08.20.21
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Three names to watch in Temple camp

Absent of actually being there–and really no one in the media is these COVID days–the best way to follow the progress of the Temple football team is OwlsDaily.com.

The editor there is Shawn Pastor, an impartial observer and terrific writer of the Owls since way back in the 1990s. The difference between Shawn and the Brand X site is that he is not an employee of Temple University and therefore is free to criticize.

Without mentioning names, I don’t think you can find a single article on the archives of the “other” site where the editor there has ever hammered a Temple coach for underperforming while that said coach was also collecting a Temple paycheck.

That’s quite understandable. Don’t bite the paycheck hand that feeds you. Conflict of interest? Double-dipping? Call it what you want but I would have loved to have read just one story on that site calling for a firing of a high-profile Temple coach who wasn’t doing his job.

Never did. Probably never will.

If Rod Carey goes 2-10 this year, you are more likely to read a story about how the 2020 COVID season impacted the 2021 year rather than a call for heads to roll.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think so. The proof of that pudding will come in late November if Rod Carey finishes 2-10. If Brand X comes out with a front-page post calling for the firing of Carey, you have it in writing Aug. 20 that I will apologize to them and make a FULL post praising them to the hilt.

There’s a reason that never happened after Bobby Wallace’s 0-11 season over there.

You are definitely reading a head-rolling piece here in November if that happens and, to be fair, a call for Rod to retain his job should he go 10-2. Six wins, six losses? That’s the definition of mediocre and mediocre, as Wayne Hardin said on the day he retired, is “not my cup of tea.” Nor should it ever be Temple’s.

You’ll find plenty of criticisms from Shawn about Bobby Wallace and Ron Dickerson and even Steve Addazio in his wayback machine WHILE they were employed by Temple.

That’s why if Shawn says someone is doing well I tend to listen.

Daesean Winston has earned that open starting safety spot.

Shawn has actually been to the Bronx site where the Owls practiced for the first 10 days of summer camp. The Brand X guy has been there virtually by Zoom.

The three names to watch in Temple’s camp, judging purely from the OwlsDaily.com coverage, are safety Daesean Winston, kicker Noah Botsford and 6-5 receiver Ronnie Stevenson.

Those, to me, just a guy who watched the team from afar in horror last year, didn’t really factor into the 1-6 record.

If the Owls are going to turn that 1-6 into a 6-1 or even a 3-2 start (which would require beating either BC or Rutgers in addition to Akron and Wagner), the guys who weren’t here for the 1-6 will probably have to be the reason for the turnaround.

That’s why the performances of Botsford, Winston and Stevenson are so encouraging.

According to OwlsDaily, Botsford–a nationally acclaimed kicker from St. Augustine Prep in Florida, has emerged not only as the top placekicker for the Owls but also could handle the punting duties.

If he’s that impressive, there’s a chance the Owls go from a laughingstock in the kicking/punting department to a solid dependable squad. From the four kicks that went out of bounds to the too many good returns by the bad guys last year was not a typical Temple football kicking year. Hell, even the 8-5 season was a horrible kicking year by Temple standards.

Winston is another interesting story. He sat out last year because of COVID and the Owls needed another safety to emerge alongside the dependable leader Amir Tyler. Winston has separated himself from everyone else. Why is that good? The Owls got really poor play opposite Tyler last year.

Finally, Stevenson.

A Western Pennsylvania legend at Montour, Stevenson gives the Owls what they seemed to lack when Branden Mack left for the NFL–a large dependable red zone target. According to OwlsDaily, Stevenson has been the surprise of the camp–every bit as good as Temple all-timers Jadan Blue and Randle Jones. (Not what Shawn said or wrote but me reading between the lines.)

If that carries over into the fall, watch out.

What does it mean to the Owls’ bottom line?

Certainly more than one win and maybe a lot more.

A month ago, I never expected, say, the kicking game and the safety position to be in good hands. If those two positions have improved, I’m looking forward to seeing how many more do.

Reading that they are exponentially better from someone I’ve learned to trust over three decades gets the juices flowing and that certainly beats the alternative.

Monday: How history factors into this season

08.15.21
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Golden’s secret sauce for success at Temple

Whatever Rod Carey was cooking at SUNY-Maritime for the last 10 days or so won’t be really tasted until Sept. 2 when the Owls visit Rutgers.

