10.24.22
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Dancing on their own: The Temple Owls

This is the happiest I’ve seen the Broad Street Subway since Sept. 5, 2015.

Disc jockeys in this town like Jerry Blavat and Pierre Robert made a national reputation by taking a chance on a demo song, playing it, and then watching it go to the top of the pop charts first here, then nationally, by call-in requests.

If the present-day Philadelphia DJs still took requests, chances are a song by the alternative pop star Robyn called Dancing on My Own would top the list at least this week. That’s the unofficial anthem of the Philadelphia Phillies, who will steal much of the thunder from the unbeaten Philadelphia Eagles over the next couple of weeks.

Jon Sumrall has Troy at 6-2 after three-straight losing seasons (one more than Rod Carey had).

Ironic the Phillies adopted it because the theme is heartbreak and isolation, about someone watching her boyfriend dance with a new girlfriend.

Today, the Phillies are feeling loved and included, while it is the Temple Owls who are feeling heartbreak and isolation.

That’s what happens when you lose to a team 70-13 one week, then turn around to watch that same team get spanked, 34-13, by a league rival you once owned the day after you lose, 27-16, to a two-win team.

If the team that beats you 70-13 gets beat the next week 34-13, what does that tell you?

At least Robyn was dancing on her own inside the club.

Temple proved it could win the AAC title here. With 1,564 players in the portal, it doesn’t need to wait more than one of two years to repeat

Right now, the Owls are on the outside looking into the AAC football club, pressing their collective noses against the window after being denied entry by the bouncer.

Or so it seems.

First-year coach Jim Mora Jr. is not talking playoffs, but certainly entertaining a realistic shot at a bowl game after a 1-11 season last year.

The reality of this season is that Rod Carey got fired for a lot of 63-21, 52-3, 49-7 and 61-14 losses. Then the school ate $6 million of Carey’s salary to hire a new guy and the new guy loses 70-13. You can talk about the change in attitude and culture inside the E-O but, until it shows up on the scoreboard on game day, that’s all it is.

Talk.

Maybe it’s not so much the coach as it is the players.

Or maybe it’s a combination of both.

There were 30 new FBS coaches hired last year and Athlon Sports ranked Stan Drayton 29th. That might have been because he had never coached anything above a position but Drayton hasn’t proven those guys wrong yet.

Drayton still has a chance to prove the so-called experts wrong, but the reality is that he has not this year and probably won’t. Other coaches inherited the same or worse records a year ago and have done better than Temple has. Temple has some good players like linebackers Jordan Magee and Layton Jordan, defensive back Jalen McMurray and tight end Jordan Smith but it needs a lot of Magees, Jordans, McMurrays and Smiths and doesn’t have time to wait for high school recruits to develop.

Sadly humorous tweet from a fan watching the Temple-UCF game.

Other schools got good in a hurry by reaching that same conclusion and the solution is staring Drayton right in the face.

The same names Carey was being called by Temple fans could be attributed to past coaches at places like Georgia Southern, UConn, Troy and Duke but those places, unlike Temple, see new coaches prove themselves by the most important metric–the scoreboard.

Georgia Southern, also 3-9 a year ago, had only four starters returning on offense and two on defense and was able to beat a Big 10 team (Nebraska) and post a 5-3 record under former USC head coach Clay Helton. That guy also had the same number of months to build a roster and did so by bringing in 16 transfer starters from the portal.

UConn was 1-11 with only two starters on offense returning and three on defense yet first-year coach Jim Mora Jr. remade the roster to the point where the Huskies are 3-5 with a win over Fresno State and a decent chance for a bowl game.

Troy’s Jon Sumrall has his team with a 6-2 record after Chip Lindsay had three straight losing seasons there (one more than Carey did at Temple).

Duke also had a 3-9 record and fewer starters returning than Drayton did, somehow first-year coach Mike Elko is not taking long to turn things around there. The Blue Devils are 5-3, coming off a 45-21 win at Miami. That’s just four first-year coaches. Temple is not the only place in the world that had an awful coach ruin their program but those places hired guys who made an impact right away. Others, like Mike McIntryre (former Temple assistant) at FIU and Tony Elliot (Virginia) also have better records than Drayton does in the same time frame Drayton has had.

