Category Archives: Temple football

06.15.19
by

A Place for Owl fans to reminisce

A complete Al Golden Show is one of the things you can find on Zamani’s site.

So you are a fan of, say, Alabama and Penn State looking for some footage of Joe Namath throwing a touchdown pass or Al Golden catching one.

No problem.

Screenshot 2019-06-14 at 2.44.24 PM

All you have to do is go to YouTube, type in a couple of search words, and up pops the video.

Not so much for Temple Owl football fans who have a hard time finding any great historical footage before this current century.

Thanks to Zamani Feelings, that’s all about to change. Zamani and I have been instant messaging lamenting the lack of past films and he’s done something about it.

He is in the process of creating a YouTube site just for the purpose of archiving some past Temple football film and adding to it. For now, though, you can navigate to this new YouTube site in the link inside this paragraph to see what he’s putting together.

Now, Feelings–who does an outstanding job shooting still photos for the current football team–cannot create videos that do not exist but he sure can accept any and all that are out there and put them in one spot for all Temple fans to access any time they want. I’ve contacted current Father Judge head coach Frank McArdle and he has a treasure trove of game film from the Bruce Arians’ Era that will be forwarded to Zamani sometime later this summer.

The hope is that any Temple fan who has something (a DVD, a VHS tape or even a BETA one) can get that off to him or contact him via the YouTube site so that there is a one-stop spot to see all available past Temple film.

It’s a terrific project and deserves all of the support he can get.

We may not be able to see Joe Namath, but Joe Klecko hunting down quarterbacks in Cherry and White would be even nicer.

Wednesday: Help Is On The Way

06.12.19
by

Anthony Russo: Let’s Go to the tape

Covering high school football for two Philadelphia newspapers for nearly 39 years, I got to see a lot of good quarterbacks.

Rich Gannon (St. Joseph’s Prep) and Matt Ryan (Penn Charter) later became NFL MVPs.

Yet, the night Anthony Russo won a state championship with Archbishop Wood, I made this bold statement to a group of writers I was with at HersheyPark Stadium: “He’s the best Philadelphia high school league quarterback I’ve ever seen and that includes Rich Gannon and Matt Ryan.”

beatty

Temple is set at QB with these 3

Not surprisingly, two or three nodded their heads in agreement.

That’s not to say that Russo will be an NFL MVP like those two were–geez, I hope, so, though–but his high school career in terms of stats and wins and sheer ability to throw the football surpassed those two.

At the time, Russo was a Rutgers’ commit and, as a Temple fan, he fit the profile of the one guy I wanted to have as my quarterback: A Philadelphia star who would be the Pied Piper of Philadelphia stars and make Temple a destination school. That came about when Matt Rhule pursued him and he de-committed from Rutgers and, after a brief one-afternoon flirtation with LSU and Les Miles, reaffirmed his commitment to Temple.

This is what I wrote on Twitter back in October of 2017:

Screenshot 2019-06-10 at 10.00.53 PM

Fortunately, the Steinmetzes agreed with me way back then.

He has gotten onto the field and he has not lost the job and I don’t think he will. That’s not to say Toddy “Touchdown” Centeio will not be nipping at his heels because he will and that’s good for Temple. Trad Beatty is also in line and I don’t think the Owls have had this much depth at the quarterback position since Maxwell Award winner Steve Joachim was backed up by future CFL star Marty Ginestra.

That’s a good thing, not a bad one.

For his first year after shaking off two years of rust, Russo had a terrific season. That’s not to say he was perfect. Fourteen touchdown passes and 14 interceptions is not a good ratio but, say, 25 touchdown passes and 11 interceptions is and that’s a pretty realistic goal to shoot for in terms of stats. Getting away from offensive coordinator Dave Patenaude is probably the best thing that ever happened to AR’s career.

To me, though, about a dozen wins would be even more impressive and, if that’s the end result of the 2019 season, I think Anthony Russo would take that and another 14/14 ratio again.

