Category Archives: Uncategorized

12.06.17
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Ridiculousness: Temple Football Edition

Taking time off from all the bowl mania to re-examine one word uttered by Temple football coach Geoff Collins in his last press conference that we wanted to get to before too much time passed.

Ridiculous.

It stood right out there like a high-hanging curve ball for Barry Bonds to hit out of the park.

“We’re going to have a ridiculous team next year,” Collins said on the day the Owls beat Tulsa. That was his last press conference because he hit the recruiting trail the day after Tulsa and was not back for the bowl press conference.

kraft
“We’re going to have a ridiculous team next year,” Geoff Collins.

On the TV grid, MTV has a show called “Ridiculousness.” I page down it on the way to watching the Sixers or another sporting event and have never stopped, but the guide describes it  as “various viral videos from the Internet, usually involving failed stunts.”

Since the Minister of Mayhem (and swag) probably wasn’t referring to the Merriam-Webster definition of the word, we went to the online urban dictionary to get the meaning of it to the kids today.

The urban dictionary of the word ridiculous says “something unbelievable in any shape or form, or something worthy of memory.”

The last part of that sentence is probably what Collins was thinking about.

Something worthy of memory …

Geez, I hope so but this team loses two of its three best receivers, its best offensive lineman, the best fullback in the country, its two best edge rushers and pretty much the entire starting defensive secondary.

All of the things that should have made this season more satisfying to Temple fans than it turned out to be seem to be part of the reason why the Owls won’t return to championship form next year. All of those losses were guys who were key contributors to an AAC championship team and their talents should have been accentuated enough to get to at least eight wins this season.

Instead, the coaches tried to force a square peg into a round hole too many times this season, at least offensively, trying to turn fullback-oriented and play-action talent into a something foreign to them.

It’s all about the Jimmy’s and Joe’s, not the X’s and O’s, and the Owls lose too many Jimmy’s and Joe’s to be as “ridiculous” as Collins is projecting them to be. A word of caution is that when the experts picked UCF and USF ahead of the Owls, Collins said “I love it.” The interpretation at the time was that he loved it because he would have loved nothing better than the Owls to prove them wrong by vaulting over them, not that it had lessened the pressure of defending his team’s AAC title. Now, his word is ridiculous and we’ve got to interpret that was ridiculously good, not ridiculously bad.

For his sake, and ours, let’s hope he’s right but here we sit a year to almost the day from finding out, there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Friday: An Early  Look At FIU

12.04.17
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TU Bowl Motto: Let’s Win This Bad Boy

tailgate

Tailgate areas are at the top of this photo

Other than knowing the geography every nook and cranny of Philadelphia, the Tampa/St. Pete area is the one I am most familiar with on the planet.

If I could live there, I would. That’s pretty much why I play the lottery a couple of times a week.

Great weather a dozen months a year and no driving in the snow. I know. I spent nearly 20 springs there, covering the Philadelphia Phillies for a suburban daily and going down on my own in the years I was not on assignment.

fiusked

This is a team Geoff Collins should beat

Can’t beat it. From Dale Mabry Boulevard to the Howard Franklin Bridge, the driving is easy and the people are laid back and happy. There are plenty of Philadelphia transplants, lured by the appeal of the Phillies being in town for February and March and plenty of Eagles’ bars down there.

So the Temple Owls will live in St. Pete/Clearwater for at least a week, getting an invitation to the Gasparilla Bad Boy Mowers Bowl (Dec., 21, 8 p.m., ESPN).

It should be a fun week.

This time, though, the focus should be on winning. It is the only game on national TV that day and the national perceptions of Temple football will be formed in bars from Salem, Oregon to Salem, Massachusetts.

The Owls’ lone motto from today on out should be: “Let’s Win This Bad Boy.”

If Matt Rhule were to get on the horn with his good friend Geoff Collins, he’d give the first-year coach this advice:

“Geoff, I wanted our Florida bowl to be a reward for our kids so we went heavy on the air hockey, the bowling, the beach volleyball and even a trip to the Everglades. What I didn’t do enough of was game prep and we got our asses handed to us by a good Toledo team. Don’t make the same mistake I made. Go very light on the tourist stuff and very heavy on the game prep. Make it like a regular week at the E-O.”