They did it by remaking the roster with high-end transfer portals. That’s the blueprint they left for Drayton to follow this coming off-season.

It’s something he probably should have done nine months ago but better late than never.

Otherwise, he’s setting Owls fans up for another year of heartbreak, isolation and dancing on their own on the subway going Northbound away from the Linc.

Friday: Navy Preview

10.21.22
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Game over, season over

If you’ve learned one lesson from every football game, it’s a good thing.

Temple learned four big lessons on Friday night in another embarrassment on national television, a 27-16 loss to visiting Tulsa and it is only a good thing if the Owls do something about it.

One, to win in big-time college football, you need a dual-threat quarterback.

Another, enough of Edward Saydee at running back. He’s just not fast enough or good enough to be the feature back at a school whose recent history includes Ryquell Armstrong, Jahad Thomas, Bernard Pierce, Matty Brown, Tanardo Sharps, Stacy Mack, Jason McKie, Sid Morse and Paul Palmer.

Four, drop the Temple TUFF moniker at least until you can put the “greater than” sign in front of the Navy moniker.

Navy tough > Temple tough.

The last lesson might have been the most important one of the night because, evaluating all of the available analytics, Navy was behind Tulsa in the next most-likely possible Temple win. After all, Delaware–a one-time whipping boy for Wayne Hardin–beat Navy, 14-7, in the first game of the season.

Navy has gotten much better with each game. Temple has gotten much worse.

That’s mostly coaching.

Ken Niumatalolo is a great coach. The jury is still out on Stan Drayton before we can answer that question truthfully. Navy held Tulsa to 25 rushing yards that day and Temple gave up more than 300 yards on Friday night.

If Navy can beat Tulsa, 53-21, and Temple can’t, what does that tell you about the rest of the season?

That Temple is going to finish 2-10, that’s what. That was even lower than the Whale Shit expectations of Vegas, which had the Owls at 2.5 wins.

Hate to take off the Cherry and White glasses, but that’s the truth.

On Saturday the fifth, South Florida comes to town. Do you really see the Owls hanging with a USF team that lost close games against ranked Cincinnati and Florida?

I don’t.

Very few others do.

Drayton can talk all he wants about each game being a “learning experience” but a lot of that learning should have been done before the season, not during it.

For example, the coaching staff should know down by 24-16 to go for the extra point and not the two-point conversion halfway through the fourth quarter. Going for the two, as Andre Ware correctly pointed out, should be reserved for the tying touchdown, not the penultimate one if that was indeed the mindset behind the decision. Even then, got to go for the extra point there and the extra point after the next touchdown to send the game into overtime. That’s Coaching 101.

When the coaches have to learn to do their jobs during the season, not before it, how can the players expect to learn their jobs?

The answer to those questions and the ones posted initially should be fairly obvious to any logical football fan.

Monday: Excuses or Reasons?

Saturday’s college football TV schedule
10.21.22
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Temple-Tulsa: Heartbreak Ridge?

CapperTex is to college football computers what IBM’s Watson was to Jeopardy.

When we last saw the Temple football Owls on national television, the university’s reputation in the sport took a beating in a 70-13 loss to UCF on ESPN’s primary channel.

This should be the standard Temple home uniform. Way better than the black ones.

Same old Temple under Stan Drayton that existed under Rod Carey, the nation said, and the guys who play for Drayton gave little reason to argue with that assumption.

Now that the Owls are on that network’s secondary channel, ESPN2 (tonight 7:30), two major computer simulators have the team garnering respect but not the ultimate prize: A win.

The top NCAA football simulator has Tulsa winning, 24-21, generated by CapperTek. For those not aware, the top “human” handicappers against the spread usually rate in the 67-70 percentile. CapperTex’s artificial intelligence model has a 79 percent success rate.

If it is right and the Owls lose by three, that sets us all up for a heartbreaker. Tulsa opened as a 13.5-point favorite and the “wise guys” bet that down by a whole point over the last two days.

