The most impressive thing about this video is Kenny Harper’s speed  to the ball and tackling ability.

Matt Rhule’s position changes have been nothing short of genius so far.
Alex Jackson looks like he’s going to work out better as a DE than a TE, a move I suggested in this post way back on March 20th.
Chris Coyer looks like a triple-threat guy at H-Back.
Cody Booth, always one of the team’s best blockers as a tight end, looks like a real plus at OT and and an added threat for the tackle eligible pass in the goal-line package.

Kenny Harper

Romond Deloatch looks like a downfield threat at TE and a situational pass rusher at DE.
Wayne Benson looks like a playmaker at LB and a dynamic fullback option for the goal-line offense.

Still would like to see Khalif Herbin move from the slot to backup tailback, like Matty Brown did as a freshman, but someone explained that Herbin did not build up enough upper-body muscle to make that move. Still, I think Herbin is a natural-born running back who can stop, start, find holes and be the kind of home-run hitter Temple needs. Plus, the Owls have a Herbin-like slot guy in Jalen Fitzpatrick.

Now that Zaire Williams appears to have won the starting tailback job, as we hoped two weeks ago, the one glaring position upgrade need is over on the defense at safety and Temple has one superb safety on the team.
Kenny Harper, who Williams beat out for the starting tailback job, would be the perfect solution to the Owls’ safety problem on the defensive side of the ball.
Harper (see graph below) was one of the top-rated safeties in talent-rich Florida and the leading tackler for two straight years for the Gainesville Buchholz football team.
What did Temple lack last season?
Good tacklers at the free- and strong-safety positions. Harper is a hitting machine with the speed to play either position and rush the quarterback as a blitzer.
Not very many positions need an upgrade by now, but playing safety is like riding a bike. If you’ve won the Tour De France before, like Harper has done at the safety position, it won’t take more than 10 days to get rolling down that road again.
Plus, Rhule is all about getting the team’s best 22 players on the field and, in my humble opinion, if Kenny Harper isn’t playing at running back, he’s still one of the team’s best 22 players.

2011 Florida Pre-Spring Top 25 Safeties

The Orlando Sentinel’s top safeties in Florida two years ago.

Tommy Rees never sees Sean Daniels coming at him from behind.

After having a rather detailed dream of the upcoming Rutgers’ game this season, I’ve wondered why I have not dreamed at all about the Notre Dame game.  Not once. Not since the contract signing over a year ago. Not ever.

Until last night, that is.

It was a weird dream for a lot of reasons but the first of which is  I’m watching the game with my brother and he passed away in 2007. (I hope this doesn’t mean I won’t make the first tailgate vs. Houston this year.)

The game starts pretty good, with the Owls moving the ball to the ND 40 and Paul Layton gets off a coffin corner punt (they still do those, don’t they?) that lands on the ND 1-yard line. After two short runs, Sean Daniels chases down Tommy Rees from behind and grabs his ankles and Rees goes down. This punting back and forth continues to the end of a scoreless first quarter.

The second quarter starts and Channel  10 interrupts the telecast for “breaking news” of a house collapse in South Philly.

“This is the third structure collapse in Philadelphia in the past two months and there have been no reports of an Earthquake in any of them,”  Nicole Brewer reports from the scene. Then, for the next half hour, Brewer asks residents what happened and they all say the house collapsed.

Nicole Brewer reports about another house collapsing.

(Don’t ask me how Brewer got from Channel 3 to Channel 10, but she was there.)

Meanwhile, I scramble for my old transistor radio.

Harry Donahue doesn’t give me a score during the second quarter, but he gives me a lot of “third and two and Kenny Harper runs for about four yards” followed by “looks like that was 1 1/2 yards and Temple will now have to punt.” Harry also gives me a lot of “Rees throws the ball and he’s intercepted by Tavon Young … wait, they say he dropped it” and “Notre Dame fumbles the ball and Temple recovers …. no, they are now saying Notre Dame recovers.” Plus, one “Juice finds Deon Miller in the back of the end zone for a touchdown … no, they say he juggled the ball and it’s incomplete.”