If that were truly Rhule’s advice—and we suspect it would be—the Owls will be much better off. Look at it this way: From a national perception standpoint, the Temple football brand (Temple TUFF?) takes a huge hit if it loses to Florida International. There’s a big difference between finishing 6-7 and trending downward after back-to-back 10-win seasons and 7-6 and trending upward by winning four of the last five games. It’ll be pretty hard to sell things like “The Standard, Money Downs and Swag” coming off a 6-7 season. In fact, it will sound damn hollow.

Plus, there is the added incentive of doing something those double-digit-win Temple teams did not do: Celebrate the last game of the season by hoisting a bowl trophy. They had to watch two teams do that the past two years at their expense.

So let’s win this bad boy and wash that nasty taste out of our mouths. There’s no easy formula to accomplish that, but hard practices would be a good place to start.

Wednesday: Ridiculousness

Friday: Closer Look at FIU

12.02.17
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Bowl Scenarios: It comes down to Florida

There are two thoughts that come to mind when thinking about Temple’s bowl destination:

1)  Beggars can’t be chosers

2) What difference does it make?

We won’t know for sure, but my gut is telling me that Temple’s bowl destination will be Boca Raton again.

Process of elimination.

Because Temple just scraped into being bowl eligible, it falls into the beggars’ category when it comes to the AAC pecking order. That means the more appealing bowls–at least to me–like the Birmingham Bowl and the Cure Bowl–will go elsewhere.

templebowls

To me, the Birmingham Bowl would be the ideal destination for Temple because the Owls’ football brand is best advanced by beating a Power 5 team. The only possible Power 5 opponent would come in either two bowls, Birmingham or Military.

That’s where the “what difference does it make?” phrase comes into play. If the Owls are not going to play a Power 5 team–and it looks like they are not—what difference does it make if they play either a Marshall, a Georgia State, a FIU or an Appalachian State?

Not much.

Since Navy, despite some rumblings down there to the contrary, is probably going to host the Military Bowl and since USF made known its strong desire to play a Power 5 school, the Owls are probably going to either St. Petersburg  or Boca Raton again. The Owls have demonstrated a strong following in Boca Raton, so I think that’s where they will be slotted again. They drew a conservatively estimated 6,000 to Boca (after drawing 4,000 to New Mexico for the previous bowl), so they are a known commodity there. They might do as well or better in St. Pete, but bowl committees like a sure thing and Temple is far from a sure thing there.

The opponent is the unknown factor, but if it’s a Sun Belt or CUSA school, the reaction by “Joe Philadelphia” fans to will probably be a “meh.” Ideally, you’d like to see the Owls go against, say, an ACC team like Duke or BC in Birmingham but that chess move has been blocked by USF.

So, in my mind, it’s back to Del Boca Vista. This time, let’s hope Geoff Collins goes easy on the beach volleyball, air hockey and bowling and cracks the whip on the game prep because, while beating a CUSA or Sun Belt team won’t advance the Temple TUFF brand, losing would be worse.

Monday: Bowl Reality

Wednesday: Ridiculousness 

11.26.17
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Temple Owls: Bowl Bound

Unfortunately, there are still some Temple football fans around rooted in the mindset of the 1990s.
That is, Temple football is not Alabama and that we as the unwashed Temple fans should be able to accept any scrapes of food that come our way because we are starving for success.
That all changed, though, when Al Golden came to town roughly a decade ago.
Those of us who have followed the program know that Temple has turned the corner and that bowl games should be the norm, not the exception.
So, as in vitamins, consider what happened yesterday to be the adult minimum yearly requirement: A bowl game with expectations of a brighter future.
I don’t know about the brighter future part–new coach Geoff Collins says that next year is going to be, umm, to use his word “ridiculous”–but we’ve achieved our minimum yearly requirement of a bowl game and I guess a lot of us should be thankful for that.

greatness
I will say one thing: This season will be a success if Temple, not Wake Forest or Toledo, is hoisting a bowl trophy no matter who the opponent.

