11.11.23
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Temple football: A mind-blowing loss

A lot of things had to go wrong for Temple to lose on Saturday and they all did

Not very much still blows my mind.

Watching a 1950s TV game show interview of a guy who was an eyewitness to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was one. Knowing that the grandson (not great-great or even great but regular grandson) of the 10th President of the United States is still alive (as of 8:30 Saturday night) is another.

If Harrison Ruffin Tyler, 95, was watching the Temple at South Florida football game on Saturday, that probably would have killed him.

Fortunately for him, he’s not a Temple football fan so he didn’t care enough to grab the old ticker on the way to dropping dead on the floor in front of his TV.

Many other younger Temple football fans did and I hope they survived because I can’t remember a more agonizing (or avoidable) loss in a long, long time.

The record will show that the final score was 27-23, South Florida, but there is more to the story.

Temple won the coin flip but, with one of the worst defenses in the history of college football, decided that deferring was the smart move instead of giving the rock to the best quarterback in the conference.

It wasn’t.

For the fifth time this season, the Owls kicked the ball out of bounds. This was exactly a decade after Temple had the best kicker in the nation, Brandon McManus, who drilled the ball through the end zone on 58 of his 70 kickoffs.

Never once did McManus, a former soccer player at North Penn, kick the damn ball out of bounds.

What happened to Temple football in 10 short years from having the best kicker in the nation to having the worst?

Brandon McManus kicking the game-winning FG at UConn in 2012. Kicking has become a disaster for Temple since and it should not given that Philly is a hotbed of great high school soccer talent.

The Temple cornerbacks do what Temple cornerbacks have done all season, allow completions on long passes, and the Owls found themselves in the same 17-0 hole Navy found itself in last week.

To their credit, the Owls fought back.

Not to their credit, some head-scratching mistakes made it impossible for them to win.

One of their most reliable players fumbled after a long gain.

They jumped offsides after doing the good work to stop USF on one drive.

They inexplicably hit the quarterback out of bounds when they could have gotten the ball back for the game-winning drive.

Who to blame?

Certainly the overpaid brain trust is right at the top of the list.

You don’t recruit a Purdue reject to kick off when there were about 20 great FCS kickers who would have LOVED a Temple opportunity. Kicking has become a disaster for Temple. The Owls had a great kicker in Brandon McManus and two very good ones in Austin Jones and Aaron Boumerhi but have had no luck since. Cam Price missed a chip shot FG and an extra point that was the difference in the game.

The Owls brought only 69 players to Tampa but whose fault was that? They left their RB of the future, Joquez Smith, home for an “administrative issue.”

Sorry.

Unless your best running back was stealing signals and suspended by the conference, you don’t leave him back in Philadelphia when he was supremely motivated to show the hometown folks in Tampa what they missed.

Do you think Steve Addazio wanted to suspend Matty Brown a ton of times? Yes. Did he? No. He wanted to win more.

Win. The. Game.

That’s the only important thing.

I never thought I’d want Addazio back. I do now.

Punish Joquez Smith next week, not this one. He might have run for 300 yards against this USF defense.

Have to win the game. Save the high and mighty stuff for later.

You’ve got to coach up that it’s NOT OK to hit a quarterback five yards out of bounds under any circumstances. This has to be done in spring practice, and May, June, July and August and not for yelling at the guy after the fact in November.

The other mistakes–the DMR fumble and the E.J. Warner interceptions–were more forgivable because those two guys have been warriors for the Owls all season and the errors were of commission, not omission.

There have been many mind-blowing losses in Temple football history. It’ll be hard to top this one for a long time.

If you had a grandson who attended this game, maybe he will still be alive to tell the story in 2123.

More people will believe he was there than the story he tells about it.

Monday: The Opposite of John Chaney

11.10.23
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If Temple wins, you can utter this four-letter word

New USF coach Alex Golesh and his players talk about Temple.

About a third of the way through a 55-0 beating at the hands of visiting SMU a few short weeks ago, Temple football was trending for a very bad four-letter word.

Mess.

Mike Edwards caught this great shot of Edward Saydee scoring one of his three touchdowns on the way to 265 yards against USF last season. Saydee had a nice game against Navy and should be able to get 100 against USF if that wasn’t a mirage.