That’s what made him such a great quarterback in high school and it’s what makes him a great quarterback now.

Temple is lucky to have and, fortunately, it is only 80 or so days until we see him on the field again wearing Cherry and White.

Saturday: Archiving Temple’s Past

 

 

06.08.19
by

Measuring Up to Penn State by Remote

Matakevich_Tyler_20150905_JLabolito_43

Look at all the Cherry in the stands

Here’s one way to look at the 2019 season: It’s a chance for Temple football to measure up against Penn State. No, not on the field. At least not yet. That doesn’t come again until 2026 when, hopefully, Rod Carey has recruited enough talent to win his fifth game in seven tries against Big 10 teams (if the Owls don’t face one before that).

The measuring this year stick is in a very important area of TV ratings.

Very rarely has Temple gone up against Penn State at the same exact time on local TV, but that’s going to happen twice this season when it matters.

Screenshot 2019-06-08 at 12.15.29 AM

Forget about the Bucknell opener because the Owls’ starting time is 3 p.m. (and Penn State is 3:30) on August 31. That’s not a fair fight because the Owls are on ESPN+, which is just a step above the old MAC dial-up internet days and Penn State vs. Idaho is on the Big 10 network.

A fairer (but not “fairest”) comparison comes on Sept. 14 when the Owls host Maryland at noon on the CBS Sports Network while, at the same time, Penn State hosts Pitt on Philadelphia powerhouse No. 1 station 6abc.

Not all of the times have been announced, but there are other opportunities the two programs are on Philadelphia TV at the same time so we shall see. (Interestingly enough, the Owls and Nits have common opponents in Maryland and Buffalo this season.)

Temple has done very well against Penn State in the past, though, when the teams are on more equal footing. Temple’s 2015 home game against Notre Dame was an ABC national game and drew an 18.1 rating, which was the No. 1 rating in the history of a Philadelphia game on ABC. Temple was ranked No. 21 in the country at the time and ND ranked No. 9. By comparison, the 2007 ABC game between No. 5 PSU and No. 13 ND pulled in only an 11.5 in the Philadelphia market, also at the same 8 p.m. slot. One can only reach a conclusion that “Temple” was the X-factor in this equation on Philadelphia TV ratings since Notre Dame and Penn State have been on Philadelphia TV hundreds of times and not brought in those kinds of numbers.

In 1985, Temple played at Boston College on KYW-TV 3 at noon while Penn State traveled to Maryland on Sept. 7 on WPVI-TV 6. Despite 6’s status then, as now, as the No. 1 station in the market, the Temple-BC game (a 27-25 Owl loss) drew an 11.3 to PSU’s 20-18 win over Maryland (6.9).

There can be no question Temple is the No. 1 TV school in the Philadelphia market, pretty much by a longshot, but if the Owls can beat the Nittany Lions on an obscure channel like CBS Sports, that would open a lot of Power 5 conference eyes.

Wednesday: Let’s Go to the Tape

Saturday: Archiving Temple’s Past

Wednesday (6/19): Bulking Up The Lines

Saturday: (6/22): Magazine Season

Wednesday (6/29): A partnership that worked

 

06.05.19
by

The case for the defense

Almost a year ago, Geoff Collins got up at the season ticket holder’s party and praised his “dark side” defense, saying that it would be one of the best defensive units in the country.

Like a lot of things that came out of Collins’ mouth, it was promised hype that never materialized.

Not because of talent, because the talent was there but because the talent was often lined up out of position in the hopes of creating pressures that would cause fumbles and interceptions. What it did cause more often than not were gashes in the defense that allowed runners huge chunks of yardage and points on the scoreboard. The pass defense was OK, but the run defense was not.

Temple was rated 47th in total defense, one behind Georgia Tech and one ahead of North Texas. That’s the definition of mediocre. Worse, it gave up 45 points to Boston College, 52 to UCF and 57 to Duke.