The fact that it should have been better cannot be changed now. Beat UConn and Army, as the Owls should have, and the Owls would have finished 8-4 and gone to a similar bowl that they will go to now so it’s a wash.
As far as the 43-22 win over Tulsa goes, the Owls made Nick Sharga disappear again and that’s sad because he’s not only the best fullback in the country but one of the four best fullbacks I’ve ever seen in my 40 years of watching Temple football (right up there with Henry Hynoski, Mark Bright and Shelley Poole) and maybe, with Poole, the best blocking fullback I’ve ever seen at Temple.
If there’s a God, there will be a game plan featuring Ryquell Amstread following Sharga through the hole against the bowl opponent and a similar role for Rob Ritrovato next year. The Owls have a Heathen OC, Dave Patenaude, though, and he seems intent on doing things his way.
That way worked against Tulsa. It did not work against Villanova, UConn or a myriad other games.
Collins delivered the minimum his first year, which fit the definition of ridiculous in one way in that you are not supposed to go from double-digit-win seasons to a six-win one.
Seven wins would be better and the Owls have a chance to do that in a couple of weeks.

That would be exceeding the minimum by one.

Thursday: Fizzy Wraps Up The Season

Saturday: Bowl Scenarios

Monday: Bowl Reality

Wednesday: Ridiculousness 

 

 

11.25.17
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Tulsa Preview: Setting Up Next Year’s Slogan

emoji

Anyone who thinks a 2-9 Tulsa this afternoon (4 p.m., ESPN NEWS) is going to be a pushover for Temple is sadly mistaken.

Exhibits A and B are two scores: Tulsa 45, Houston 17 and USF 27, Tulsa 20.

Both of those are real scores and both happened this season, not some season long ago. The Hurricane beat one good team badly and hung tough with the second- or third-best team in the league on the road a week ago.

Yes, Temple is 5-6 and Tulsa is 2-9 and ostensibly playing for a lot more than the Hurricanes. Still, this is Senior Day at Tulsa and 19 seniors are saying goodbye. They will not quit.

unfinished

So Temple has to execute. In our minds, maybe not Dave Patenaude’s, that means establishing the run with the tailback following the best fullback in the country through the hole, then hitting on explosive plays in the play-action passing game. Really, that’s the only way Temple has won the prior two seasons and the only way Temple can win today.

This game is as much for Temple setting up next year’s slogan as much as anything else. When the Owls finished 6-6 at the end of the 2014 season, fullback and team leader Kenny Harper got up on the podium at the E-O and said, simply: “Leave No Doubt.”

He and the rest of the seniors were leaving the unmistakable slogan for the next year that six wins would not be good enough; that six wins would be putting the Owls’ fate in someone else’s hands. Harper’s words carried the Owls through one 10-win season and an appearance in the AAC championship game. The next year’s slogan was “Unfinished Business” and that was also fulfilled with the business being an AAC title.

This year, though, is different.


.. .that means establishing
the run with the tailback
following the best fullback
in the country through the
hole, then hitting on explosive
plays in the play-action passing
game. Really, that’s the only
way Temple has won the prior
two seasons and the only way
Temple can win today

Six wins would MOST LIKELY put the Owls in a bowl and give them the chance to finish the season with the kind of exclamation point they were not able to even in 10-win seasons the last two years. From our algorithms, we have been able to determine that there is a 99.5 percent chance for this year’s Owls to reach a bowl with six wins, while the six-win team of 2014 stood no more than a 45 percent chance.

Winning a bowl this year would be a welcome difference compared to the last two seasons but to win one you’ve got to get to one first.

Owls had trouble with that minor detail in their last six-win season  because the AAC had four bowl-tie ins in 2014, having sold their fifth–the Bahama’s Bowls–to the MAC. This year, the conference has seven bowl tie-ins and since the winner of the league, probably UCF, will be going to a New Year’s Six Bowl, any six-win AAC team will qualify for some bowl. Even in the unlikely event that the AAC has eight six-win teams, the profile of the league is such that any qualifying team will not be snubbed.

At least, that’s the way we see it.

If the Owl team that showed up for Navy shows up for Tulsa, the Owls will be one of those teams. If, on the the other hand, the Owls who lost to UConn show up in Oklahoma today, they will be sitting on the couch watching other less talented teams  and wondering just what swag, money downs, juice and #TheStandard really means.

And they will leave a lot of doubt for next year and for the entire Geoff Collins Era. So there is a lot at stake in the three hours that begin at 4 this afternoon or next year’s slogan could be a real doozy.

Tomorrow: Game Analysis

 

11.15.17
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Geoff Collins Unplugged

tuff

A couple of weeks ago, at hopefully what will later be determined to be the low point of a long and fruitful (well, maybe just fruitful) career as Temple football head coach, Geoff Collins sat down with The Inquirer’s Marc Narducci and gave mostly guarded answers about his first season.