Can an Owl brother get a win here?

Possibly, because as good as artificial intelligence is, it does not account for the occasionally tipped ball interception or the stripped sack fumble.

The same model predicted Virginia would beat three-point favorite Georgia Tech on Thursday night, 31-27. Virginia won, but by 16-9. Maybe Tulsa wins by three more points than the computer expects, but maybe the Owls can do something about it.

Another model also has Temple covering the spread by losing “only” 38-26.

This CBS projection has the Owls covering the 12.5 spread by the slimmest of margins.

What does this mean?

Of all the remaining games on the Temple schedule, this is the Owls’ best chance for a win. There are a few reasons for this.

Our picks this week. We’re playing these separately for blog purposes but if all hit on a $10 parlay investment, $2,936.43 is the ROI.

Tulsa struggles in the run game, getting only 25 total yards rushing in a 53-21 loss at Navy.

That means the Hurricanes will be forced to pass against an Owls’ defense that has been very good against the pass in five of their first six games.

The game will simply come down to this: If the Owls can just do a decent job against the pass and the same kind of job Navy did against the run, they will keep it close.

If they can force a couple of interceptions against quarterback Davis (an odd first name, no doubt) Brin, they will post the upset.

Tough task?

Certainly.

Impossible?

No.

They will need to take the ball away twice to get the win. One fumble, one interception or two interceptions will do the job. On its end, Temple will have to protect the football.

If both teams play a clean game, Tulsa wins.

You read it here first.

At least now the Owls know what they have to do to avoid a broken heart. Knowing it and doing it is the difference between winning and losing.

Picks this week: In the graphic near the bottom of this post. Thought long and hard about the UL-Monroe at Army game but Army’s beatdown at the hands of an average Georgia State team convinced us that ULM can cover the 6.5. That’s the key play. San Diego State’s four-point win over a truly horrific Hawaii team convinced us that Nevada can win outright at home against SDSU. The Rice Owls are the best Owls playing college football this year (unfortunately) and should beat Louisiana Tech by a touchdown.

Update: Not a good week, won on Western Kentucky, Kent State, Rice, Louisville and Wyoming but lost on ULM, ODU, Texas State, UCF and Nevada. 5-5 for the week and now 22-18 on the season.

Tomorrow: Game Analysis

Monday: Excuse or Opportunity?

10.17.22
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Halfway through: Horseshoes and hand grenades

Another five days to wait for a game and five more days of listening to the nation bash the Temple football Owls.

That seems to be the story of this football season, though.

If Arthur Johnson hired Stan Drayton to be the horseshoes and hand grenades head coach at Temple instead of the football one, real progress would be shown in at least five of the first six games.

Close doesn’t cut and, last week, the proverbial hand grenade blew up right in the Owls’ locker room in a 70-13 loss. Seventy points and 737 yards can’t do much for the team’s confidence moving forward and destroyed any good feelings about the team among whatever remains of the fan base.

Lot K will be taken over by Phillies fans on Friday night and much of the Temple-Tulsa in-game ESPN discussion will focus on what is happening across the street.

That’s what happens when you lose, 70-13.

Close against Rutgers when last year the Owls got beat 61-14 was a step forward, as was holding Duke to a pair of second-half field goals. Beating Massachusetts by about the same score MAC contender Buffalo did was nice but Lafayette got shut out by a Penn Quaker football team that doesn’t even have spring practice so maybe the Leopards should not have been on the schedule.

Some fans like to compare Stan Drayton’s first season to Matt Rhule’s first one, which resulted in two wins but the difference between then and now is Rhule’s team battled UCF down to the wire and UCF beat Baylor in a bowl that season and, in Week 7, Rhule’s team beat Army, 33-14.

It is now Week 7. Time to win.

A 33-14 win over Tulsa would be just what the doctor ordered but this team appears on life support right now.

The so-called national experts nailed the Owls going into the UCF game.