There’s the nagging feeling, at least from this point of view, that the ingredients are just not there and, at the end of the day, this won’t be a satisfying meal for Temple football fans when all is said and done. If I had my druthers, Carey would go 12-0 and keep his job but too many good players walked out the back door and not enough walked through the front one to make up for it.

It’s looking a lot more sour than sweet.

If so, Dr. Jason Wingard couldn’t go wrong in rescuing Al Golden from the obscurity of an NFL position coach come the end of the season.

Al Golden went to the tie in his fourth year.

If anyone knows the secret sauce for success at Temple, it’s Golden.

Last week, Golden spoke with Dave Lapham in a Youtube interview and much of the talk turned to Temple. His degree in sports philosophy undoubtedly helped.

” The biggest question I get at speaking engagements is, “How did you turn around Temple? How did that happen?’ I think the biggest thing was we took secondary educational philosophies and reversed them.

“So, in secondary education, you use sports confidence or different extracurricular activities to build confidence that would carry over into academics. We just did the reverse. We just said we’re going to win as many things. … we’re going to be great in the community, we’re going to compete in the class room, we’re going to compete in the weight room, we’re going to compete in the off-season program. We’re going to do all these things and, ultimately, that would become our culture and we’re going to get this thing turned and that’s what happened. That was a great experience for me, personally, and for my family. We loved being in that area as both of our families were from that area.

“Again (Temple) was kind of a leap of faith. I felt like I was ready, No. 1 and No. 2, I just felt like. I think the number to be correct is that 40 percent of the nation’s population lives between Hartford and Richmond and West of Pittsburgh and then again I don’t know if that number is that way today but, back then, it was so densely populated and I just kept saying to myself we needed about 18 guys a year and, from that, we just kind of changed the paradigm.”

Golden even talked about how it took him four years to switch from sweats on game day to ties at Temple.

“When we first got to Temple, every day felt like training camp,” he said. “We were so far from … there was 120 teams in Division One football my first year. We were 120. Literally there were times those first 18, 24 months where my hair was falling out and I was wearing just a sweat suit or sweat shirt on game day and it just felt like training camp. I’ll never forget before the fourth season my mom was the one who kind of got after my butt a bit and was like, “Hey, the game day is different. You have to look different. You have to feel different.’ So, you know, that’s the year I went with the tie and the rest is history.

“We won nine games in a row and that was the most in 112 years of Temple football at that time and the first bowl game in 30 years and the third bowl game in over a century and that’s where it all started.”

(Golden could be excused for the exaggeration. The Owls won 14-straight games between 1973 and 1974, but having the second-longest winning streak in 120 years should be a point of pride.)

Golden also said it was easier to win at Temple than Miami.

“The Miami thing was harder because I was blindsided,” he said. “There was a huge investigation and we had to give up bowl games and there was probation. … we met great people and that was an unfortunate circumstance.”

Temple, though, was something he took a lot of pride in for good reason. If the wheels fall off at the end of this year, Wingard could pick a lot of guys to succeed Carey but there is only one guy out there who might take the job who has done it to a high level.

“I always felt like I was ready to take the Temple job because I had gone to Boston College with Tom O’Brien and we inherited that gambling scandal,” he said. “So that was hard. Same kind of scenario because we had to start from scratch again. I had the opportunity to do it myself at Temple with a bunch of great, great coaches and support.”

The secret sauce is already bottled and the patent belongs to one guy, even though Matt Rhule made a bundle with his copy of it. Plenty of candidates will want the job if Carey falters but there is only one guy realistically available who has proven to be able to do it.

Friday: Surprise of Camp

08.13.21
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Owls need to get the RIGHT work done

https://twitter.com/i/status/1425610736475201556
D-Line sacks and stopping the run will be the key for the Owls’ success this season.

One of my favorite sayings from Bruce Arians was what he opened almost every practice with:

“Get your work done.”

Because Bruce invited me to a few Temple practices, that was always a part of his mantra before allowing the guys to get on the Geasey Field astroturf.

Sprinkled in, of course, with a few expletives to put an exclamation point and a sense of urgency on the message.

That’s been pretty much the mantra for every Temple coach since, a few more successful than the others.

From what I’ve seen so far from this Rod Carey year, the Owls are getting some work done.

How successful they will be in my view is what kind of work they get in and how that work translates to on-the-field performance. I feel confident about the running backs, offensive line, linebackers, and corners but the defensive line MUST make a giant leap forward.

Owls DL needs to get back to forcing these kind of takeways on a regular basis.