Other four-letter words were worse.

Now, after a 32-18 win over a representative Navy team, Temple defensive lineman Jerquavion Mahone went on radio and associated Temple football with another four-letter word:

Bowl.

“All we’re thinking about is winning this season out and getting into a bowl game,” Mahone said on Wednesday night’s Stan Drayton Radio Show (97.5 FM). “We want to do it for all the guys who have been here through all of what we’ve been through for the last three years and we want to do it for coach Drayton.”

When someone is 6-4, 290 pounds, you tend to listen to what he has to say.

My guess is Mahone won’t pull a Quincy Roche and opt out of a bowl if he gets his way.

First things first, though, and tomorrow’s game is at USF (noon, ESPN+).

If the Owls win that one, they can think about beating UAB.

IF .. and that’s a big IF .. they beat UAB, it sets up a home finale the day after Thanksgiving where they can beat Memphis for a bowl game.

Must admit it would be sweet to go from an absolute mess to a bowl in a little over a month.

Whoa, Nellie.

If that happens, chances are that E.J. Warner will be the first Temple player in my lifetime carried off the field after a victory because they will need a Herculean three games from Warner to complete the trifecta. The team gave a preview of that by carrying Warner around the locker room after the win over Navy.

Beating USF is a hard-enough task but by no means is it impossible.

Temple fans even in this season like to look down on one-win UConn, a former rival, and say that this three-win Owl team is better and I think it is. Yet UConn “only” lost, 24-21, to USF and even with all the Owls’ problems, I think any team with E.J. Warner on it beats UConn by double-digits.

Now go ahead and prove me right with a touchdown win at USF tomorrow.

There is both good news and bad news here because the good news is that USF can’t stop anybody.

The bad news is neither can Temple.

Now the Owls showed some defensive fiersness against Navy, holding a triple-option team to zero first-half points. That really was the only reason Temple won the game because everybody knows that a triple option team no matter how good it is doesn’t come back from 17-0 deficits.

The Owls played a flawless first-half of defense by putting their best players in position to make plays. They had effective run- and pass blitzes and they need to do that going forward because they can’t get a rush from their base three.

If they do that against USF, they can cause havoc in the backfield and make a running quarterback put the ball up.

Our picks this weekend

When that happens, guys like Magee, Layton Jordan and Jalen McMurray have to use their talents to go get it and take it the other way.

Mahone will have to do his part by occupying blockers and getting a push up the middle.

The rest will be up to an offense that needs to utilize its most talented players–Warner and tight ends DMR and Jordan Smith–in mismatches against the USF defense. That doesn’t even include the guy who got USF head coach Jeff Scott fired last year, Edward Saydee. Weapons galore for Temple.

UConn didn’t have that kind of offensive explosiveness against USF.

Temple does.

If the Owls use it effectively, you can start saying a four-letter word about them and, for the first time in months, it can be said in polite company.

Late Saturday Night: USF Analysis

11.06.23
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Last three games: Have fun and play loose

One of the greatest plays in Temple football history, courtesy of Al Golden and Matt Rhule

One day, if it’s not too late, Stan Drayton will stand up and tell his players to have fun and play loose and hard on both sides of the ball.

Maybe he already has.

The Temple football Owls seemed to be playing very tight for the five-straight games they were dominated but, for some reason, they swarmed to the football–particularly on defense–and seemed to have a whole lot of fun in a 32-18 win over Navy on Saturday.

That was fun to see.

Playing tight never seems to work so maybe the attitude will carry over into how the coaches approach the game as well.

I don’t think Temple can finish 6-6–a Memphis team that beat Boise State and hung right at the end with Missouri looks like it is going to come to Philadelphia bent on revenge for losing to both Rod Carey and Geoff Collins in its last two trips to Philadelphia. Beating the Tigers might be a bridge too far for this talent grouping.

I think, though, if Temple can play fast and loose the rest of this season that UAB and USF are beatable. USF and the Owls both beat Navy by two touchdowns and, virtually this same Temple team beat USF, 54-28 a year ago. I’m not taking about being loose with the football as the Owls have to do a much better job with ball security but some imagination in the play calling would not hurt.