Bud Elliott of CBS Sports’ Cover Three podcast said: “I’m not buying that the Temple defense is any good. They have good numbers in terms of points allowed but look who they did it against: Lafayette, a FCS team; Rutgers, a team that fired its offensive coordinator, UMass, which has trouble scoring against everybody.”

Fellow podcaster Chip Patterson replied: “Did anybody say the Temple defense was any good?”

Danny Kanell, the former Florida State quarterback, said “Temple is unbelievably bad.”

The Youtuber Depressed Ginger said: “There is no salvaging Temple football. They are just so, so bad.”

This is the kind of bleep Temple fans have to listen to and swallow all season long.

And that was all BEFORE the UCF game.

You want to shoot back at those arguments but your team isn’t giving you much ammunition.

When the real season started–the league one–the Owls took two very large steps back. They lost to a Memphis team they scored 39 points on a year ago and, if you thought getting beat by 42 points to UCF last year was bad, getting beat by 57 was much worse.

It’s hard to swallow that Rod Carey did better against two league opponents in a year that got him fired than Stan Drayton did. Drayton upgraded the talent at running back and wide receiver but it doesn’t seem to have made a difference in the only metric that matters.

Winning.

The only way to change the national perception is by winning but, based on a half-season of results so far, it’s hard to imagine the Owls winning another game.

Are they going to beat Tulsa, a team that hung with Cincy and Ole Miss? They better hope the Tulsa team that shows up at Lincoln Financial Field on Friday night resembles the one that lost at Navy, 53-21. If it does, they have a puncher’s chance.

Maybe Navy is another possibility but that team, unlike Temple, has improved as the season has progressed.

Temple’s coaches and players can change the narrative but the only way to do it is by winning. Being close won’t cut it anymore.

Friday: Tulsa Preview

10.13.22
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Langsdorf: Same bleep, different day

Temple’s defense almost allows a big fat guy to score against it. Far cry from the UMass or RU games

What started out as something sweet turned sour pretty quickly in Temple’s 70-13 loss at UCF on Thursday night.

E.J. Warner was holding the baton and orchestrating the offense like Leonard Bernstein and The New York Philarmonic for a while and Temple oh-so-briefly held a 10-7 lead.

Then the same old Danny Langsdorf offensive coordinator shit that we’ve seen the first five weeks of Temple football predictably happened on the sixth.

Danny Langsdorf contributed to Nebraska’s decline on the college football landscape and now he is doing his part to negate all the good Stan Drayton has done so far.

Quincy Patterson was inserted into the ballgame as the quarterback and–you guessed it–ran the football.

The playlist Bernstein, err, Warner had setup was perfect except that every football team that scouts Temple knows what’s coming when Patterson comes in: A run.

Talk about a buzzkill. As embarrassing as the 30-0 loss to Duke was, this was worse.

This harkens back to the Bobby Wallace days of consecutive 70-7 and 70-21 losses against Bowling Green.

I have no problem at all, unlike former Pennridge and Pitt running back/defensive back Louis Riddick, with Patterson coming into the game.

I have a problem with him doing the same damn thing in Game No. 6 that he did in Games 1-5: Run.

Had Patterson, say, THROWN the ball, there’s a good chance that UCF would not have been ready for it and Temple might … might … have been able to squeeze out a 17-7 instead of a 10-7 lead.

The game of football is a momentum game and who knows how Temple’s defense would have responded with the Owls not only having momentum but also the scoreboard on their side?

Probably wouldn’t have won but would have certainly made it more respectable than the 70-13 disgrace on national TV.

After a perfect 4-0 week against the spread last week, our picks this week.

We will never know.

The Temple defense certainly doesn’t get a pass but what happened was what we predicted would happen in this space a week ago. At what point does the defensive effort erode when they realize that they are busting their ass without any help from the offense?

We saw that breaking point on Thursday night. Say what you will about the defense, but at least that side of the ball gave maximum effort for the first five games.

The offense has shown little effort and less of a clue from a coaching perspective for ALL six games.

It’s not that Langdorf hasn’t been warned.