One of those Bob Beamon Jawns as the kids might say.

Quite honestly, just from what they showed me last year, I don’t see the Owls moving off that 2-10 most NEUTRAL observers have them finishing this season. That was a shockingly non-competitive team I saw and I’m not sure I can blame it all on COVID, like Carey seems to be doing.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that there are so many moving parts that don’t factor into the above equation.

Pass rush, for instance.

One of the most maddening things about last season to me is that the Owls didn’t put the bad guy’s quarterback on his ass as much as they should have or even as much as those winning Temple teams of the last decade did.

Manny Walker, their 2020 P5 transfer, gave them two whole sacks and he was the team’s leader. To me, he was a big disappointment.

Not good.

The moving parts are there this summer and they are named Will Rodgers III and Lancine Turay. Rodgers had nine sacks at Washington State and Turay was a big-time recruit the Owls would have had no chance at two years ago who has been moved to the outside.

The middle of the defense allowed too many inside runners too many yards up the middle yet we’ve been hearing good things the last couple of weeks about tackles like Nick Bags and Kevin Robertson. People like Joe Klecko, Dan Klecko, Averee Robinson and Freddie Booth-Lloyd probably were shaking their heads in disbelief a year ago watching their beloved Owls get gouged up the middle.

The stuff we are hearing from the Bronx is the Owls got their stuffing the run game together.

Geez, I hope those things are true because even if the Owls are able to score 30 points a game, they will never win more than a couple if they give up 35 per to teams not named Akron and Wagner.

Getting after the passer and stopping the run is the real work that needs to be done now.

Come Sept. 2, we will find out if that work earns a paycheck or it was another exercise in going through the motions.

Monday: Al Golden Unlocks the Key for Temple success

Friday: Camp Surprises

Monday (8/23): History of Rebounding

Friday: Rutgers fans

08.09.21
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2021 Temple football: Best WRs, OL in G5

On a team most neutral observers have listed down in the 100s, it’s been pretty clear for awhile that Temple two of the best units not only in the AAC but in all of G5 football.

Specifically, offensive line and wide receivers.

Despite finishing 1-6, the offensive line allowed a league-low 1.7 sacks per game in 2020. It returns four starters and a junior college All-American comes in to replace the oft-injured Vince Picozzi, who was the other starter. Really, if you count tight end David Martin-Robinson (and you should) the line returns five starters not only from 2020 but from the 2019 regular season when they finished 8-4. They proved to be good run-blockers more during the 2019 season than the 2020.

Pretty impressive but not as impressive as the wide receiver group, led by Temple’s all-time leading single-season record-holder Jadan Blue. As good as Blue is (and he’s an NFL player), Randle Jones on the other side is slightly faster and has been called a “flat-out stud” by head coach Rod Carey.

There’s plenty of depth, too, with a productive Power 5 portal transfer in Purdue’s Amad Anderson Jr. Anderson caught 36 passes for 362 yards and three touchdowns for Purdue in a couple of seasons and, with Blue and Jones, should get a lot of single-coverage opportunities. (Hell, you can’t double-cover a single Temple receiver because that opens things up for the other two.)

What does this mean for the team’s bottom line?

Not much if the defense and special teams can’t be fixed.

That’s something that Carey should be placing a priority right now during two weeks of practice in the Bronx.

Still, good defense or no, when the Owls have the ball there is a chance … a chance .. that they can turn the Lincoln Financial Field scoreboard into an adding machine.

If so, the season could be more exciting than the experts say and that something is better than nothing.

Friday: Some areas of concern

Monday: Camp surprises

Friday (8/20); Rutgers fans

08.06.21
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Expansion: All talk, no action

Temple is about as likely to build a stadium as this is to happen.

Lately, we’ve been having an explosion of expansion mania in college football.

The Big 12 commissioner, Bob Bowlsby, accused ESPN of conspiring with the AAC, of all conferences, to take break up his group.

ESPN has denied it.

Over a month now and that’s all it’s been: All talk.

This time, it seems like something might happen. Does, say, Kansas going to the Big 10 help Temple?

No.

Nobody really knows what’s going to happen, if anything, but I will take a guess.

The current Group of Five schools largely remain in the G5 and the current Power 5 schools largely remain in the P5.

That’s it.

Notice the missing school from all this realignment talk …

The only change I see is that the schools in the P5 will consolodate into four mega conferences. The leftovers from the Big 12 are more likely to join the PAC-12 than they are the AAC.