That means more “imaginative” plays on offense and more run and pass blitzing on defense.

This season can remotely resemble the 2008 season when the Owls won two of their last three to finish 5-7. In that season, the Owls often showed imagination on offense as a young OC named Matt Rhule would toss in five-to-seven trick plays to keep the Owls interested in practice and the bad guys on their toes.

Maybe a fake kneel down like Adam DiMichele pulled off (top video) would work. Certainly, it would work better than the Owls wasting their offensive timeouts at the end of each half in so many of their games this year.

Speaking of DiMichele, E.J. Warner passed the former Temple and current Nebraska assistant on the all-time yardage list on Saturday. Warner’s flea-flicker touchdown to John Adams against UTSA was this year’s most imaginative Temple play.

More of that please.

If the coaches inserted a few fun plays into every game plan, who knows? Maybe the so-called trick plays open up a run game that had been under lockdown all year.

Anything to keep the bad guys honest and watching the good guys making plays and having fun would be the perfect way to close out the year.

Friday: USF Preview

11.04.23
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Some much-needed respect

Respect is earned, not given, and, honestly, the Temple football Owls didn’t deserve much respect over the first eight games of this rapidly ending season.

When Temple wins, the Owls have more people talking about them than an Insurrection, Tucker Carlson and Trumpers.

It took until Game 9 for the Owls to earn it, though, and earn they did, with a 32-18 win over a Navy team that already did enough to earn respect on the basis of its prior games.

Had not one player fumbled twice on consecutive plays, it probably would have been 39-11 instead of 32-18.

The worst thing, though, about Temple’s five-game losing streak was reading so many of the comments that “Temple should drop football” and “give it up, we’re not good at this” because other schools lose games and don’t have to listen to that garbage.

Nobody on any Navy site is calling for the Middies to drop football and concentrate on basketball after the Temple loss and neither should anybody from Temple overreact the other way when adversity faces the Owls.

It was just seven short years ago that Temple pummeled No. 22-ranked Navy in the AAC championship game, 34-10, proving a couple of things.

Temple can win in this sport and a fan base that has something to cheer for will show up, as 10,000 Owl fans who traveled 120 miles proved that afternoon.

Just win, baby.

This slap made my day.

We’re not going to overreact either way today because the Owls looked so bad in those five games there is a strong argument to be made that the Navy game was an outlier. Even the other two wins were nothing to write home about. Akron hasn’t exactly set the world on fire since losing to the Owls and Norfolk State still has a Division II blemish loss on its record.

Here’s what we do know, though. Temple is a representative team with quarterback E.J. Warner in the lineup. In my mind, UTSA will win this year’s AAC title because it has a seven-year quarterback and a great coach but the Owls were still within shouting distance of that team late in the fourth quarter with Warner. Even coming off a concussion, Warner finished an insane 27 for 33 with 402 yards and four touchdowns against Navy.

For that, he became the first Temple player in history (I wasn’t around in 1934) to be carried by his teammates in the lockeroom.

I’ve never seen a Temple player carried off the field in my lifetime (Dick Beck and other Owls carried Bruce Arians off the field in 1988). If Warner wins four-straight to close out the season, expect him to be carried off the field after a win over visiting Memphis. (Temple has beaten Memphis the last two times it came into Philadelphia.)

As Temple head coach Stan Drayton said after the win over Navy, “You can’t spell Warner without a W” and E.J. slapped that W on the Lincoln Financial Field wall with some added gusto.

Scary, though, because what happens to the Owls without Warner? Obviously, all three backups are light years behind him so let’s enjoy the Owls while we have him.

Navy isn’t great, but is pretty good. The Middies beat both Charlotte (14-0) and North Texas (27-24). They hung with USF (44-30) and a really good Memphis team (28-24). Temple has both USF and Memphis left on the schedule. It will have to win those games plus scratch out a win at UAB to get a bowl bid.

Impossible?

No.

Likely?

Also no.

If the Owls are able to keep Warner clean and avoid fumbles, they have a shot and, at this point, this is all we can ask.

After being a national laughingstock for five-straight weeks, any morsel of respect is both needed and appreciated.