We’ve been saying in this space for a few weeks that the tendencies of the Owls are so clear when Patterson is in the game that the Owls might as well be handing their entire playbook and the plays themselves to Gus Malzhan during the pre-game warmups.

Winning in college football is hard enough as it is. When your offensive tendencies are that predictable, it’s almost impossible.

New Temple coach Stan Drayton does not have to fire Langsdorf before Tulsa–although by doing so he would send a clear message to Temple fans that he’s not accepting failure–but he does have to use his running back acumen and dictate the philosophy on offense.

Giving Patterson some PASSING series and not RUNNING ones is a good place to start. In a 2-4 season, the Owls haven’t tried that concept yet.

The seventh game might be too late to start but it’s definitely worth a try. Langsdoff has tried this shit for exactly half the season and the stink is unbearable.

Update: Went 4-2 with ODU and Illinois not only covering as dogs but winning outright; Navy covered the 12.5 and Buffalo and UMass went under (41) the No. (47); lost on NIU and Kansas. Last two weeks we were 8-2 ATS. Season: 17-13 ATS.

Monday: The path forward

10.10.22
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Temple at UCF: A bridge too far?

This drive made the AAC championship possible for Temple.

Maybe it’s for the best that nobody expects Temple to win its game at UCF on national television Thursday night.

Temple’s players do. Temple’s coaches do and only the most die-hard fans do.

Maybe it’s best because UCF will be playing not to lose and the Owls will be able to play to win.

UCF went from an 0-12 season to a 6-6 one after Keith Kirkwood made this clutch catch for Temple.

There was a game like that six years ago between the teams when the Owls traveled to UCF with a championship on the line every week and played tight against a Knights’ team coming off an 0-12 season.

Temple fell behind, 25-7, but used perhaps the greatest 32-second drill in the history of the sport to pull out a 26-25 win. If the Owls don’t win that game, they probably don’t win the championship.

Both teams took a step forward after that night as the Owls won the championship and UCF went from 0-12 to 6-6.

If history repeats itself on Thursday night, and the Owls jump to a 25-7 lead and lose 26-25 but finish 6-6, the Owls would probably take that trade because, in reality, expecting a win here may be a bridge too far.

UCF beat a Georgia Tech team that beat Duke. On the flip side, Louisville beat UCF. Those Cardinals also lost to a Boston College team (that also lost to Rutgers). The Owls pretty much played Rutgers to a competitive standoff, getting more first downs, time of possession, and yards but losing only on a fluke-tipped interception.

Fluke-tipped interceptions are part of the game, though, and who is to say the Owls won’t be on the good side of that bouncing ball in a couple of nights?

What we’ve seen so far from Temple is pretty clear: The Owls have a defense that CAN keep them in every game and an offense that CAN cause them to lose every single game. They have an attacking defense and a predictable offense. Putting some unpredictability into that offense should be a feature of Thursday night’s game plan.

Really, the offense showed up only in the 28-0 win over Massachusetts, and, for the 2022 Owls to have the same kind of rebound season the 2016 Knights did, it will have to show up on a more consistent basis. The most interesting Temple-centric score of the weekend occurred at UMass where the same Minutemen who were shut out by the Owls but were also able to put up 24 points on Liberty.

Liberty might be every bit as good as UCF is now.

That’s not much to cling hopes on but there are signs that Temple will be competitive. After an 0-12 season in 2015, that’s all UCF could ask for in 2016 and it achieved that goal. After a 3-9 season in 2021, that’s about the best Temple fans could ask for now.

Of course, if the Temple players and coaches prove everyone else wrong on Thursday night, that would be OK too.

Friday: Game Analysis

10.07.22
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Possible solutions to Temple’s offensive woes

We will know by about midway through the second quarter on Thursday night if Temple made the most of its bye week or frittered it away.

By then, if Temple “gets it” the Owls would have tried:

1) at least one so-called trick play (halfback pass, reverse, double-pass, flea-flicker, Statue of Liberty, a shovel pass, jump pass to the tight end in the red zone, etc.)