The AAC won’t be absobing the remnants of the Big 12. There won’t be a Power 6.

Why?

Money talks and the 64 schools in the P5 have never shown one iota of sharing that money with any newcomers.

This whole thing reminds me of the talk about Temple’s ill-fated football stadium.

Back in March of 2012, a big football contributor was willing to tell anyone he saw at Temple basketball’s NCAA basketball game with North Carolina State that the stadium was a “done deal” — meaning that it will be built.

Knowing the North Philly neighborhood like I do, I said: “Wake me up when the first shovel hits the ground.”

Almost a full decade later and the first shovel has never hit the ground.

Now it’s a done deal the other way.

Temple has signed a 10-year Linc lease extension and not a single official affilated with the university wants to talk about the status of the stadium. That kind of tells you all you need to know.

That’s kind of the way I feel about all of this expansion talk. Wake me up when Temple joins a Power conference.

Until, then, like the stadium, it’s a nice thing to dream about while smoking a pipe.

Monday: Two reasons for optimism

08.01.21
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Adam DiMichele: Sorry to see him go

Adam DiMichele’s final game as a Temple Owl.

Before too much time passed, we wanted to note here that Adam DiMichele is no longer with the Temple program and we’re sorry to hear that.

The news was official less than two weeks ago when Adam sent out a tweet saying goodbye.

Maybe someday we will hear the real story about why a guy who has been here since the beginning of the Al Golden Era left but it won’t be this year and maybe not next.

As soon as I found out, I texted someone I knew inside the E-O simply this: “What’s the deal with Adam DiMichele?”

“What do you mean?”

“He resigned 27 minutes ago.”

“Oh no. I know he wasn’t happy but I didn’t think it was that bad. I’m bummed. He’s a real good dude.”

Whatever the deal is, we simply know this. Of the four coaches Pat Kraft specifically asked Rod Carey to keep (Fran Brown, Ed Foley, Adam DiMichele and Gabe Infante), three of them are gone and Kraft isn’t here to protect a single one.

Sad, because DiMichele was a part of the turnaround from the beginning. He played for Golden and coached under three uniquely different personalities, which suggests he gets along with everyone. He was quarterback with three Philadelphia teams (Eagles, where he threw a touchdown pass in a preseason game to a guy named Gibson), Soul and Owls.

Adam’s career stats at Temple.
P.J.’s career stats at Temple.

DiMichele was one of my five favorite Temple players of all time (Paul Palmer, Joe Klecko, Tyler Matakevich and P.J. Walker were the others).

Stat-wise, DiMichele didn’t compare to Walker but there were extenuating circumstances. Because Joe Paterno never released him from his Penn State scholarship, DiMichele was eligible only three years to play at Temple, not four. Plus, he missed half a season with a broken leg.

The fourth year he would have been the quarterback of a great Temple team that finished 9-3. That team had everything but a quarterback. DiMichele would have been that quarterback and both his stats and an insanely good legacy here would have been cemented.

Would that team have gone 12-0 during the regular season with DiMichele at quarterback? I think they would have. They lost, 31-6 against Penn State with Vaughn Charlton and Chester Stewart at quarterback and they probably would have beaten UCLA in the bowl game and those were the two best teams they lost to that season.

Maybe 13-0 including the bowl (although the bowl opponent would have been better than UCLA) is a stretch but 12-1 was definitely within reach.

No way this team would have been “only” 9-3 with a quarterback like Adam DiMichele behind center.

It would have been fun to find out.

We will never know the story of how his playing career would have ended but someday I’m confident we will hear the real story of how his coaching career ended here.

Someday, but probably not soon.

Friday: Expansion Mania

Monday: Optimism abounds

07.29.21
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Temple football: Bronx Cheers?

If the Owls bond as a winning team, this is where the magic will happen.

After training camp in the 1992-93 season, Doug Moe went on record with the press as saying his Philadelphia 76ers would win 50 games.

Six months later, he was fired by General Manager Jimmy Lynam after only 19 wins.

In one of the greatest quotes ever in Philadelphia sports, Moe said he only made that 50-win claim on this basis: “We looked great practicing against ourselves. When we had to play other teams, it was different.”

That reminds me a little of both the very important upcoming two weeks in both Temple football and many Cherry and White games that tutored me in the past. The Owls looked like national champions practicing against themselves in so many of the prior Al Golden Era years I was fooled like, maybe, twice.