Monday: The Road Forward

11.03.23
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Navy-Temple: Hard to beat logic

If you think Everett Withers has been burning the midnight oil devising a plan to stop the triple option, by all means place a huge bet on the Temple Owls tomorrow. I don’t think he’s that kind of guy.

There is little worse than wasted anticipation, a pizza stuck to the top of a home delivery box, a trip down the shore delayed by a flat tire and a Starbucks’ coffee cup that leaks are some that come to mind.

All happened to me in the past six months.

My biggest wasted anticipation, though, by far is this 2023 Temple football season.

It’s really hard to admit that you are wrong but the logic coming into the season was fairly clear: There was much good to anticipate. My favorite sports team, the Temple football Owls, had taken two bowl teams to the wire in the final two games of the year and probably should have won both games.

No worries, I thought. This was a learning experience and the Owls would use those lessons to leapfrog from a three-win mindset to a winning one. Bowl game here we come. “Temple football is back, baby. Watch out for my Owls. Even Everett Withers can’t mess this up.” That’s what I told everybody who saw me wearing the Temple swag on my bike rides, walks and jogs this summer.

What happened?

There were no significant offseason acquisitions when many needed to be had, particularly on both lines. Plenty of P5 guys who entered the portal last December and could have helped the Owls this season remained in the portal by the kickoff against Akron. If I knew that and you knew that, surely the brain trust being paid handsomely to oversee a multimillion dollar program in a $17 million practice facility certainly must have known that.

Think again.

They sat on their hands, transfer portal wise, and let everybody else in G5 college football pass them.

They downgraded a third of the game (defense) with one of the worst hires in the history of Temple football.

The logic that now dictates Temple football has come to this conclusion: Even Vegas is way off. Temple is 2-6 on the season but only 0-7-1 against the spread (the Norfolk State game was a push).

Vegas says the Owls are “only” 6.5-point underdogs against Navy tomorrow (2 p.m., ESPN+) but the new logic, like new math, dictates otherwise.

In the only common opponent comparison, Navy beat North Texas, 27-24. Temple lost to North Texas, 45-14.

Now you can say transitive property doesn’t work until you are blue in the face but Temple’s defense did all but bring those matador capes out and allow the Mean Green to score at will. Navy’s defense fought like hell and held that same team to three touchdowns.

Do you expect Temple’s defense, which hasn’t fought like hell since the second half against Akron, to suddenly start doing so in 24 hours?

Logic dictates otherwise.

Thanks to Stan Drayton hiring the inept Everett Withers, I’ve suffered six Saturdays this fall. If I’m going to suffer tomorrow, I’m going to get paid for it. Rather lose the $150 and see my Owls win.

The only thing Temple has to hold its hat on is the return of quarterback E.J. Warner but is that even enough?

Remember the last time we saw E.J. he had five touchdown passes and 472 yards (and no interceptions) against a very good UTSA team. All that got him was a 15-point loss.

To me, if Temple has a strength, it’s E.J. and the wide receivers.

If Navy has a weakness, it’s pass defense.

That’s the only logic pointing in Temple’s direction. Praying it is enough for a win hasn’t worked all season and I’m not anticipating anything different.

That flat tire on the trip down the shore taught me to expect the worst and hope for the best not only with my favorite sports team but with life in general.

After the last two months of seeing the worst, we are due for the best. I’m not holding my breath.

Late Saturday Night (pushing Midnight): Navy Game Analysis

10.30.23
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Navy week: Headed for a dubious record

Current Charlotte DC Ryan Osborn explains how to stop the triple option four years ago. He held this Navy team to 14 points.

Say what you will about Everett Withers’ performance in his last two DC jobs.

He’s consistent.

Say what you will about Everett Withers' performance in his last two DC jobs. He's consistent.
Withers in 2023 ….

As the Florida International DC only two short years ago, his team gave up 39.7 points per game in a dozen games for a grand total of 476 points. As DC for Temple in 2023, his unit has given up 38 points a game with four left.

Maddeningly consistent.

He’s on the verge of breaking a dubious mark: With four games left, Owls have to give up “only” 43 points a game for this team to pass that one in futility.

If you think that’s not possible, the trend for Temple has been downward. All talk of a bowl game is out the window. It would take a minor miracle for this team to finish 3-9 for a third-straight year.

