Category Archives: Temple football

07.27.19
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Carey on Foley: Plausible Deniability

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Carey’s litmus test going forward is to protect these other three guys and give them room to thrive.

A few weeks ago we wrote that Rod Carey had some “splaining to do” after the incident that caused Temple football to be jettisoned from a loyal soldier, Ed Foley.

The explanation came in a recent Marc Narducci story where Carey said that he had “too many offensive coaches on the field, including myself” and wanted to put a talented young defensive assistant, Tyler Yelk, on the field.

Narducci has been on fire recently, with a piece stating that Isaiah Wright wants an expanded role and another giving detail on Manny Diaz’s departure from Temple, but his stories detailing both sides of the Foley issue might have been the best of the summer.

Foley said he was leaving to go “with someone I trust and respect” and the implication was that he did not trust and respect Carey.

Then Narducci came back with Carey’s side of the story. 

A lot of fans, this one included, are still irked that Foley is gone but, given Carey’s explanation, it makes sense.

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Pretty much every Temple fan now watching how Carey treats our beloved trio of Adam DiMichele, Fran Brown and Gabe Infante.

One, Foley could have remained in an off-field capacity if he wanted and both men admitted that. Two, Temple did seem to be top-heavy with offensive coaches in a program that, as Carey has said, “hangs its hat on defense.”

Plausible deniability should Foley’s absence be felt this season. By that, I mean deniability that he’s trying to get rid of the Temple holdovers in favor of NIU guys. The litmus test going forward for Carey is to protect the other three guys (Fran Brown, Gabe Infante and Adam DiMichele) and give them a chance to thrive at Temple. Rod, we’re watching you. 

The bottom line is that Temple, which generally never had to worry about special teams, has one more thing to worry about now. That’s why Carey gets paid the big bucks, though, to make sure everything runs smoothly, including special teams.

The Owls have a serviceable kicker in Will Mobley, who did a nice job when Boston College transfer Aaron Boumerhi had a hip flexor last year. Boomer had the range, while Mobley was essentially a solid extra point kicker. They also have the nation’s best returner, Isaiah Wright, so the special teams should be OK.

Where I think Temple fans will really notice Foley gone is in the area of blocked punts, field goals, and extra points. Foley consistently had the Owls in the nation’s top 10 in those categories because he was an aggressive coach who went after kicks. There is little in Carey’s history to suggest NIU was anywhere near as consistent in that area as Temple was.

When Al Golden got here and brought Foley with him, he said special teams were as important as offense and defense and he practiced what he preached. Let’s hope Carey continues that tradition. 

Monday: Up Against The Walls

07.22.19
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Aresco Should Practice What He Preaches

Mike Aresco talks BYU and the Power 6

One of the dichotomies of American Athletic Conference Media Day was Mike Aresco preaching Power 6 and the football schedule of the league not practicing it.

The SEC and Big 10 commissioners have moved to eliminate scheduling FCS opponents and there is some talk now of them eliminating Group of Five opponents in the near future.

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The irony of that is they don’t need to do it.

The AAC, if it is indeed going to be a Power 6 conference, does. The AAC needs to schedule Power 5 opponents and beat them if they are going to be seriously considered as a P5, even if that means giving up a home game here and there. Commissioner Mike Aresco cannot force conference athletic directors to schedule additional P5 opponents, but he can strongly suggest (and even shame them) into doing so, saying it’s for the overall good of the league.

He has not done that and it’s been showing up on the schedules, games that do nothing to advance the conference’s profile.