It never happened a third time and it won’t happen now.

Injuries are one concern; drowning might be another.

Moe is a good example only because he had a similar history to current Temple head coach Rod Carey. Before getting to the Sixers he was 609-492, which is damn close, percentagewise, to Carey’s 52-30 before he got to Temple.

The Owls will begin training camp at SUNY-Maritime in the Bronx next week and Carey is not promising 50 or even five wins in 2021.

He knows what he saw and so do I.

All he’s doing is promising a team that “will play hard and make the fans proud”, whatever that means.

Me?

I’d prefer they play soft and win 10 games.

If they play hard and win two or even four, that won’t make me proud.

The two weeks of practice in the Bronx of all places is obviously an attempt at team bonding and to avoid all of the City of Philadelphia COVID pitfalls that set Temple back in 2020.

It’s a longshot but if it works I’m down.

What I know is what I saw.

COVID schmovid, that was a shockingly uncompetitive football team I saw in 2020.

I don’t care if you lose 20 starters, a 28-3 loss at Lincoln Financial Field to an East Carolina team this program has routinely beaten like a drum is unacceptable. Calling a dump pass to a running back down two at Navy when you had a 6-6 receiver against a 5-10 corner is also shockingly incompetent from a coaching standpoint.

When every Owl fan watching on TV knows a fade in the corner will work before the fact and the staff calls a head-scratcher, that’s a red flag. Who are these guys stealing money from the university?

Now they have to earn their pay.

After two weeks in the Bronx, the Owls return for the final two weeks at 10th and Diamond before the Sept. 2 opener at Rutgers.

You can talk all you want about Bronx and North Philly, but the proof is in Piscataway.

Winning there will change the whole vibe right now. Otherwise, be prepared for a lot of “Bronx Cheers” beginning in the home opener the next week. I’d like to bet on the former but I’ve seen this play before.

Monday: Tribute to a champion

07.19.21
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What would Geoff Collins do?

According to the website coacheshotseat.com, two former Temple guys sit at Nos. 14 and 15, respectively.

While there seems to be some debate about how rosy the future is for Rod Carey at Temple, there is less debate about current Georgia Tech head coach Geoff Collins had he remained at Temple.

It would not have ended well.

Yikes …

Hell, my best guess has been since December of 2019 that it won’t end well for Carey here but Collins didn’t tee things up for Rod like Matt Rhule did for Geoff.

Carey probably has one more year, maybe two, to post a winning season at Temple or he’s out of here.

Collins would have been on a shorter leash had he remained here simply because his contract would have been up.

Collins recruited primarily from the South, eschewed local connections, and his two classes were mediocre at best.

Had he remained here would he have been able to switch gears like Carey did in the offseason, promote Gabe Infante and hire a guy like Preston Brown?

Doubtful.

So, in my mind and probably in a lot of other minds, Temple is slightly better off with Carey than Collins.

Put it this way: Carey beat Collins, 24-2, with AAC talent while Collins had the benefit of ACC recruiting classes.

Knowing Temple as I do, Carey will probably be able to survive a 2-4 win season as most of the experts expect the Owls to have. Look at it this way: Did Steve Addazio survive a four-win season at Temple?

He sure did until Boston College took the Owls off the hook.

Temple rarely fires head coaches who it owes money to and I doubt they’d start with Carey.

Collins, on the other hand, is feeling the heat in Atlanta and that comes with the Power 5 territory.

Maybe he can make a move to solidify his job by capitalizing on the new NIL rule, but that remains to be seen. The fans there are restless and a story published over the weekend illustrated why.

That’s Georgia Tech’s problem, not Temple’s. We have our own, of course, but things could have been worse.

Friday-Monday: Off the Grid (we’ll be in the Poconos this weekend and our only internet will be by phone so no stories)

Friday, July 30: Summer camp preview

07.16.21
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New Beginnings: Recruiting

National high school coach of the year Gabe Infante would be my first choice to replace Rod Carey should the wheels fall off this year.

Maybe after nearly three years of banging his head against a wall Rod Carey has figured out a way to succeed at Temple.

Better late than never.

For MOST of the first two years, he relied primarily on his Midwest recruiting connections.

Some nice players out there but, when they get to 10th and Diamond, there has been a history of culture shock.

Not every intersection is for everybody.

The good news is that there are literally thousands of urban kids–good players from good families–who are not only used to the urban environment but prefer it.