Temple TUFF is becoming a distant memory.

The Owls have given up more than 40 points per game in five-straight games and their tackling will be put to the test by Navy this Saturday at Lincoln Financial Field (2 p.m., ESPN+).

This is historically bad territory for Temple. The Owls haven’t given up 40+ points a game in five consecutive games since Ron Dickerson’s 1994 season. That’s hard to do because it also includes Bobby Wallace’s last season (0-11) and Al Golden’s first season (1-11).

…. Withers in 2021

This will be the first time Withers has faced a triple-option service academy team in a long time. He did not face one at FIU nor did he face one in his prior three years as head coach at Texas State (2016-18).

It might help to go over 2016 Temple film for a primer. In the opening game that season, the Owls fell to Army, 29-13, going with their usual 4-3 defense. They left the “A gap” open and the Army fullback gouged them for over 100 yards.

They finished that season with a 34-10 win over an even better Navy team in the AAC championship game, going to a 5-2 taking away the Navy fullback by putting a nose guard over the center and stringing the Navy offense from sideline to sideline where the Owls could use their superior speed. Both Averee Robinson and Freddy Booth-Lloyd alternated at nose guard for the Owls on that glorious championship afternoon.

Phil Snow adjusted from the lesson of the opener and applied a fix to the closing game plan.

Does anyone here think Withers has the knack for defensive adjustments that Snow had? Do you even think he spends the requisite hours in film study in his current and past jobs?

The numbers certainly don’t reflect that.

In fact, they are headed in a historic Southerly direction and head coach Stan Drayton is giving every indication that Withers will be able to do the same damage to Temple that he did to FIU by refusing to fire him.

FIU recovered from the Withers’ Era. It’s not entirely clear that Temple will be able to do the same.

Friday: Navy Preview

Late Saturday Night: Navy Analysis

10.27.23
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Deja Vu All Over Again

SCOTUS judge Potter Stewart said “I know obscenity when when I see it” and this is obscenity.

Like many of my tailgate buddies for many years, I met a couple of future good friends in front of Veterans Stadium one day long before Temple Football Forever was ever conceived or before I even wore Temple swag to the games.

I was wearing an “Upper Bucks YMCA” sweatshirt and they were from Upper Black Eddy, which I only knew as the Upper Bucks’ home of then National League baseball President Bill White. (I knew Bill because he was one of our biggest local celebrities and I worked for the local newspaper at the time.)

My newest friend at that time pointed to the sweatshirt, I explained the connection (I lived in Quakertown at the time), talked a little Bill White and The Riegelsville Inn and we became fast Temple tailgate buddies for maybe 30 years now, if not more.

The last year Temple played at The Vet, both of us would point to the stadium going up across the street and say: “We need to get into that stadium next year.” We did.

I only remember this story because he said his wife said something last week: “This reminds me of the Ron Dickerson Years.”

Hmm, I thought. This season sounds and feels very Ron Dickersonish. She might have had a point. I looked it up and found a gem of a tweet from a guy named Hayden.

I’m sure Hayden means “following the week 3 win, not loss” but his point is well-taken here.

Just by crunching the numbers, a Temple football season hasn’t been THIS BAD since Ron Dickerson was the head coach.

This is even worse than the 20-game losing streak Bobby Wallace left Temple first-year head coach Al Golden, who by some miracle, was able to beat a Bowling Green team in his first year that dropped a 70-burger on Wallace in consecutive years.

Stevie Wonder could see the 1-11 Owls improve in that first year under Golden. Superman with X-ray vision cannot see the 2-6 Owls improve in this second year under Stan Drayton. They were 3-9 last year. It will now take a miracle to achieve a third-straight 3-9 season. You fire a 3-9 coach and pay off $6 million of his contract to go forward and not sideways.

Right now, this is going backward.

This is almost a carbon copy of the 1994 Temple season and that’s historically bad.

Who to blame?

x

Certainly not the players. They returned 15 starters from a team that was competitive in many more games in 2022 than 2023. They hired a defensive coach who has no idea how to stop a modern offense after having a defensive coach who was competent enough to be hired by the Philadelphia Eagles.

Do you think Everett Withers has a chance to be hired by the Philadelphia Eagles next season?