Still, Harry gives me no score.

I finally get the score on the ESPN crawl  and it looks like 27-13, ND, but I put my face up to the screen and it says 41-13, ND.

Then Channel 10 returns to the game from the house collapse story and the Notre Dame band is on the field and the score is indeed confirmed as 41-13.

Then I wake up.

The Rutgers’ dream?

Temple wins, 56-13,  and, ala the win at Maryland two years ago, puts the game away early and the Rutgers’ fans empty the stadium at halftime. Temple finishes off the game in front of about 5,000 delighted Owl fans. Chris Coyer becomes the first player in NCAA history to run for 100 yards, pass for 100 yards and receive for 100 yards in the same game.

After leading the team in singing “T for Temple U” Coyer dons the headset and is interviewed by Lou Holtz on ESPN Game Day.

“I don’t even have to think about it, Chris, you get my helmet sticker right now,” he said.

“Thanks, Mr. Holtz,” Chris said.

I like one dream better than the other but, unfortunately, you don’t get to pick which dream comes true.

The only thing good about the “bad dream” was that Nicole Brewer made a surprise appearance.

Zaire Williams, while at Cherokee (N.J.), rushed for 389 yards and six touchdowns in one game … as a junior.

Today’s Throwback Thursday moment that relates to what it happening today involves what Temple players were saying at the 2009 Fan Fest.
One of the Temple video guys asked a question to several of the veteran players, the “old heads” as the kids call them.
Five seniors were asked which freshman impressed them the most.
“I’d have to say Bernard (Pierce),” one of them said.
Then the interviewer would walk about 100 yards to the next guy (who did not hear what the first guy said), and he’d say:
“I’ve got to say Pierce,” he said.
And so it went.

Please click on photo for my story on Steve Addazio on Rantsports.com. Any tweets of this story or shares on Facebook would be appreciated.

Now fast forward to today and talk to the older players about some of the freshmen and they pretty much are saying the same thing about Zaire Williams that the players said about Bernard Pierce five years ago.
“I would say Zaire,” one of the guys told me.
“My son said Williams looks real good,” a parent wrote in an email.
That’s a good thing, not a bad thing.
While Kenny Harper appears to be a clear leader at tailback, there’s somebody coming on the outside railing who might have something to say about it and it’s Williams.
If Harper pushes Williams and Williams pushes Harper, that makes Temple a better team.
Pierce didn’t start the first game of his career against Villanova, but he showed enough flashes to get his chance in Game No. 2. He had 44 yards on six carries against Villanova.
The next game, Pierce was in the lineup to stay for three more years.
Kids know.

Post-practice interview sessions in August are a little like prospecting for Gold in 1849.

Put the pan in, do some swishing, move some dirt and look for the kernels of knowledge.

Owlscoop.com’s John DiCarlo is a good guy and a fine journalist, but he’s a master of the 35-second question, trying to frame the answer.

Fortunately, Temple head coach Matt Rhule gives the answers he wants to give.

Here’s what we learned:

• Romond Deloatch overslept and was late for practice so he got switched from tight end to defensive line. He had seven or eight sacks, or so Rhule says. (Hey, the kid is  a great athlete, so it’s believable.)
• Rhule still has the New York Giants’ playbook. (If one is missing, coach Coughlin, now you know where it is.) Hey, I know a Temple fan who has a UConn playbook but I’m not saying who he or she is.
• Pete White is playing great at right guard for the Owls and Rhule wants to “trade” him to the NFL at the end of the season.
• P.J. Walker is progressing at about the same rate as Teddy Bridgewater did before his freshman year at Louisville and that’s a very good thing. I hope the Owls can keep him away from the memorabilia guys.
• Connor Reilly has a slight ankle sprain.
• Juice Granger is throwing the ball better than ever.
• One of the goals of the team is getting back its sack mojo (40-45 a year during the Golden/Rhule Era).