Here are five WTF games that jump out on the AAC non-conference schedule. We’ll skip the Wagner at UConn game for obvious reasons:

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  • Bucknell at Temple–We’ve already talked about this game until we’re blue in the face but this made no sense when it was first scheduled and make less sense with each and every passing day. A better competition would have been to put Anthony Russo and Isaiah Wright as the captains of the Cherry team and Toddy Centeio and Jager Gardner as captains of the White team and have them alternate picks for a real pickup game with full contact. That’s water under the bridge now. Let’s hope Pat Kraft doesn’t make the same mistake twice.
  • Holy Cross at Navy–Unless the ghost of Gordy Lockbaum shows up, this team has no business being on the Navy schedule. Holy Cross lost a home game to Bucknell last year and was beaten, 62-14, by Boston College and lost to Harvard and Dartmouth of the Ivy League.
  • Prairie View A&M at Houston–Prairie View lost to Rice and UNLV last year in addition to Alcorn State and Jackson State. The Cougars have a long history of scheduling and beating better foes. They should have stuck to that philosophy, particularly when they showed they are the only G5 school willing to spend the big bucks to woo a successful P5 coach.
  • Florida A&M at UCF–This is precisely the kind of game that sets up UCF for some kind of legitimate criticism should it go undefeated again. The Knights are playing Stanford but essentially weakened their argument by not playing P5 foes instead of Florida A&M and Florida Atlantic.
  • Southern at Memphis--Southern, one of the best teams in the SWAC, still lost to TCU (55-7) and Louisiana Tech (54-17) last year so Memphis, trying to position itself for an NY6 bowl, still impresses no one with this possible win.
  • On the other hand, the league deserves kudos for games like Georgia Tech and Maryland at Temple, UCLA at Cincy and Cincy at Ohio State,  Tulsa at Michigan State, Ole Miss at Memphis, Wisconsin at USF, Tulane at Auburn and Washington State at Houston.

For this conference to achieve the goals its commissioner preaches, it needs to practice more of that kind of scheduling and less of the WTF games.

Saturday: Plausible Deniability

07.20.19
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AAC Media Day: Not-so-great expectations

Chris Giannini on 2019 Temple: “That is a really, really good team” .. yet he picks Owls to go 7-5

Anyone arriving at the AAC Football Media Day was greeted with one of those graphic boards usually seen at horse races listing the entrants and their odds.

This time, though, the board read the media preseason polls and the expectations for the season by a poll of so-called experts.

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The expectations for Temple, the winningest team in the league in the last four regular-season years (yes, more wins than UCF, USF, Houston and Memphis from 2015-2018) were not so great. The Owls were picked fourth in the AAC East behind UCF, Cincinnati and USF.

The reasoning was simple.

Temple was losing Geoff Collins and gaining Rod Carey was usually the first thing out of their mouths. The second thing was the loss of a NFL fifth-round draft choice at running back, Ryquell Armstead, who former Houston coach Major Applewhite called “the best running back in our league.”

Sound reasoning for outsiders, not so much for insiders.

Losing Collins, long on schtick and short on substance, was the antonym of the new Temple coach, Carey, a guy long on substance and short on schtick.

 

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The Owls are only 20-25 handoffs from this guy to that guy away from winning an AAC title.

It’s hard from an insider’s point of view–particularly this one–to see that as anything but a net gain for both the organization and its preseason chances.

The running back conundrum is another story, though.

Carey has promised to give the ball to potentially the best running back in the league, Isaiah Wright, a lot more. If Carey has the kind of substance we think he has, he will figure out the best way to do that is making Wright the full-time replacement for Armstead because, as good as Armstead was, Wright has the kind of moves and speed that could make the rest of the league forget about Armstead. It’s a no-brainer because Temple is extraordinarily deep at wide receiver with Branden Mack, Jaden Blue, Randle Jones and Freddie Johnson, among others. Still, the last two Temple head coaches also promised to get the ball into Wright’s hands more but did not deliver on those promises.

Nothing would achieve that goal more than quarterback Anthony Russo sticking that pigskin into Wright’s belly 20-25 times a game and maybe added a few swing passes out of the backfield to give Wright the space to do his thing.

In the middle of July, that, to me, seems to be the key to the season. Ride that horse and the Owls’ odds of moving from fourth to first improve dramatically.

Monday: Practicing What You Preach

Saturday: Plausible Deniability 

Monday (7/29): Up Against The Walls

Saturday (8/3): Game Month

07.13.19
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Open Letter to Pat Kraft: Honor TU’s Moon Landing

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Dr. Patrick Kraft

Director of Athletics

Temple University

Broad Street and Montgomery Avenues

Philadelphia, PA 19122

 

Dear Pat,

In the next few days, you are going to be hearing a lot about the 50-year anniversary of the Moon Landing (July 20, 1969).