I think even the Rockledge Eagles might pass on his services if he became available.

The 1994 season was one where Dickerson resigned on the spot following a 53-52 loss to Pitt, only to renege on the resignation a couple of days later. Temple had a 4th and 2 at midfield at Pitt Stadium only to go for it, give the Panthers a short field and see them score a last-second touchdown. Had the Owls merely punted there, Pitt would have had to go the length of the field with 52 seconds left no timeouts.

A lot of people are blaming the NIL and transfer portal for Drayton’s failures this season but I’m not buying it. This season is the result of a bad hire in a key spot. Thirty-four points against UTSA and 26 points against Tulsa should have been enough to win if the defense just performed to last year’s level.

That’s flipping a horrid 2-6 to a representative 4-4.

The fact that Drayton hasn’t fired Withers in this off week is a clear signal he’s willing to go down with the ship rather than plug the holes to save it. That message is received loud and clear not only by Temple fans but his players, the staff and the administration who have to be wondering what the hell is going on here.

Unfortunately, that means we all go down with the ship and if it reminds you of the time you spent shivering in a raft looking at an iceberg 29 years ago before being fished out of the sea then you are correct.

Major props to Mrs. Winkel for pointing out that cold hard fact and to a guy named Hayden Bandel for providing the receipts.

Monday: Navy Week

10.22.23
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5 Former TU Coaches Who Are Doing Great Jobs

Not for a hot minute do I think any of the five guys I mention below will ever take the Temple football head coaching job if it became free tomorrow.
I started following Curt Cignetti at the beginning of the year and found it interesting that at least two newer followers are current Temple Owls.

Not for a hot minute do I think any of the five guys I mention below will ever take the Temple football head coaching job if it became free tomorrow.

That’s a shame because for more than a minute anyone of them would have in a yesterday not that long ago. It was a primo G5 once. It is not that anymore.

Desai when at TU

You’ve got to wonder might have been. Temple football’s recent head coaching hires, including this current one, have no history with the school. In the not-so-distant past, Temple could have hired a number of guys who did but, for some reason, looked elsewhere.

Temple’s football history is replete with near-misses and what can’t be argued is the five guys below who once sought the Temple head coaching position are doing great jobs now.

What also can’t be argued is that the current job-holder is not. Stan Drayton’s closest connection to Temple is that he once coached at Villanova and Penn.

Not close enough.

Only a guy who coached at Villanova and Penn could regress the Temple program behind those two at a salary of $2.5 million a year.

Right now, they look like the third-best team in the city and I would take FCS members Penn and Villanova in a head-to-head matchup with the Owls.

I’m serious. It’s that bad. I’m kinda glad I don’t have to make that bet. I would not plunk a penny on Temple and that’s my favorite sports team, way more than the Eagles and Phillies who are distant second and thirds.

The team has regressed this year and it’s pretty much his fault. Depending upon which game participation chart you believe in, the Owls returned anywhere from 15-19 starters from a team that finished 3-9 last year and teased their fans by losing in the last second to a pair of bowl teams at the end of last year.

They haven’t delivered. These five guys have:

Curt Cignetti _ The JMU head coach and former Temple assistant has James Madison 7-0 with wins over Virginia (which won at North Carolina yesterday) and Marshall (which won at Notre Dame last year). Nobody is doing a better job in college football. A quarterbacks’ coach for four years at Temple, Cignetti, 62, went for the Owls’ head job in 2005, 2010 and when Geoff Collins got it in 2016. A compelling argument can be made that no one in college football is doing a worse job than Drayton so with Cignetti and Drayton we have opposite ends of the spectrum. Salary: $425,000 a year.

Scot Loeffler as a TU OC.

Sean Desai _ the 40-year-old former Temple special teams coach applied for the Temple job twice and was turned down twice. He now has the Eagles’ defense as one of the best in the NFL as their coordinator. He has a Temple degree and was a Temple professor as well as a football coach. Sunday night, he held a Miami team that scored 70 points on Denver to just one offensive touchdown. Salary: $1.5 million-a-year.