Good stuff, but I can’t wait until 8/31/13. The countdown continues:

Matt Rhule talks to the Inquirer’s John Mitchell (left) and assorted media types.

Those of you who’ve read this site for the last eight years know I’m not a big guy on practice.
The one “practice” I pay a lot of attention to every year is the Cherry and White game and since that’s always the good guys against the good guys, I don’t get much satisfaction out of that either.
Wake me up when the real games begin.

To me, any good story has to have a protagonist and an antagonist.
The story of Temple football so far has been a protagonist and a protagonist.
The antagonist shows up in this story on Aug. 31, not before.
Still, I recognize that practice is a necessary forward in this great football book.
So the good news for me out of Saturday’s first scrimmage was that the pass rush is back and disrupting things.
Let’s hope that’s because of the pass rush and not the offensive line, but that’s a different chapter for another day.
To me, the key to winning in football is ball security.
You take care of your responsibility and hold onto the ball and then force the bad guy, the antagonist, to give it up.
The best way to force the other guy to give it up is a good blindside pass rush that forces fumbles in the backfield or a quicker-than-timed release that results in interceptions.
Temple had that pass rush yesterday. Let’s hope the Owls keep it up for the next six months or so.

I really miss Fran Duffy and Scott “Our Very Own” Hartkorn.
Those were the video guys from back in the day with Al Golden.
Not only would they file a report a day, they’d send me the link and I would post it on TFF immediately.

Duffy and OVO brought the fans close to the team by interviewing a different group of players every day. The personalities of the  players showed through the screen, with guys like Adrian Robinson and Morkeith Brown doing dances and Morkeith coming up with his own Temple cheer. I hope the current video guys are allowed enough rope to do the same thing with the players as the summer progresses. In the video below, you see Morkeith Brown leading the guys in the ahhh-HAAA cheer. To me, that’s what Temple football is all about. No, not the cheer itself but the fun of playing the game and the swagger, the confidence,  that Temple brought to the stadium every Saturday.  AS much as I missed the winning,  I missed that swagger and fun last year.  Connor Reilly said something the other day that indicated to me the fun is back. “The whole atmosphere is changed around here,” Reilly said.

For a couple of years, Fran Duffy and his crew gave fans an insight into Temple football in their daily “Owl Outlook” features.

Duffy, who Al Golden called “the best in the business” at the team’s football banquet, is now producer with the Philadelphia Eagles television network. You’ll see some of his work Friday night on TV against the New England Patriots. OVO was Duffy’s right-hand man at TU.

Still, you’ve got to take what you can get and what you can get these days is an interview with Matt Rhule. Love the way Matt talks to the press. He’s honest and straightforward and doesn’t try to hide or sugarcoat anything.
Got a report from a few of the ex-players who said Connor Reilly has the “it” factor. I like the “it” factor. You know it when you see it. Adam DiMichele had it. Chester Stewart and Vaughn Charlton didn’t have it. Chris Coyer had “it” when Scot Loeffler was the OC. He didn’t have it when Ryan Day took over. I think Juice and P.J. have “it” as well.
The it factor can win a lot of games for you.
Also like that Rhule is saying the younger players are the story of the defensive secondary. After that secondary was torched last year (not really ALL their fault, there was no pass rush), it’s time for younger blood, although I think Anthony Robey is an NFL-caliber DB.
Rhule said today was the first day heat was a factor. Looking at the long-range forecast, doesn’t look like heat will be much of a factor going past the next day or so.
Unlike last year at this time, when Steve Addazio was complaining about the quality of the wide receivers, it looks like that group is a strength of this team.
See what happens when you commit to throwing the ball?

Throwback Thursday (skip the preliminaries and jump ahead to the 3:30 time stamp … this is what Temple football is all about):

Temple football after working out on the Art Museum (Rocky) steps recently.

Today, Temple football is back (officially).
Anyone who takes the train into the city on a regular basis as I do knows that Temple football has never left.
You could see the guys holding some sort of unofficial practices in the snow, rain and sleet all winter,  the cool spring  mornings and the heat of a mid-summer afternoon.

