
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NIL: The rich getting richer

With each passing change of college football as we know it, you can excuse Temple sports fans not being overly excited.

As of yesterday, the NCAA adopted the latest reality: Name, Image and Likeness.

To me, it’s another in a series of changes that mean simply this: The rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

It makes sense that the teams with the larger followings, like Duke in basketball, and Alabama in football, will have players who rake in the money over, say, the Temple’s and the Cincinnatis.

Fairness?

An even playing field?

Giving everyone an equal chance to win?

Bleep that, says the NCAA, which has reluctantly joined the call for paying the players through this method.

One of the barometers for this is social media following and, just for an example, I can’t imagine Temple basketball ever having a larger social media following than Duke (see above).

Or Temple football against any P5 team.

That 2016 American Conference football championship that Temple had now seems so far away.

Can the Owls win another AAC title?

Sure, but expecting the “amateurs” to compete with the “professionals” in a playoff with be damn near impossible. That 2016 Owls’ team would have been a worthy foe for anyone in a 12-team playoff. It lost by a touchdown at Big 10 champion Penn State despite 130 yards in home-cooking penalties. Have a rematch in a bowl game on a neutral field and things might have gone the other way.

Especially if Matt Rhule saw a playoff game against his alma mater as a better reason to stay at Temple for one more game than a meaningless bowl.

It would have been a mighty blow for the G5 to have one of its champions beat the Big 10 champion in a playoff game. Maybe the biggest boost ever for the G5.

We will never know.

Now Temple faces huge obstacles in the transfer portal and this Name, Image and Likeness development.

If this NIL thing works out the way we think it will, it might just be time for the G5 to break away and form its own organization with its own playoffs. Give similar sized schools with similar followings (and presuming players benefit the same with pay) an even playing field. I had been against that because I always thought that Temple could join the P5 but it seems like the P5 doesn’t want to share its money with anyone.

Except the players who commit to those schools and that’s sad.

Monday: Temple 2021 Measurables