The Owls have an established gem on the Pennsylvania side of the river in Gabe Infante. Great head coach with multiple state championships under his belt and the kids love him.

Now they have Preston Brown.

Lose one Camden Brown (Fran), gain another.

Two-time South Jersey state champion Preston Brown (holding trophy) would be my second choice to replace Carey. If Carey goes 10-2 this year, I vote for Carey to remain at Temple.

I would argue Carey got the better Brown.

Hear me out here.

The Brown who went to Rutgers was never a head coach and never won squat as a head coach.

The Brown who Temple hired this week not only won one but multiple New Jersey championships as a head coach at Woodrow Wilson.

The kids love the Temple Brown as much and maybe more than the Rutgers Brown (no relation).

Plus, Carey has now surrounded himself with legendary state championship high school coaches in the very fertile recruiting ground (Southeast Pennsylvania and South Jersey) any Temple head coach must dominate. There are more FBS players in the fourth-largest market in the country than there are in 10 of the next 35 markets.

Temple should have a huge advantage over the Cincys, Memphises and Tulsas and at least rival the UCF/USF Orlando-Tampa market. No Temple fan has been harder on Carey than me but, if anything, I’m objective.

There is no reason (none) that Temple should not compete for the AAC title every season.

The fact that Carey doesn’t feel threatened by the existence of Brown and Infante so close to his office speaks volumes for Carey’s confidence in himself and that he can do the job here.

Since I’m much more a fan of 10-2 than I am of 2-10, I hope Carey’s faith in these two great men pays off sooner than later.

Time is running out for Carey, but it is definitely on the side of Gabe and Preston. The fact that Carey doesn’t feel threatened by either guy makes me respect Rod more today than I did yesterday. Rod, I hope to hell that you succeed because 2020 reminded me more than anything that I hate losing more than I love winning.

Monday: WWGCD?

07.12.21
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Rod Carey knows how to beat the Big 10

Mike Locksley gets the no-look handshake from Rod Carey after beating the Big 10 in 2019
Sales of this sweatshirt go off the charts with a win at RU.

Rod Carey knows how to do two things:

Lose bowl games.

Beat Big 10 teams.

He’s 0-7 in bowl games.

He’s 5-2 against the Big 10.

Even one of the two losses to the Big 10 was a 20-13 loss to 12-1 Ohio State in 2015.

Presumably, in all seven of those games (not the bowl ones) Carey was working at a huge talent disadvantage.

That bodes well for Carey and the Temple Owls some 50 days from now in the opener at Rutgers.

Bum Phillips might have said it best of Don Shula in 1979: “He can take his ‘um and beat your ‘um.”

Gotta love the fake punt. Temple used to do that all the time.

That’s the ultimate compliment for a head coach, meaning he can take his players from either team and win the game.

Really, though, how much more talent does Rutgers have than Temple, considering the Owls beat Maryland, 20-17, two years ago for Carey’s last win against the Big 10 and later in the same year Maryland took Rutgers to the woodshed, 48-7?

It usually takes a long time for entire rosters to be recycled out of programs and that’s even the case with the transfer portal. There are enough Temple playmakers from the 2019 team to contribute in 2021.

So Carey is going to have to work whatever magic he did in that win over Maryland, plus beating an 8-5 Iowa team in 2013 (30-27), plus Purdue (55-24) that same year, Northwestern (23-15) in 2014 and Nebraska (21-17) in 2017. All the games except Maryland were on the road and all, including Maryland, came in September.

Carey knows something about putting the several months he gets to prepare for more talented opponents to good use.

The good news for Temple fans is that the core members of the NIU staff who made their fortune beating the Big 10 are still in place at Temple.

You have to assume that even this version of Temple has more talent than most of the NIU squads Carey took to Big 10 stadiums. Plus, this group at Rutgers isn’t as talented as Iowa in 2013 nor Maryland in 2019. NIU was a double-digit underdog in all four of its Big 10 wins under Carey and Temple will be probably a double-digit underdog at Rutgers.

Carey has been saying for 10 months now that COVID beat Temple in 2020 more than the six opponents did.

He gets his best chance to back up that statement on Sept. 2.

The fact that he has a pretty good history against the Big 10 provides some level of comfort and the mindset around here will change quickly if he proves his point that night.

We’ll worry about the bowl record later.

Friday: New Beginnings

Monday: WWGCD?