We’ll call those the “plugged” answers—as in those stock answers you’d expect most head coaches to say.

Today, with the benefit of hindsight, we’ll add some answers Collins MIGHT say if he was being unguarded or, in another word, unplugged. Our words mind you, but the words we guess Collins might be thinking now.

What has been the most pleasant surprise and biggest disappointment to this point?

REAL ANSWER: “The pleasant surprise has been the players. How they work every day, how they have a great attitude every day, how they are physical and tough every day in practice. They are very coachable and want to be great. That has been the biggest pleasant surprise. After coaching in the SEC the last six years, you don’t always get that, but these kids want to be great, they want to be coached and they are fun to be around. The biggest disappointment is just some of the young mistakes we have made. Three of the games in particular (against Houston, UConn and Army) were one-score games and a lot of those were things that were one or two plays away and that happened because of young mistakes. That has been one of the things that has been tough to deal with. The nice thing is that once they get the experience and they get it corrected, you don’t see it repeated. So you haven’t seen a rash of the same mistakes. A lot of times it is a new experience and a new thing that goes wrong with young players and that happens. But just the resiliency and coachability has been fun to be around.”

shargamilk

COLLINS UNPLUGGED:  The pleasant surprise remains the same, but the biggest disappointment has been the fact that we tried to reinvent the wheel when they did just fine under their system the last two years. I told Mack Brown in the ESPN game prep for Cincinnati that we were going to go back to TEMPLE TUFF football—run the ball at the goal line behind the best fullback in the country—and you can see what happened. We got away from that in losses to UConn and Army. That’s Temple football and it’s got to be Temple football going forward: Run Rock and Hood behind Sharga (and Nitro next year), then have Frankie Juice make explosive downfield plays in the passing game by faking to those guys when the linebackers and the safeties cheat up to stop the run. It’s not the kind of ball Dave likes, but he’s going to have to get used to it. If I have to put my foot down, I will.

Depth has been an issue due to so many injuries, especially recently. Has that been eye-opening for you?

RA: “It has been tough and the thing I talked about to the team this morning (on Monday), one of the positions of strength both in leadership and depth and the ability to rotate guys through in our above- the-line system has been in our defensive line. We have played eight, nine and 10 and sometimes 11 defensive linemen. And there really hasn’t been a drop-off. The leadership from Jacob Martin, Jullian Taylor, Sharif Finch, has been outstanding and I would even include Greg Webb in that leadership piece. We are using that as a model for all the other positions moving forward. To build that kind of depth and that kind of leadership throughout the organization at every single position.”

performance

CU: Not playing Greg Webb—who started in the Navy championship game last year—against Notre Dame and Villanova was a big mistake. We probably would not have been gouged on those 17 running plays that gained like 8,000 yards had we had vets like Webb and FBL in there instead of the new guys. We’ve also got to get Karamo Dioubate started in the right direction and I’ve made a mental note to play him some more going forward. KD’s natural position is DE and shifting him over there will make him a Mayhem star next year.

The quarterback situation is probably something you didn’t envision and I would think you would have wanted to have had it settled well before the opening game instead of deciding the week of the opener at Notre Dame. How tough was that?

RA: “When you lose a kid who started so many games and thrown so many passes and had first-team reps for four years (the way Phillip Walker did), the transition trying to find that next guy, a first time as a head coach, has been challenging. The thing that makes it challenging is they have been good. It would be one story if they weren’t good, then it would be a different scenario. We have had some quarterbacks that have played really well and good enough that the separation has been tough throughout. Logan (Marchi) has played really well in some really good stretches. And I was proud of Frank (Nutile) who came in and played as well as he did last week in his first college start (with Marchi injured). It’s been a good issue to have that they are both good and competitive.”

CU: I’m kicking myself now but not going to Frankie Juice after Logan had that pass batted down against Villanova. That should have been an Epiphany moment for me but I kind of let Dave (Patenaude) talk me out of it because he had such a good relationship with Logan due to recruiting him for Coastal (Carolina). No doubt in my mind had Frankie played after Nova, his feet would have been wet enough to maybe beat Houston and definitely beat UConn and Army. From now on, we’re throwing out this metrics stuff at practice and playing the guy who plays best in real games and that’s Frankie Juice currently.

juice

You talked earlier that in your previous coaching experiences for the most part, you only had to watch the defensive side of the ball. Now you have had to be in charge of the entire team. As a first-year coach has this been overwhelming task for you, and how has it been adjusting to being a head coach for the first time?