What you probably won’t be hearing about is Temple football’s Moon Landing, which came in 40 years ago on December 15, 1979, so we will fill you in here.

While it might have been technically harder for man to set foot on the moon, getting Temple to win a bowl game certainly is a feat that needs to be remembered and honored at some home game this season.

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That’s because while, arguably, the quest for the Moon was really only talked about realistically after the Russians launched the satellite Sputnick (1957), Temple football had a similar quest to win a bowl game since they became a thing in the late 1920s.

Temple came close before, losing the first Sugar Bowl to Tulane (who could have figured that school would ever become a conference foe later?), 20-14, in 1934, the Owls did not even a chance for greatness until 49 years later.

So what took the United States less than a decade to accomplish as outlined in JFK’s 1961 Rice University commencement address, Temple football was looking to do really since 1934–an accomplishment that took about as long as the moon anniversary we are approaching.

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“Even after Hardin landed at Temple, Belichick continued to pay close attention to the coach’s methods. In 1979, when the Owls took on heavily-favored Cal in the Garden State Bowl at Giants Stadium, Belichick was in attendance. The Giants special-teams coach at the time, Belichick sat with then Giants assistant Ernie Adams, who now works alongside Belichick as the football research director for the Patriots. “The pair of young and talented football minds were completely baffled as they watched Hardin toy with Cal’s linebackers, who were taught to read the guards in front of them.” _ Phil Perry, NBC Sports

The Owls did not get a sniff of a bowl after the Sugar until 1979, when they dismantled California, 28-17, before 40,207 fans at the Garden State Bowl. One of those in attendance that day was Bill Belichick, who took copiously detailed notes about how Wayne Hardin outcoached Cal’s Roger Theder.

Yet, as far at least a half-dozen members of that team we’ve contacted know, nothing is planned to commemorate that team this fall.

So far.

Plenty of time to rectify that and plenty of representatives of that team are available, tailgating in the far corner opposite the K Lot and across the main entrance.

By all metrics, the 1979 team has proven to be Temple’s best team ever. The 10-2 Owls finished 17th in both final polls (UPI and AP) and lost only to Pitt (10-2) and Penn State (22-7). Pitt was in the top 10 when it needed a late field goal to beat Temple. Imagine if the Owls were able to scrounge up 17 more points that year and finish 12-0? It would have meant a likely national title.

Temple.

In football.

National champions.

That’s pretty heady stuff and getting some of these guys together again in front of the fans–at least at halftime of the Oct. 12 Homecoming game against Memphis–should be on your end of the summer to-do list. Just roll out the guys at halftime, give them a plaque, and roll the 1979 highlights on the Jumbotron.

It’s the least they deserve.

Monday: Ed Foley is Gone But Not Forgotten

07.04.19
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Best of TFF: There are no words

Editor’s Note: Bill Maher takes the entire month of July off. We only take the first week. Our July 4th Best of TFF story is the most-viewed story in the 15-year history of this blog. Thanks to a big boost of traffic from Deadspin redirecting readers here, we had 388,569 unique readers to this story, the most-viewed story in a single day in the history of TFF. Monday, we resume the regular blog.

The morning after arguably the greatest win in Temple football history, there are no words.

Literally no words are coming out of my mouth, at least in the sense of being able to talk this morning.

The throaty and hoarse condition is more than OK because it was the result of cheering for the Owls at beautiful Navy-Marine Corps Stadium as they captured what really is their first-ever major football championship. The 1967 MAC title was admirable, but that was a day when the school played to a level of football that was beneath their status even then as one of America’s great public universities.

So this was it.

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Walking out of the stadium and into the concourse, I let out a very loud primal: “THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKIN’ ABOUT!!”

Fortunately, I got a few high fives and smiles from my fellow Temple fans and not fitted for a straightjacket. It also put the voice out for 24 hours, maybe more.