Mike MacIntyre _ Two years ago, Florida International didn’t even have money for uniforms. Now the Panthers who are led by Macintyre won at UConn and are 4-4 compared to Temple’s 2-5. At Temple, he was the DC when the Owls won at No. 14 Virginia Tech, 28-24. In 2012, as head coach at San Jose State, the Spartans finished No. 23 in the final AP poll. Macintyre beat a North Texas team that embarrassed Drayton. Nobody has less NIL or transfer portal money than FIU. Mcintrye didn’t look for excuses he just found a way to win. He applied for the Temple job in both 2005 and 2010. Salary: $750,000-a-year.

Scot Loeffler _ The former Temple offensive coordinator applied for the Owls’ job immediately after Steve Addazio left for BC and, when it became apparent Temple was going in another direction, decided to join Daz as BC’s offensive coordinator. This year, Loeffler has led Bowling Green–with significantly less resources than Temple–to a win at Georgia Tech. On Saturday, his team pummeled an Akron team, 41-14, that Drayton was only able to beat by the skin of his teeth. Salary: $525,000-a-year.

Al Golden _ Currently Notre Dame’s defensive coordinator, he was “consulted” for his input by Temple athletic director Arthur Johnson before Johnson decided to hire his Texas football buddy Drayton. Hard to believe that Golden would have recommended Drayton considering he never worked with him. Something tells me that if Johnson had asked, “How about you, Al?” he would have said yes. We will never know. I do know this: A secretary that worked with Al Golden was there when Al turned out the lights of his office at Temple for the last time and told me Al shook his head and said, “I love this place.” Those were Al’s final words at Temple before he was inducted into the Hall of Fame there a year ago. I think he would have loved it enough to return if he had been convinced by the powers-that-be that only he could save it. Salary: $1.5 million-a-year.

It only makes sense that someone who knows the 10th and Diamond landscape would do better than the carpetbaggers Temple has brought in since Matt Rhule.

Five forks in the road for Temple football. Making the wrong turn at least a couple times might prove to be its downfall.

Friday: Numbers Comparison

10.20.23
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TU Needs to Have an honest convo about Drayton

In a perfect world, on private jet somewhere, Lew Katz would have watched Temple lose a 55-0 game on national television to SMU, made a call or two and Stan Drayton would be out as the head coach of his favorite university on Saturday morning.

There are Lew Katz’s all over college football. Temple, unfortunately, no longer has one of those guys. Drew Katz, his son, is on the BOT now but, unlike his dad, cares more about keeping that money in his pocket than making Temple great.

Since jet engines are as imperfect as hiring RB coaches to be head coaches, though, Katz is no longer here and Temple has no one in any position of authority who can make a hard and necessary call right now.

Temple, put it simply, is between a rock and a hard place.

Everyone–including me–loves Stan Drayton The Man.

Football world–including me–pretty much already has mind made up on Stan Drayton the head coach.

We need to have an honest conversation about Drayton today.

Temple University has committed way too much money to a lifetime RB coach and expected him to do a completely different job at a high level. He has not. It looks like he never will. He has three years in his contract for $2.5 million a year and a university with more pressing security issues simply cannot afford to eat the money it would take to replace him.

CBS radio host Zach Gelb and Jacksonville kicker Brandon McManus muse about what happened to a once-great program.

Ask yourself this question: Which university is getting the best ROI? Florida Atlantic, which hired Tom Herman as a first-year coach for $700,000 or Temple, which is paying Drayton $2.5 million in his second season?

Katz certainly could and would write a check for whatever it would take to get someone else in here STAT.

Unfortunately for the Owls, there are no Lew Katz’s around anymore.

Nobody cares might be too big a stretch but the 1,000 or so real fans who sat in the seats at the 70,000-seat Lincoln Financial Field is not enough to move the needle.

The Peter Principle certainly is in effect here.

Drayton was a great RB coach wherever he went. Great RB coaches aren’t always cut out to be great head coaches. Drayton certainly has proved that much in his year and a half here.

Our picks this week. We’re a quarter on our way to a $266 payout for four measley games. Thanks, Stan and Everett. (Rather have Temple win and eat the money but this is getting too easy.)

He knew the Owls needed help on both the offensive and defensive lines and failed to replenish both in the offseason. A good CEO would have brought in a dozen great FCS linemen. He knew he needed a great defensive coordinator to replace D.J. Eliot, who left for the Eagles, and replaced him with a “friend” who was not a qualified person.