RA: “It has been exciting. I think I have improved every single week. I have been self-critical at every stage. I think at first you have to be critical of yourself before you can be critical of others. At Notre Dame (a 49-16 loss), I was still in that fighter-pilot mindset that I have been in for the last six years as a coordinator in the SEC and learned very quickly, I couldn’t do that. You see me at practice and I am a wild man out there and provide the energy and drive and I have been doing that more and more each week, so those kinds of things have been good. I found myself earlier in the season staying on the defensive headsets most of the game. The defensive staff has done a great job with in-game adjustments, and I now when the defense is on the bench, I have been able to be on the offensive headset the whole time, put my two cents in, tell them when we are going to go for it, when we need to run it, and when we need to take a shot, so that has been exciting for me. So more and more throughout the season since the South Florida game (a 43-7 loss on Sept. 21) we have done an elite eight, which are eight plays I give to the offensive staff. The crazy formations we started doing, I know as a defensive guy those are difficult to prepare for, so I give them a formation and two to three plays.”

photo

CU: As a head coach, you’ve got to be aware of everything and, for the first few games, I wasn’t that tuned into things. Pat Kraft strongly suggested that Dave go to the booth after his sideline demeanor against USF and that’s turned into a positive for us, not just in PR, but in productivity.

These last four games whether you become bowl eligible or not become critical when you are talking about next year. How critical is it?

RA: “We are probably four plays away from having a completely different record. We are playing a lot of young players at a lot of key positions. We have a lot of guys who will be coming back after this season so I think the future is really, really bright, but out of respect for our old guys, we are going to do it the right way for these old guys to finish out strong the final four games.”

CU:  We’re not playing as many young players as I’ve been saying all year. We’re going to be losing a lot more guys from this year’s team for next year than we did last year’s championship team for this year. So I’ve got my work cut out for me next year in terms of getting JUCO offensive linemen, wide receivers and defensive backs–not mention  replacing impact ends like Martin and Finch. A lot of our fans feel like we’re playing a completely new team but we’re not. Matt (Rhule) left me with a lot of great championship-level players and we’re going to lose a lot of those guys after, hopefully, the bowl game.

Friday: Our Annual Tribute To The Seniors

11.13.17
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Fizzy’s Corner: Then Broad And (Now) Ridge

Editor’s Note: Now that Mack Brown says Temple has ditched the spread and gone back to the “Temple TUFF” offense it was known for the last two years, Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub has some nice things to say about Dave Patenaude. No nicknames for Patenaude quite yet, though.

By Dave (Fizzy) Weinraub

 Can you believe it?  For the first time, a bootleg at the goal line for a TD, and Frankie could have stopped off for a hot dog.  Then, some razzle – dazzle, where Frankie pitched to Wright, who then threw (finally) back to Frankie for a two point conversion.  There were even play-action passes on first down, (instead of drop-backs) and after turnovers, and even the second jet sweep of the year.

 

Don’t get me wrong, there were still up-the-guts at the wrong time, especially at first and goal, where we were still not efficient. It’s on first down, at first and goal when you have to show imagination.  But all-in-all, a remarkable turn around from the junior high offense we’ve been running all year.  There was so much improvement, I’m forced to upgrade the name of the offense from “Broad Street,” to the Ridge Avenue Offense.  Where Broad Street runs straight, Ridge Avenue twists and turns and curls.  Has Dave Patenaude seen the light?

footballs

However, I’m still pissed.  If we’d been running this type of offense all year, we certainly would have at least two more wins.  Also, Frank Nutile has been simply terrific.  His only two interceptions were passes that bounced off the receivers hands.  When given time, his passing has been phenomenal.  So my question is, why wasn’t he the starter from the beginning of the season?

The defense which had been mostly exceptional against the run, was only okay.  It allowed some sustained running plays for a time, but then righted itself.  It’s still the pass defense, especially against the two-minute offense that’s been terrible all year.  I just don’t understand why we can’t do the same thing the Eagles do in that situation. They rush four  and play a five across zone at about 12 yards, with a deep safety on each side. Then the defenders can see the QB and the ball, instead of running with their backs turned.  Even the announcer Friday night said, “no one knows where the ball is.”  We’ve given up an awful lot of TD’s in the right corner of the end-zone all year, and that’s because number ten (Jones), can’t see the ball.  To stop Central Florida, we have to defend the pass.