When it comes to Temple football today at least, you cannot think in terms of a national championship—the deck is stacked against G5 teams in an unfair system—so what happened yesterday was the pinnacle of Temple football success. Thousands of Temple fans, easily in excess of 10,000 Temple fans, made Navy’s 15-game home winning streak a moot point by turning that stadium into a Temple home field advantage and to get to that mountaintop and look down from it is incredibly satisfying.

Hey, it’s a pretty spectacular pinnacle. The only thing that would have made it better was a G5 slot in a New Year’s Six bowl against Penn State, but that’s not happening for a number of reasons that are not important today. (Objectively, would you take a team for the Cotton Bowl that has won seven straight against this schedule and beat a Navy team, 34-10, over a Western Michigan team that struggled to beat a four-loss Ohio team? I would but I don’t expect the bowl committee to be that objective. I can also grudingly see the WMU argument.)

What is important is that the Owls have gone from being a perennial Bottom 10 team and laughed at nationally to being ranked in the Top 25 for two straight years and going to a title game one year and winning it the next. When you think of the success P.J. Walker and Jahad Thomas have had here, there is a Twilight Zone quality to the parallel between this success and their success at Elizabeth (N.J.). In their freshman year at Elizabeth, they won one game; in their freshman year at Temple they won two games. In their sophomore year at both schools, they won six games. In their junior year at both schools, they reached the title game and lost and, in their senior year at both schools, they lifted the ultimate hardware together.

Truly amazing and I will miss both of those guys.

Back on Cherry and White Day, I wrote that this team will be better than last year’s team while people on other websites—notably, Rutgers and Penn State fan boards—insisted that Temple would take a step back. I was consistent in my belief that this was the STEP FORWARD year, not the step back one, and that belief was rooted in knowledge that both the defense and offense were significantly upgraded despite graduation losses. Only a Temple fan who follows the team closely would know that, not the know-it-alls who make assumptions on subjects they have no idea what they are talking about.

Today at noon, the Owls will know where they will go for a bowl game. They can finish the season in the top 25 and set the record for most wins in Temple football history.

It won’t be the cake because we saw that yesterday, but it will be the Cherry on top of that white cake and it will be delicious even going down past what promises to be a future sore throat.

07.01.19
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Best of TFF: Comical, if not so sad

Editor’s Note: Bill Maher takes off the entire month of July. We’re only taking off the first week. In this space, we are filling it with a “best of” TFF. (Not our picks, but readers choice by page views of from 2018 and 2019 posts capped with our most-viewed post of all time on Friday.) This appeared the day after Manny Diaz quit.

leipold

Lance Leipold is probably the best available head coach out there, but does Kraft know that?

Mulligans are usually associated with the game of golf, but Temple athletic director  Pat Kraft now has a chance to have that kind of do-over in football coaching searches.

He missed this most recent two-foot putt by a mile but this is a chance to correct his mistake.

worstthing

This is what we wrote 20 days ago and Kraft did exactly the worst thing–bring in another team’s coordinator.

The $6.5 million question now is whether he admits his hiring model was a flawed one or does he take this as an opportunity to create a new model?

Manny Diaz lasted all of 17 days as Temple football’s head coach and, frankly, I’m glad he’s gone. He was never a fit for Temple. The guy never coached North of Jacksonville, had no recruiting ties to the area and probably doesn’t even own an overcoat. Temple was going to train him to be Mark Richt’s successor for one year and he would move on to his “dream” job, Miami. He would make all the mistakes first-year head coaches make–all the ones that Matt Rhule made in a 2-10 season and Collins did in a 7-6 one–and the Temple fans and players would be the ones paying for it.