I’d rather have a great recruiting SOB signal stealer who wins than a nice guy who loses.

For all of these sins, Drayton deserves to be replaced.

Because Lew Katz is not here, we know he won’t.

Rock, meet hard place.

If Temple choses to drop football in a May BOT meeting instead of continuing to pay an unwise contract going forward, don’t blame Drayton.

Blame Temple for hiring a running back coach for what should have been a primo G5 job.

Monday: Five G5 HCs who are doing a great job

10.20.23
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Temple-SMU: Quitting time?

You know the worm has turned when the national broadcasters who used to rave about “Temple TUFF” eight years ago are mentioning another four-letter word about Temple football:

Quit.

While quitting time for the week for most workers usually is 5 p.m. on every Friday, it will be less than three hours later the rest of the nation decides whether the Temple football Owls have punched the clock out for the rest of the season.

With good reason.

Bud Elliott of CBS Sports’ Cover 3 podcast casually stuck in that word at the end of his analysis of tonight’s Temple-SMU game (ESPN2, 7 p.m.).

“Temple might be on quit watch,” Elliott said.

In a tribute to his hometown in New Jersey, Jahad Thomas channels his inner Fred Sanford eight years ago yesterday when the Owls’ made No. 22 in the AP poll.

It’s not a phrase he uses lightly. Unlike most national experts, Elliott has watched a lot of Temple. In fact, the “Cover 3 podcast” really is the only national podcast other than the “College Football Show” (Gary Seagers, Kyle Hunter and Parker Fleming) that ever talks Group of Five football. (Josh Pate, we are looking at you. The next time Pate mentions a G5 team will be his first.)

For the record, I don’t think the Owls have quit yet but NFL fans saw the Philadelphia Eagles “allow” the Jets to score a touchdown on Sunday and the entire defensive effort for Temple looked like that pretty much all year. In reality, the Owls aren’t laying down as much as they are following the schemes of an inept defensive coordinator, Everett Withers, who allowed 39.7 points a game in his last full-time DC job (FIU, 2021) and he’s doing his best to exceed those dismal numbers at Temple this season.

We warned everyone about that in this space back on St. Patty’s Day and we weren’t even drinking then.

Elliott is expecting SMU to put a “50 burger” on the Owls and it’s up to the players to disabuse him of that notion tonight and make it a competitive game.

Mostly the defensive players.

I will grant Bud this point: Last year the defensive side of the football fought like hell. Just think back to the Rutgers’ game when Layton Jordan was sacking Big 10 quarterbacks like it was going out of style and teammate Tre Thomas was the best defensive player on the field that day. Temple’s defense was taking off RU heads, figuratively of course.

I don’t see the same “Temple TUFF” his year. We are running out of days and nights to see that same kind of toughness again. The current Temple players owe it to the past Temple teams to try to shut out SMU. Show some life. Sack the quarterback and strip him of the football. Pick balls off on defense and take them the other way.

That’s what Temple football teams used to do not all that long ago.

The really sad thing about this is Temple was on the opposite of “quit watch” eight years ago this week.

On Oct. 18, 2015 the 7-0 Owls moved up from No. 25 the prior week to No. 22 in the AP ranking. That was the highest the Owls made it in that all-important poll since they finished No. 17 in both the AP and the UPI polls in 1979. By Halloween, they would make it to No. 21 and play a knockdown drag out battle with Notre Dame in the ABC Saturday Night Game of the Week before the largest Philadelphia TV audience that watched any college football game.

Ever.

Temple University as a school could not buy that kind of publicity and the result was a record freshman enrollment for the 2016 scholastic season.

Only four years ago this week Temple also made the Top 25 of the Coaches Poll.

Since then, we’ve seen a Midwestern coach flop his way out of Philadelphia like a fish out of water and the next guy hire a defensive coordinator “friend” with a terrible record of allowing points turning a group of better-than-average players into a team that seemingly doesn’t know where to line up and are tentative when they should be attacking.

Some friend.

Another blowout loss tonight and we know what four-letter word the nation will be uttering about Temple football.

Hint: It won’t be TUFF.

Tomorrow: Game Analysis and Saturday picks