Wednesday: Geoff Collins Unplugged

Friday: Our Annual Tribute to the Seniors

Sunday: UCF Game Analysis 

10.31.17
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Losing Is An Attitude

litany

Watching Army march down the field a couple of weeks ago, a thought occurred to me even before the Cadets scored the game-tying touchdown. The defensive players were looking around for someone else to make a play instead of taking that bull by the horns themselves.

Losing is an attitude and it appeared as if Temple adopted that mindset early on in the season, but especially during the UConn game.

John Chaney wrote a great book called “Winning is An Attitude” with Steve Wartenberg about Temple basketball but this Temple football book appears headed for a less happy ending unless the Owls truly embrace the principles that gave them consecutive double-digit-win seasons.

Late in both the Uconn and the Army games, you could see the Owls—especially the defensive players—look around and wonder how their hearts would be broken now.

Instead of grabbing the game by the throat and sacking the quarterback, they allowed a 59-yard draw to a slow-footed Huskie quarterback and gave comfort to a triple option team that was very uncomfortable at throwing the ball by playing a prevent defense.

wartenberg

As Harry S Truman once said, “The buck stops here” and the buck of this losing attitude has to stop at the desk of Temple football CEO.

If Geoff Collins were to write a book about the 2017 Temple football season, its title would be “Losing is An Attitude” and the subtitle might be “How I Turned Temple TUFF Into Temple MUSH in 8 Games.”

Other possible titles might be “Unfulfilled Promises” or “Undelivered Mayhem” because  Mayhem–which really is attacking the quarterback relentlessly—would have probably gave Temple wins, not losses, in the last two games.

Basically, this whole attitude was established from the first weeks of Collins’ tenure when he gave the offensive coordinator job to a spread offense guy, Dave Patenaude, who gave only lip service tribute to the Temple style of play which produced consecutive 10-win seasons. You knew this thing was headed south when, in January, Patenaude said he was going to run the tailback behind the fullback but also incorporate spread principles into the offense.

You can’t do both.

At least not effectively, and Patenaude has strayed from what the Temple personnel if best-suited for—run a great tailback behind a great fullback—to the point where the great fullback seldom even plays. The running game always set up explosive downfield plays in the passing game for Temple, making great use of play-action. The spread lends itself to punting on 4th and goal, which is exactly what the Owls did in the Houston game.

Defensively, the pressure on the quarterback we’ve been promised and subsequent backfield fumbles and interceptions returned the other way (Mayhem) has been MIA for eight games, even in the wins.

There are four more games left. It’s up to the CEO, not the OC and the DC, to order that the Temple offensive brand be restored in full and give the home fans at least a hint of the Mayhem he promised nine months ago.

Thursday: Navy Preview

10.24.17
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5 Quick Temple Football Fixes

sameold

The Owls should use this bye week to change the philosophy that led to 3-5.

What are we going to do without a weekend of Temple football?

To duplicate the kind of torture Temple fans experienced the last two weeks, we recommend stopping at the nearest police station and asking to be tased or making a trip across the Delaware and volunteering to be a waterboard subject at Fort Dix.

No thanks. I’ve had enough agony the last two weeks to last two years.

fixes

Losses to Army and UConn have been that painful.

If anything the last two weeks have taught the Temple football staff is to not allow the same thing to happen again. There are reasons the Owls are 3-5 and chief among them is an ill-advised offensive philosophy that caused the program to stray from what has worked here the last two years for something that might have worked at Coastal Carolina last year.

Are the Temple coaches sensible enough to understand that? Probably not, but this is the path from 3-5 to 6-6 and they better at least consider it or they risk not losing only this year but the next  five as well.

These five quick fixes that can be accomplished in the next nine days and implemented going forward:

Ditch the Spread
This team won the AAC championship last year by going fullback and play-action and that’s what this personnel is best suited to do. Put fullback Nick Sharga back there leading the way for a now healthy Ryquell Armstead and establish the run. Once that run is established, have Frankie “Juice” Nutile fake the ball into the belly of Armstead and pull it out. With opposing linebackers and safeties inching up to the line of scrimmage to defend the run, those great wide receivers—Ventell Byrant, Keith Kirkwood and Adonis Jennings—will be so wide open Nutile won’t know which one to pick out. That’s Temple football.

wright

Put Isaiah Wright at tailback
Wright in space in the open field is, as the announcers said on Saturday, a “touchdown waiting to happen.” To give Wright the kind of space he needs, run him at tailback. Throw him little swing passes out of the backfield or run screens for him. Use Wright–along with David Hood–as the change-of-pace backs when Armstead needs a break.