 

Screenshot 2019-06-04 at 11.59.15 PM

About 20 former Temple players of Bruce Arians traveled to Tampa to renew a 30-plus year friendship with their former coach earlier this week. That’s GOAT Paul Palmer (bottom left) with Keith Jones and Mike Hinnant behind him with Bruce.

That’s not the kind of gang-tackling defense Temple fans got used to seeing under Matt Rhule and Al Golden and it probably won’t be the kind of defense they will be seeing going forward.

For the Owls to have a championship season in 2019, they must do better and there is every indication they will.

It all starts up front as defensive end starters Dana Levine, Quincy Roche, and Zack Mesday return and Karamo Dioubate and Dan Archibong provide a solid duo in the middle. The linebackers are both good and deep with Shaun Bradley and Chapelle Russell joined by William Kwenkew, Sam Franklin and Isaiah Graham-Mobley. In fact, the linebacker room is so crowded that Franklin–who has experience both at DE and safety–might have to be moved to strong safety to better utilize his exceptional talent.

Corners are solid with Linwood Crump Sr., Christian Braswell, and Ty Mason and the safety core that already included Benny Walls and Keyvone Bruton was bolstered by the addition of Penn State portal transfer Ayron Monroe, who played in all 12 regular-season games for the Nittany Lions last year.

This is a lock-down group coached by a staff that believes in lock-down defensive principles. NIU traveled to BYU and won, 7-6, last season (see video at the top of this post). That was the same BYU team that won at Wisconsin.  While the Huskies had talent and finished seven spots ahead of Temple in overall defense, new coach Rod Carey and his defensive staff have a lot more talent to work with here than there.  Carey believes in sound base defense. It puts a premium on being in position over getting turnovers.

The days of those gouging runs against the Temple defense that we saw for the last two years may be over.

Instead, get ready for the gang-tackling Temple defense we all know and love.

Saturday: Measuring Up

 

06.01.19
by

Temple Football: The Long Game

patkraft

The first step Pat Kraft must do to get Temple a P5 invite would be to rid future schedules of all FCS foes. It may be too late for Bucknell, but not too late for Idaho and the like.

We all know the short-term goals every year for Temple football are winning the AAC title and getting the coveted G5 slot in an NY6 bowl.

It hasn’t happened yet, but one AAC title appearance and one AAC championship in the last five years prove that goal is within reach.

Beyond that, though, what?

As Peggy Lee sang once, “Is that all there is?”

Maybe.

image_handler

Nothing would help Temple more than a stadium full of these people

Yet one of the recurring themes of this blog is and has been that Temple belongs with the more regional great schools of the East like Maryland, Syracuse, Boston College, Rutgers, West Virginia and Penn State and not with the Tulsa’s and Memphis’s of the world.

Ideally, getting back into a league with those schools would be preferable but playing the same level of football with them should be the minimum objective.

Every major decision Temple makes should be with that eventual long-term goal in mind.

There’s no easy way there from what I can see.

College football now is a cartel of, really, 64 schools who have made it and another 66 who are on the outside looking in and Temple is in the latter group. The window is closing, though, and many of us believe it is already slammed shut.

If Temple drew 70,000 or even 50,000 to every home game over the last decade or so of relative success, there is no doubt in my mind the Owls would have had an invitation after the last stop of the merry-go-round. The TV market is great but the TV market combined with a rabid fan base is an unbeatable combination.

Sadly, with its “commuter school” roots and 20 years of administrative neglect of the football program, the ceiling of fan support is really about the 35,000 who went to see a 6-0 Owl team play Tulane in 2015.  There were no Green Wave fans there so that is a pretty good indication of the maximum amount of Temple fans who would support a winner.

How to change this?

One, schedule the regional schools who would be of interest to Temple fans (Maryland, Rutgers, ‘Cuse). Two, be a little more flexible with 2-for-1s until Temple is in a position to command 1-for-1s with everybody. It has 1-1s with Maryland, Georgia Tech, Miami, Rutgers and Boston College. Owls need to get Penn State in here every few years or so and, if 2-for-1s is the way to go, they must be flexible enough to do it. Pitt would also be an attractive in-state foe.