Our picks this week

2) a short passing game in lieu of establishing the run;

3), a fake off a fourth-and-two punt at midfield;

4) a run game based on sending multiple blockers to the point of attack (i.e., a tight end in motion);

5) a “passing series” for so-called running quarterback Quincy Patterson.

That’s what we know at this point, six days before a vital league game at UCF.

Central Florida has scouted the Owls. It knows when Patterson is in to defend the run and when E.J. Warner is in to defend the pass.

It would be prudent for Drayton to screw up those preconceived notions by sending Patterson in for a passing series. Just a thought.

Making Gus Malzhan throw that scouting report in the trash by the end of the first quarter should be Priority No. 1 with the Edberg-Olson brain trust this week.

Oh to be a fly on the wall the past few days at the $17 million Edberg-Olson Complex.

I have my hopes but I also have my doubts.

Hopes, because first-year head coach Stan Drayton so far has pushed all the right buttons on the key decisions a CEO needs to make. The film from last year indicated to a lot of Temple fans and, ultimately to Drayton himself, that he needed to bring in a quarterback to compete with D’Wan Mathis. Six touchdown passes against four interceptions is not the ratio any winning team is looking for but that’s the ratio Mathis had last year. The same film also indicated that the Owls needed a serious upgrade at running back and Drayton brought in portal transfers to beat out the holdovers and they’ve shown more promise than the holdovers.

Doubts, because for the first five games Temple has done the equivalent of banging its head against the wall on offense.

How about OUR Warner pitches it to Trey Blair, who throws it back to him, who finds Sanders for six? If it’s a choice between that and a handoff to Saydee for 2 yards, I’m taking that play every time.

The same failed schemes and the same failed game plans. Zero points against Duke was nauseating, 31 points against Lafayette was not good enough and 14 points against Rutgers was putrid. Toledo put 55 on UMass and Temple struggled for 28 against the same team. Three points at a Memphis team that gave up 32 to that power North Texas was telling.

There has been a notion circulating on social media that this is the best we can expect from the offense because “the offensive line is not good enough” and “as soon as Drayton recruits his people” the Owls will start to move the ball.

That assumes next year the Owls will get two offensive linemen as good as Adam Klein and Isaac Moore who will not be here next year. Do you know who might dispute that? Current offensive line coach Chris Wiesehan who coached those two when they were, along with second-round NFL draft pick Matt Hennessy, the best offensive linemen on Geoff Collins’ 8-5 team.

They were also the best linemen on a Rod Carey 8-5 team.

They are the best linemen on Drayton’s first team.

Getting the most out of their talents means scheming plays behind their blocks and sending a good blocking tight end like David Martin-Robinson to help jump-start the running game. Logic dictates if you send three good blockers to an area where two good defenders are, there will be a hole to run through.

Establish a run game and Warner’s play-action passing game becomes that much more effective. Toss in a wrinkle or two and a defense that plays Temple will have its heads spinning. No need to have trick plays on every series but would it kill Temple to have a couple of “trick plays” in a game?

Certainly not.

We haven’t seen that so far in a 2-3 season.

If this season is going to flip from bad to good, we will need to see things we haven’t seen while the Owls were banging their heads against a wall. That’s a good way to send a once-promising season to the Emergency Room and it’s an awful habit that can easily be stopped right now.

Update on above picks: Went 4-0 with a nice return on investment in this four-team parlay.

Monday: Temple-UCF Preview

10.03.22
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Temple football: You are here

You’ve seen those maps in every mall in the country, an arrow pinpointing your location with the words: “You are here.”

In Temple football’s case, “here” means simply this: You have a football team with a winning defense and a losing offense, and the faster you can match one with the other, the better the shopping haul for wins will be.

At some point, the defensive players will ask themselves, maybe subconsciously, what is the point of busting our ass if the offense isn’t going to help out?

Maybe the play on that side of the ball erodes as well.

What’s abundantly clear, though, is that the “easy” part of the season is over. It only gets tougher from here on out. The Owls weren’t competitive when it mattered against Duke and maybe the good effort against Rutgers wasn’t as impressive as originally thought. UMass almost beat Eastern Michigan (which did beat Arizona State) so the Owls getting 28 points on that team was encouraging.