That’s the life of a major college football player these days.
For all of that work, you get only 12 Saturday afternoons _ 13 if you are lucky _ to show the fruits of all that lifting and studying and drills.
One of Saturdays is the last one of this month.
If football was a school play, this play skips the auditorium and goes straight to Broadway, where it will be scrutinized by all of the major critics in the media.
Now the practices are more structured and with a sense of purpose.
Rocky vs. Rudy.

Rudy Ruettiger (45) played for Dan Devine, who once applied to be head coach at Temple.

Temple vs. Notre Dame in about 26 days, give or take a few hours.

That’s almost four weeks to get ready for a top-level BCS team.

For all of the excitement about Notre Dame, though, there is a more important goal ahead than winning that first game.
For the past few weeks or so, the poll question on this website has been:
Would you rather …

a) lose to Notre Dame and go 11-1

b) beat Notre Dame and go 6-6

c) go 6-6 only if two wins are over ND and Rutgers

While C is my second choice, there is a right answer to that question and it’s No. 1.

Temple football should strive for excellence but Notre Dame recruits in a different stratosphere than the Owls.  (Notre Dame also recruited in a different stratosphere than UConn, USF and Navy and lost to all those schools in recent years. Temple beat all of those schools in the same time frame.)  That said, I don’t see a game among the final 11 (with the possible exception of Louisville) that can’t be won. Rutgers lost almost its entire team and Tommy Tuberville ran off just about the entire Cincinnati recruiting class after he signed to be head coach. The most important thing is winning as many of those final 11 as possible. I’m greedy, though. I’ll take all 12, but seven is the minimum this team should get. Anything above that is gravy and there’s nothing better than gravy around Thanksgiving.
Rocky vs. Rudy is a tremendously compelling matchup, but Rocky vs. the rest of the American Athletic Conference is far more important in the grand scheme of things.

Joe Klecko (left) hugging Wesley Walker. Read my story on Joe on Rantsports.com by clicking on this photo.

As much as I love watching the Pro Football Hall of Fame Induction Ceremonies (tonight, 7 p.m., ESPN), the last 20 or so years I’ve had to shake my head when I hear all of these speeches.
I mean, Warren Sapp is a great player and all and deserves to be in the Hall of Fame but does anyone who saw both Sapp and Joe Klecko in their primes REALLY think Sapp is a better player?
I didn’t think so.

Joe Klecko deserves to get into the Hall of Fame, as the great New York Times’ columnist Dave Anderson argues in this well-written piece.
Sapp wasn’t as a strong an interior presence as Klecko, never occupied as many blockers as Klecko and, unlike Klecko, was too fat and slow to get to the quarterback on a regular basis. But what can be said about the Sapp/Klecko comparison can also be said about the Dan Hampton/Klecko comparison or a number of other linemen who are already in with Klecko out.

Klecko led the league in sacks with 20 1/2 in 1981 and Sapp never led the league in sacks. Sapp’s season-high in sacks was 16 1/2 in 2000 and had only three other double-digit sack years.
Yet Sapp will get up there, make his speech and sit down and I will think that should have been Joe.
Again.
I hope that Temple people and Jets people can combine forces and push the Hall to get Joe Klecko in, if not next year, then the year after.
I do know when Al Golden got up and spoke for coach Wayne Hardin that made a little bit of a difference and I would hope that Matt Rhule does what he can to add his voice to the call for Klecko into the Hall, as do the New York Jets’ players, coaches and fans.

My only beef with Joe is a very minor one. When his son, Dan, played at Temple, he used to tailgate with us all of the time. At one game at Rutgers, I turned to Joe and said, “Now, Joe, just because Dan’s career here comes to an end, that doesn’t mean you have to stop tailgating with us.”

Joe turned to me, looked me in the eye and said: “Mike, I’ll still come back and tailgate with you guys, I promise you that.”

Joe’s never been back, but that should not disqualify him from the Hall of Fame.

The Joe Klecko Hall of Fame Facebook Page