Goal-line offense
When the Owls get to the one, especially on first down, don’t try anything crazy like run out of the shotgun. Load Rock behind Sharga and pound the ball three times for six points. This team is built to run the ball at the goal. Doing anything else is asking for trouble. Owls lost the game against Army by coming away with nothing when they got to the one. They cannot let that happen again.

newfinch

Turn Sharif Finch Loose
Finch is the all-time leader in punts blocked at Temple for a reason. The Owls only have him for four more games and they should turn him loose on every punt the opposition attempts. They have been terrible on punt returns because there has been no blocking for Mike Jones, so they might as well be more aggressive and go after these punts.

No More Prevent Defense
Allowing Army to march down the field with no timeouts and 25 seconds left was a disgrace. The best pass defense, especially against a team uncomfortable with throwing the football, is putting the quarterback on his ass. If you can’t get there with four, send five. If you can’t get there with five send six. Just get there.

Anything less than these quick patches exposes your fans to a torture that makes the rack look like a feather-duster.

Thursday: Five Throwbacks

Saturday: Around The AAC

Monday: Game Week: An Attitude

Wednesday: Navy Preview

Friday: Game Analysis

Monday: The Kelly Solution

10.17.17
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Fizzy’s Corner: TU’s Regression

alumni

No truth to the rumor that Temple band alumni were playing taps for the season after that fiasco that some describe as a game on Saturday.

Editor’s Note: Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub has played for Temple and coached subsequently. He’s seen the most well-coached Temple teams offensively (Wayne Hardin) and, now, the worst-coached Temple team, at least offensively, against UConn on Saturday. His recap follows.

By Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub

I would like to begin with a quote from my teammate, Dick Gabel, a former superintendent of schools.  “Worst coaching experience since I played for Pete.”  He’s referring to our coach in 1959, Pete Stevens. (He was a fine gentleman, though.)

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Geoff Collins should whack Dave Patenaude like Tony Soprano whacked Ralph  Cifaretto for burning down the stable where his horse lived. (Figuratively, not literally, though. Patenaude has plenty of horses and has been killing  them with this ill-advised offense.)

After seven games and three woulda, coulda, shouldas, because of the offensive play calling, Dave Patenaude has proven to be an incompetent play caller with absolutely no instinct for the right play at the right time. Again, and this time twice, he’s failed to score from first and goal. That’s mostly because his first two plays are always run up the gut. He doesn’t understand that the only down you can really fool a defense in that situation, is first down, not third down. First down is when you should run the fake into the middle, and then there’s a multitude of options.

Speaking of the goal line, how about the most bizarre play call I’ve ever seen. On fourth and one, he puts in the wildcat against a gap defense.  Not only does that make no sense, he then runs a slow developing fake to the outside, and when the tailback finally turns to run up the middle, he’s overwhelmed by the penetration.

 By the way, I’ve nicknamed his offense the Broad Street Offense.  That’s not because Temple is on Broad Street, but because Broad Street is one of the longest, straightest streets in the country.  Patenaude’s offense is almost always straight ahead.  I have to say almost now, because in our seventh game yesterday, he finally ran a reverse which gained thirty-five yards, and never came back to it.

There were a multitude of other coaching mistakes. There were twelve penalties, and this shows an undisciplined team, and that’s carried over from the beginning of the year. Then there was unbelievably poor clock management at the end of the first half, and at the end of the game. The coach let the clock run down despite having three timeouts available in the first half, and two in the second half.  It’s my guess they were afraid Connecticut would get a first down.  Is that a way to coach a game?  Last but not least, it took the coach until the second half to realize he had to blitz and get pressure on the quarterback.

I’m probably missing many more coaching mistakes, but I forgot to bring my notebook to the game.  I do know one thing, however.  To earn even a six-six record, Dave Patenaude cannot be allowed to call the offense.

Throwback Thursday: When Passing Wasn’t Fancy