Bucknell is not.

If Temple wants to eventually play with the big boys (and this might be a decade or two down the line), it needs to schedule and beat the big boys on about as regular a basis as Northern Illinois has done over the last six years.

That would get the attention of the rest of the country, their own fan base and maybe a conference looking for both a growing fan base and the largest TV market without a P5 team.

That’s the long game and it can only be played within the administrative offices at the Star Complex.

Wednesday: The Bright Side

Saturday: Measuring Up

05.29.19
by

Temple’s recruiting reset button

footballs

You’ll be reading a lot about politics (though not here) in the next year and one of those things might be about this political candidate or that one hitting the “reset button.”

That got me to thinking about what all these coaching changes Temple has had in the last half-decade or so has done to recruiting. AMR (after Matt Rhule), both Geoff Collins and even Rod Carey now have had classes where they could at best provide a band-aid here and band-aid there in areas the Owls need immediate help.

That is an apt characterization of the first recruiting classes of both.

Now Carey, with a $10 million buyout that even a Power 5 school would think twice before eating, has an opportunity to hit the recruiting reset button. Let’s hope he takes it because a couple of band-aid-type classes thrown in every few years depletes the roster and a depleted roster eventually shows up on the field. The latest promising addition is running back Jeremiah Nelson and he put a lot of good moves on film, both at Iona Prep and Nassau County Community College.

 

Carey certainly has his own recruiting ideas from six successful seasons at Northern Illinois but Temple needs to aspire to get a higher level of recruit and has the geography to do it. NIU wasn’t located in the middle of 46 percent of the nation’s population, as Temple is, so the formula for the Owls would be 1-5 projects that the staff really likes on film and the rest three- and four-star prospects that not only the Temple staff likes but every paid P5 staff out there likes.

Trust, but verify.

e3b93-goldenhope
“My recruiting philosophy is simply this: Recruit an entire team every year. Eleven guys on defense, 11 guys on offense and a couple of specialists and you are never going to leave yourself short.” _ Al Golden

Temple has a lot to sell. Twenty-four current players in the NFL speaks well for the opportunity to play one part of your career in an NFL stadium and finish up the rest of it in another NFL stadium. That, plus the fact that Temple is a proven winner. Since 2015, the Owls have won one AAC title, appeared in another and have won more AAC football games than anyone else, including UCF, USF and Memphis. Plus, the school is nationally known as the sixth-largest educator of professionals so that sheepskin is something to fall back on should a pro football career not be in the offing. It’s in the middle of an exciting city and, unlike, say, Penn State,  not situated in the middle of nowhere. That appeals to “regular students” and it should also appeal to dynamic football players.

Fortunately, Carey has a gem like Fran Brown to head up the recruiting effort. In recruiting, Brown is the starting pitcher and Carey has to be the closer. Brown knows how Al Golden and Rhule build this team from the national bottom 10 to respectability.

“My recruiting philosophy is simply this,” Golden said when he got the Temple job. “Recruit an entire team every year. Eleven guys on defense, 11 guys on offense and a couple of specialists and you are never going to leave yourself short.”

That kind of sound thinking is the Cherry and White reset button Temple recruiting needs to hit now.

Saturday: The Long Game

Wednesday: The Bright Side

05.26.19
by

Temple Can Learn from Boise State

temple

Boise State opens with Florida State this year.

Temple opens with Bucknell.

Those two sentences are all you need to know about what Temple (and, to a larger extent), the AAC can learn from Boise State.

That’s because, despite all the bombast from Mike Aresco’s home office about the AAC being a Power Conference, the schedules of member schools are littered with FCS opponents.

If Aresco and members are really serious about moving on up to college football’s east side, then they will follow Boise State’s heavy P5 scheduling lean.