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A busy day ahead for the Interstate sign company

Now Kraft will have to juggle several balls in the air with the $6.5 million buyout money ($2.5 million for Geoff Collins and $4 million for Diaz) and hope he can catch them all:

    • No more carpetbaggers. Kraft, in his message to the players last night, finally used the word “stability.”  That word has never appeared in his vocabulary before and it is a concession to the fact that this revolving door is getting comical if it wasn’t so sad. Is there someone out there who has not lost to Duke and Wake Forest by a combined score of 101-53 who feels that TEMPLE is his dream job? Surely that man exists.
    • Keep contractual obligations. Another ball that is difficult to catch. Temple has the names of Fran Brown and Gabe Infante (and probably Ed Foley) signed on the dotted line and the university has a moral duty to keep them onboard and find a next guy who can work with both. Moral duty may mean nothing to Diaz, but it should mean something to Temple.
    • Forget coordinators.  Both Foley, who lost to Wake and Duke by the above-mentioned 101-53, and Fran Brown are good men who may consider Temple their “dream job” but neither has won a single game as an FBS head coach and probably are not ready for prime time. Nonetheless, we don’t want to learn the hard way.

It is time for Temple to finally bring in an established head coach and not another coordinator to have to learn on the job, someone who will bring some stability to the program and has loyalty to Temple.

stability

Al Golden said on national TV Temple TUFF is spelled T-U-F-F (and it is)

That would probably rule out a terrific head coach like FIU’s Butch Davis, who will probably spend his entire year here looking out the window. Buffalo’s Lance Leipold parlayed a 108-6 record at Wisconsin-Whitewater and six national championships (real ones, not fake ones like they have in FBS) into a 10-4 record with the Bulls and is ridiculously underpaid at $325K. Can he be talked into keeping Foley, Brown and Infante, guys who he never met? Waving a couple of million at a guy like that can be convincing. Nothing would scare the shit out of Geoff Collins more than facing the guy who kicked his ass last September at Lincoln Financial Field this September at LFF. He’s a perfect geographical fit for Temple in that Buffalo is a major Northeastern city like Philadelphia. He probably owns several overcoats.

disclosure

… and this is what we wrote 18 days ago

Al Golden is a guy who knows Temple and loves Temple and HAS PROVEN HE CAN WIN AS A HEAD COACH AT TEMPLE and would get along with Foley, Brown, and Infante and deserves a hard pursuit by Kraft. He gave Temple five terrific years, is still young and probably knows more than anyone else that the grass is not greener on the other side of the 10th and Diamond fence.

Todd Bowles would be a good co-defensive coordinator for Fran Brown to learn from but I’m told his lack of a Temple (or any other) college degree ruled him out of the coaching search in 2010.

The worst thing, though, would be for Kraft to go back and churn the coordinator pile of guys like Mike Elko and Don Brown and come up with a guy whose dream job is elsewhere.

Other people’s dreams are Temple’s nightmares.

Tuesday: Rod Carey Hire: More Steak Than Sizzle

06.29.19
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Latest hit piece: Keep Temple’s name out of your mouth

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No big fan of Donovan McNabb here, but his take on a controversy with Terrell Owens in 2005 applies to David Jones’ latest hit piece on Temple football almost 15 years later.

“Keep my name out of your mouth.”

Instead of “my” substitute “Temple’s” and it becomes a perfect retort.

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Jones, who writes for Penn Live, had a strange take on UConn’s exit to the Big East (and apparent de-emphasis of football). He lumped UConn and Temple together, saying Temple should also de-emphasize football and insinuated that it should rejoin the A-10 at the expense of a football affiliation with the AAC.

That is a weak take on so many levels we’ll just concentrate on some here:

  • One, UConn is coming off a decade of failure in football while Temple has enjoyed a decade of sustained success.
  • Two, Temple is not trying to get into the P5. Sure, it would love a P5 invite but I think even the most optimistic Temple fans are not expecting one in the next decade. G5 football is a significant upgrade over FCS, though, and a proven spot where Temple can thrive. If Dave is saying the entire G5 should give up and drop to FCS, that’s one thing but I don’t think he’s saying that.
  • Three, Temple earned in addition to the millions off its AAC football contract, $6 million with the Manny Diaz buyout and $2.6 million with the Geoff Collins’ buyout. Rod Carey’s buyout is $10 million. Owls are not going to leave that money on the table by dropping to FCS.
  • Four, the AAC as currently constituted, is a better basketball conference than the A10 as currently constituted.

Why would Temple, which enjoys terrific football TV ratings and a steady uptick in football attendance, jeopardize any part of its football franchise to ostensibly prop up its basketball one?