The remaining Temple schedule

Temple is significantly better than it was a year ago but so is the rest of the AAC. The UCF team that Temple faces next hung with a good Louisville team and blew out a Georgia Tech team that just beat Pitt.

Navy, which lost to Memphis by a worse score than Temple did, follows UCF.

After that comes a Friday home game against Tulsa, which played competitive games against two ranked teams, Ole Miss (35-27) and Cincinnati (31-21). Then a home game against USF, a visit to Houston, home against Cincy and East Carolina.

It’s hard to find more than two wins left on that schedule and, even then, those two wins figure to be a battle well into the fourth quarter.

“Rock Steadwell?” Toddy Centeio with the key block here.

The offense–which has some explosive players (Adonicas Sanders, Amad Anderson, Quincy Patterson, for example, produced at places like GT, Purdue and Virginia Tech before coming to Temple)–needs to get the ball in the hands of those guys and others in space. It needs to establish a representative running game to keep its freshman quarterback from getting killed and create space for playmakers.

Easier said than done.

Temple has some time to figure that out but the Owls have only 10 days to get significantly better than what they showed two days ago or the results of this season will be about the same as the last one.

You don’t need a map to remind you that wasn’t a good place to be.

Friday: Possible solutions

10.01.22
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TU Offense: Most predictable in college football

One of the many “trick plays” that put Temple football on the college football map.

Any Joe Blow who watched Temple football over the first five games can tell you three things:

If D’Wan Mathis is in the game at quarterback, expect a fumble. If E.J. Warner is in the game, expect a pass. If Quincy Patterson is in the game, expect a run.

That’s called telegraphing a play.

The “original” Philly special

If Samuel Morse was still around today, he’d be the Temple offensive coordinator. (Inventor of the telegraph for those who don’t know.)

Former Temple running back Sid Morse (who then play-by-play guy Don Henderson called “Morris”) probably would do a better job than Danny Langsdorf.

That is a shame because as good a job D.J. Eliot is doing as defensive coordinator, that’s more than negated by the poor job Langsdorf has done as offensive coordinator.

You can add the “swing and gate” jet sweep (see above video)

There used to be a time when Temple would dictate the narrative on offense.

When Al Golden was head coach, the Owls used a jump pass to the tight end to win a game at the fake Miami. (Little did we know at the time Golden would become head coach at the real Miami.)

Also with Golden in charge, Adam DiMichele used a fake kneel down to throw a touchdown pass in the waning seconds of the first half at Navy.

Under Matt Rhule, Temple changed the momentum in a 27-10 win over Penn State with the first “Philly Special”–a pitch from then quarterback P.J. Walker to former high school quarterback John Christopher (a Temple wide receiver) who found Walker for a key first down. The Owls were down, 10-0, at the time and that play changed the whole game.

When the Eagles used the same play in the Super Bowl, Doug Pederson said “we got the play from watching a college game.”

He never gave credit to Temple. That’s not cool, Doug, so we hope you lose Sunday.

The real sad thing is that Temple has players with unique skills suited to what current head coach Stan Drayton calls “gadget plays.” Mathis can throw the ball on the reverse or a double pass. Running back Trey Blair is more than capable of a halfback pass.

“You want, North Philly, North Philly?”

Five games in, Drayton nor Langsdorf has taken advantage of those unique skills. No halfback pass. No double pass. No pass off a reverse. No pass off a fake kneel down. No jump pass to the tight end. No shovel pass to a running back in the red zone.

No nothing.

Instead, what every Joe Blow knows every highly paid coach in America knows and that’s probably why Temple is having a tough time scoring points right now.

Temple has a couple of choices. It can put Patterson in the game and have him throw (UCF won’t expect that) or it can jump-start an offense whose battery is dead by drawing up innovative plays.

Or it can keep what it has been doing and hope to win games by field goals.

That’s not a good plan. Eleven days to dictate the narrative on offense or keep up with the failed plan of the first five games.