The worst non-conference schedule this year, according to rankings of 130 FBS team?

Alabama.

When you are in the SEC, you can do that.

ACC, maybe.

AAC definitely not.

The formula for the AAC to move up is the hard path of making its members schedule teams from the Power 5–or at least fellow FBS schools–exclusively and then go beat them.

If the AAC doesn’t change its policy, Temple certainly should.

Amazingly, there are apologists out there who say “two P5 opponents plus an FCS is the perfect way to schedule” because that’s the way to get to a bowl game every year.

To that, I say: If Temple has to play an FCS game to qualify as a top 80 team in a 130-team group, it should not be playing intercollegiate football.

Temple, it would seem to me, is best-suited for this type of schedule than its fellow AAC foes. The Owls are smack dab in the center of a five-hour drive of 46 percent of the nation’s population. There are enough great high school players within that circle for the Owls to recruit and coach them up to win a significant number of games against P5 schools.

There’s certainly no advancing the Temple brand by beating an FCS school and that’s something that should have been stopped between the last Villanova game and the next Bucknell game.

For now, all Owls’ fans can do is swallow hard and hope this is the last FCS team they will ever see again.

Wednesday: Hitting the Recruit Reset Button

Sunday: The Long Game

Wednesday (6/5): The Case for The Defense

05.22.19
by

That big-time JUCO

photo

2017_09_21 Athletics STAR Complex

In the old days before portals and graduate transfers, college football coaches would turn to big-time JUCO players to fill a need for a year or two.

It still should be one of the three options.Screenshot 2019-05-23 at 9.14.48 AM

Temple is pretty well set up in every position this season, save depth on the offensive line and starting running back.

Since Rod Carey seems very reluctant to pull the trigger on making Isaiah Wright a full-time running back, a big-time JUCO seemed to be the way to go earlier in the offseason.

Unfortunately, the latest “big-time JUCO” running back who joined Temple as a preferred walk-on, doesn’t seem to have the credentials (1,000-plus yards, 25-plus touchdowns, 4.5 speed).

Mike Mitchell is the latest JUCO recruit to commit to Temple and his stats are just about the opposite of those above. Playing for ASA Junior College, he put up these numbers:

Screenshot 2019-05-21 at 8.50.42 AM

Going back even further, his most impressive game in high school at Pleasant Valley in Brodheadsville was a two-touchdown performance in a 36-27 loss to Allentown Central Catholic on Sept. 3, 2016. By comparison, the guy who scored five touchdowns in that game, Darnell Ferrell, is at West Chester University.

Ugh.

Looks like a scout team player at worst or a backup cornerback at best.

Still, there is a bigger time JUCO on the Owls’ roster already and he already has a spring practice under his belt at Temple. Tayvon Ruley’s JUCO stats were a little better: 1,028 yards and 13 touchdowns on 120 carries. Before that, he was even better at Penn Wood High in Delaware County.  By most accounts, Ruley had a very good spring with the Owls and forced his way to near the front of the running back room and has a chance for a lot of carries this fall. Tyliek Raynor and Jager Gardner are also in the mix and Jeremy Jennings might be the fastest running back of them all. Still, he doesn’t seem to have the open-field moves that the others have.

Wright, though, is a big-time player way above the JUCO grade and the Owls are lucky to have him.

As a Temple fan, you’ve got to hope a special talent like Wright gets that important job first and make whiffing on a big-time JUCO running back look like a moot point.

Sunday: What the AAC and Temple Can Learn from Boise State

05.20.19
by

Tale of the Coaching Tape

wamo

One team will start the season with a head coach who was 3-35 in his previous FBS head coaching job.

Another will start with a coach with 52-30 in his.

In another important game, one coach will be 15-10 as an FBS head coach versus the same kind of record.

With those kinds of numbers, kinda like Temple football’s chances against both Mike Locksley and Geoff Collins of Maryland and Georgia Tech, respectively.

Because no matter how much you love this American Athletic Conference Leauge (and I do), Temple’s success or failure this season will depend on those two September games.