I don’t know what his point was. Should Temple drop out of the G5 and the AAC even though it has the most regular-season league football wins since 2015? (More than UCF, Houston, Memphis and USF). That’s a little like the Dems asking Joe Biden to drop out before the first debate (although maybe he should drop out now after it). G5 is not big-time football but it’s certainly better for Temple than an A10 basketball/FCS football combo. (Good luck drawing flies in FCS football to the Linc.)

Plus, there is absolutely no assurance that investing in basketball at the expense of football would improve that product. Why not pursue excellence in the two marquee sports?

In college athletics, you can both walk and chew gum at the same time.

Temple can and should do both and ignore the haters who keep putting the Owls’ name in their mouths.

Monday: Our one week of vacation a year (and five best-of-TFF columns M-F)

July 8: A partnership that works

July 11: Roll call

 

 

06.25.19
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UConn: Bye, Felicia!

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My reaction over the weekend when it was leaked that the University of Connecticut would be leaving the AAC for the Big East was not unlike that Ice Cube gif (left).

Bye, Felicia!

Because no matter how much UConn huffed and puffed and tried to resuscitate its failing football program, the patient died as a result of some pretty bad administrative decisions. (Hiring a hot assistant doesn’t always work as Bob Diaco the assistant coach of the year for Notre Dame turned into a nightmare as a head coach for UConn.)

Really, what was the difference between what happened to Temple in 2003 and UConn now? The Big East then kicked Temple out for what it perceived to be (their words) “non-competitiveness” when, in reality, Temple was regularly beating some teams that the Big East decided to keep.

UConn was beating really nobody last year in football and its once dynamite men’s basketball program was in the middle of the league’s pack. (Hell, it’s now hard to pick out Geoff Collins’ worst loss: 2018 Villanova or 2017 UConn. Both times he played arguably the second-best quarterback on the team so it might be a toss-up.)

The AAC probably didn’t have the stones to kick out UConn like the Big East did to Temple back then so, in effect, what the UConn leaders did this week a favor to the AAC. There is no chance the league allows UConn to take out both of its good programs (men’s and women’s basketball) and leave its one crappy program (football).

Good riddance.

Temple, in my mind, belongs in the Power 5 but that doesn’t appear on the horizon soon and, failing that, we have to accept where we are now and UConn leaving the league improves our lot at least a little bit.

Now the American can add a team like BYU (not likely) or Buffalo/Army (more likely). They would have to figure out a way to flip the Army/Navy week and the league championship weeks and that might be an insurmountable hurdle. If so, then the league turns to Buffalo, which more fits the AAC profile of larger TV markets and has a program that is immediately ready to compete in the two highest-profile sports. AAC would have the top G5 market (Philadelphia, 4) plus Dallas-Ft. Worth (5), Washington D.C. (Navy, 9th), Tampa-St. Pete (USF, 13th), Orlando (UCF, 19th), Cincinnati (34th), Memphis (48th) and Buffalo (51) and New Orleans (Tulane, 53). That’s a lot of eyeballs.

Buffalo would be the logical choice, about the same distance away as UConn for Temple fans, and a current upgrade in both sports.

That should and will probably be the successful Northeast school that replaces the unsuccessful departed one.

Saturday: The Latest Hit Piece on Temple football

Monday: A Week of Best of TFFs

 

 

06.22.19
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Magazine Season: Follow The Money

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Sadly, not a single Owl in sight

About this time every year (maybe for the last 40 or so), the routine is simple.

Go shopping, pick up milk, bread, some cheap suburban soda and check out the magazine aisle before leaving.

This is the time of year where the college football magazines come out and the sports fantasy has always been to see the Temple Owls if not prominently featured on the cover at least in one of those flaps in the corner.

Maybe one day, but that day wasn’t last week.

It never happens because money talks loudly in cases like this.

Penn State could have the worst team in history coming back and Temple could be favored to win the AAC and it will be PSU on the cover and not our beloved TU. That’s because the magazine editors see the 100,000 average fans the Nittany Lions pull in and contrast that with last season’s 28,167 Temple average and figure out who gets the press.