Even Joe Blow can tell Temple that. We will find out soon enough if the Edberg-Olson brain trust is listening or has intentionally put fingers in their ears.

Monday: AAC Landscape

09.30.22
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Temple offense: Time to take off the gloves

Temple running back Trey Blair throws a couple of damn good passes in this 2017 video.

There are three major computer-simulated websites that supposedly put in all the known data and come up with a final score for your weekend college football games.

The most accurate one beats the Vegas point spreads 9.6 percent of the time and has made a lot of, err, investment strategists big-time money.

That one has the final score of tomorrow’s Temple at Memphis game (noon, ESPNU) 37-26 in favor of the bad guys.

Must admit that one has me scratching my head a little bit because I’ve watched all eight games involving both teams and I don’t see: a) Temple scoring 26 points OR b) Memphis scoring 37 points in this one.

First, Temple’s defense has shown signs of being ahead of the offense. Holding Duke to two field goals in the second half was impressive and the 14 points against Lafayette were off turnovers. In addition, holding a Big 10 team to no offensive touchdowns indicates that the Owls might have something here and could hold Memphis in the 20-point area.

Or less.

That’s where the rub comes into play.

Our picks this week

The key point is all of the “known data.” What we don’t know, at least from a Temple perspective, is how willing Stan Drayton wants to show a hand he has not so far this season.

The so-called trick play.

Drayton alluded to as much in his AAC pre-game press conference Monday when he said “outside of the gadget plays” he doesn’t know what former quarterback D’Wan Mathis’s contributions could be to the offense.

Just by saying “outside of the gadget plays” indicates that the word “gadget” has entered Drayton’s mind. If you are Memphis right now, you are probably thinking this: E.J. Warner tosses a backward pass to Mathis, who draws the corners inside so much that Adonicas Sanders is running free down the sideline. Mathis tosses it and Temple gets six.

If you are Memphis, you might think that.

What might Temple think that Memphis isn’t?

How about this?

Warner tosses a backward pass to Mathis, who throws it across the field to Trey Blair–a former damn good high school quarterback–who finds David Martin-Robinson wide open over the middle (because the free safety bit on the fake) for six.

Memphis probably doesn’t know Blair was a quarterback but certainly knows Mathis was. That would involve thinking one step ahead of the bad guys.

Memphis has no idea that Trey Blair can throw a pass. That’s the best reason for him to do so tomorrow. (If you are a Memphis coach, he’s wearing No. 10.)

It would also involve taking the gloves off both figuratively and literally.

First, Blair has worn gloves on every single one of his plays as a running back this season. He needs to come in for at least a few plays before the gadget without wearing those gloves and run a couple of times to sell the play. The reason is simply that you can’t throw as good a pass with gloves on as you can with them off.

It’s worth a shot.

In a game where I see in the 24-17 range either way, a trick play–what Drayton calls a “gadget” play–might make a difference. We know what gadget play Memphis might be expecting. We guess they aren’t expecting double-trickery.

What Temple’s offense did not show anyone, including the simulated computers, has been innovation on offense.

This game might be a good place to start.

It’s time to take the gloves off and throw the computer for a loop that could blow a fuse or two.

Picks this week: Like four favorites and two underdogs. The four favorites are Fresno State to cover the 23.5 at UConn, NIU the 3.5 at Ball State, Ole Miss the 6.5 against visiting Kentucky and Kent State the 11 against visiting Ohio. The dogs are Navy getting 15 at Air Force and UMass getting 20 against an EMU team that gave up 50 to Buffalo last week.

Last week: 2-3 against the spread. Update: A 2-3 week (missed a push in the Kansas game by a point). Won on JMU and Rice and lost on Memphis, Duke and Eastern Michigan. That puts us at 7-7 for the season.

Update: Went 2-4 ATS as UConn not only covered the 23.5-point spread against Fresno State but won outright, Ball State won in overtime against NIU and Kentucky covered the spread while Kent State failed to cover. Won on Navy at USAF and UMass at EMU. 9-11 ATS on the season.

Late Saturday: Game Analysis

Monday: AAC Reaction