How so?

It is completely unrealistic to expect the Owls to finish on top of the AAC East this season. I certainly hope so, but when I take off my Cherry and White glasses and look at this objectively, that’s a bridge too far.

That’s because of the same Cincy team that Temple was fortunate enough to beat last year brought 35 either redshirt or true freshman on the 55-man travel sqaud to Philly. One of those was a quarterback who blamed “Temple fans” for being loud enough to cause a bad exchange on a center/qb snap that led to the Owls’ win.

Pretty much, there will be no Temple fans in Cincy this year for the rematch.

Also, even though UCF comes to town, hard to imagine the Owls beating a team that was unbeaten in the league in the last two seasons.  If that game were to be played in a 35K campus stadium, not hard to imagine a win. In the cavernous 70K LFF, that’s a loss.

For now.

So, to me, the season rests in a guy who is 52-30 in the FBS against one guy who is 3-35 and another who is 15-10. Two P5 wins in a season and losing only to Cincy and UCF would be not perfect, but successful.

Call me crazy but I like my guy’s record better. Lose to UCF and Cincy and beat everybody else and I’m not necessarily ecstatic, but certainly satisfied.  

05.15.19
by

Possible 2020 NFL Drafted Owls

When Karamo Dioubate was coming out of high school, his signing day ceremony was a short trip to my neighborhood Buffalo Wild Wings so I sauntered on over.

During it, he took a call from Alabama’s Nick Saban and turned down a last-minute offer, saying, in effect, “no sir, I’m staying home and headed to Temple.”

Those are the kind of calls top five position players in the country have to fend off on National Signing Day. Dioubate was switched from DE to DT when he got to Temple and it took him longer than expected to feel comfortable there.

Still, the talent is there for KD to blow up in this, his senior year. If he has the kind of offseason in the weight room than Michael Dogbe had last year, he could dominate on the field like Dogbe did this year. He has the size (6-3, 295) that Dogbe has. He needs only to develop the err, dog, Dogbe had.

dioubate

Buffalo Wild Wings was rocking the day Dioubate signed at Temple

While Dioubate was a rotation player for the 2016 AAC championship Owls, moving to tackle from end had its growing pains. Each succeeding year he has shown to be more comfortable as a DT starter. Dioubate has a low bar to become a fifth-round or higher draft choice. Byron Cowart, a Maryland defensive tackle, was picked in the fifth round by the New England Patriots. Cowart,  had 38 tackles, no sacks and ran a 5.16 40-yard dash. I’m going to go on record as saying Dioubate will do better than that this season. He had 23 tackles, a sack and a fumble recovery for a touchdown this past season. Cowart, like Dioubate, was a top five DL recruit when he originally committed to Auburn before transferring to Maryland.

Other than Dioubate and RB/WR/KR Isaiah Wright–who could go anywhere from rounds 1-5 next season, the possible NFL draft pickings are slim but  there are plenty of guys who have a shot to make it as a UDFA or even a late-round draft choice.

In other words, Temple has plenty of talent in its current senior class.

I think linebackers Shaun Bradley, Chapelle Russell and William Kwenkeu have chances but both Bradley and Russell are on the small side for linebackers. Sam Franklin packs a Malcolm Jenkins-type punch as a NFL strong safety but will this current Temple staff use him there instead of forcing him into an already crowded linebacker room?

The talent is good in this senior class but the current listed redshirt juniors, who include center Matt Hennessy (6-4, 295), QB Anthony Russo (6-4, 230), DE Quincy Roche (6-4, 235), DT Dan Archibong (6-6, 285) and WR Branden Mack (6-5, 215), could be even better or almost certainly drafted higher.

If you want a real longshot, too bad cornerback Josh Allen (6-3, 190) is only a sophomore. The last two No. 7 NFL draft picks?

Both named Josh Allen.

Monday: Tale of the Tape

Wednesday: That Big-Time JUCO