Journalistic integrity?

Preseason magazines clueless about Owls

That went out the window a long time ago.

Still, it’s worth mentioning here how Athlon–considered by some the leader in college sports magazines–rates the Owls. Temple is ranked as No. 78 overall and, in a landscape that has the top 80 teams going bowling, that translates to a 6-6 record.

If so, I’m headed out to Parx Casino to put money on the over.

Interestingly enough, UCF is No. 22 nationally, Cincinnati No. 39 and Memphis No. 49.  Houston comes in at No. 53 but at least the Owls have ranked ahead of No. 80 Tulane and No. 102 Navy. (Houston is a team the Owls scored 59 points on in a road game last year.)

Both P5 Temple opponents have ranked ahead of the Owls as Maryland comes in at 65 and Georgia Tech at 75.

Other than the financial incentive of ranking these teams, the other factor is research. There’s so little interest in Temple from the editorial standpoint of these publications that they don’t put enough weight on factors that include Temple hiring a complete FBS professional staff, while Georgia Tech and Maryland enter the season with staffs that have largely underachieved elsewhere. Mix in both of them are home games for Temple and it is more than reasonable to assume the Owls will be able to duplicate their win over Maryland and beat an “easier” foe in Georgia Tech.

We might know that but they certainly don’t or don’t even care. Gotta think that they have those down as two losses for the Owls and why Temple is a 6-6 team from their perspective.

If Vegas agrees, then a trip to the local gambling establishment would be following the money from another angle.

There is nothing more satisfying than proving these magazines wrong and I that’s just what this Owls’ team is primed to do.

Tuesday: Bye, Felicia (UConn)

Saturday: A Stadium Partnership That Worked

Sunday (June 30): Our One-Week Annual Vacation=5 Straight Days of Best of TFF

 

06.19.19
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Help is on the way

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Back in a 2004 Presidential campaign one of the candidates had a signature line in his convention acceptance speech:

“Help is on the way.”

That turned out to be an unfulfilled promise because the guy lost.

First-year Temple head coach Rod Carey never uttered the phrase, but he’s delivering on some immediate help along the defensive line.

Kevin Robertson, a 6-2, 240-pound defensive end, committed to the Owls on June 7. That’s important because Robertson will arrive later this summer and be available to play immediately since he is a JUCO transfer from Fullerton (Calif.) College. It’s going to be hard for him to break a defensive end rotation that includes Dana Levine, Zack Mesday, Quincy Roche and Nikolaus Madurie, but he seems to provide depth there and an extra year of eligibility will give him a more prominent role in the 2020 season. He turned down an offer from Buffalo to come to Temple.

Fullerton is about as high-level a JUCO team as there is, winning the national title in 2017 and taking a 26-game winning streak into the 2018 season.

In the “helping hand” department, Baylor transfer Harrison Hand revealed on his Twitter account that he was all cleared to play this season. That’s huge because that gives the Owls two defensive backs with significant Power 5 experience as recently as last year when you add Penn State’s Ayron Monroe. Harrison was originally a Temple recruit who Matt Rhule poached when he left for Waco. DB was already an area of strength as Temple is the only FBS school in the nation to have two cornerbacks who returned interceptions for touchdowns (Christian Braswell and Ty Mason in the UConn and Tulsa games, respectively). Safeties Benny Walls and Keyvone Burton also have plenty of experience under their belts.

Carey and his staff seem focused on building some line depth for the future as this month they seem to be very excited about the addition of Chicago high school defensive lineman Demerick Morris (6-3, 284) who turned down Air Force and Toledo, among others, to make an early commitment to Temple. He had 15 sacks as a junior a year ago. The Owls will have to wait until 2020 for Morris to arrive, though.

The Owls also dipped into Europe to get an offensive lineman Liridon Mujezinovic (6-8, 290) from Holland. They already have one starting offensive lineman from Europe, Isaac Moore, and this is their third recruit from that continent in as many years.

If there’s one area of the Owls that seems to be a concern, it’s the current depth on both lines and the recruiting focus is just another sign that this staff gets it.

Saturday: Magazine Season