03.16.19
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Carey: First Impressions Could Not Be Better

Normally, at this time of the spring practice coaches usually bullbleep their way through media sessions and say this guy or that guy looked good.

That happened before with Temple coaches Steve Addazio and Geoff Collins, not so much with Al Golden and Matt Rhule.

Judging from the video posted on Shawn Pastor’s excellent OwlsDaily.com site, Rod Carey has planted his flag very much with the latter group and not the former. In it, he said he got to know the faces and now that the helmets are on, he’s asking which guy was what. When he was pressed for specific players, he didn’t make stuff up just saying that it’s to be determined.

That is the best first impression of all.

Fortunately, we are not alone.


“Excited to see what a real
coach with good talent can
do here, been a few years
since we’ve had someone in
charge I am excited about.”
_ former Temple linebacker
Matt Powell

Matt Powell, a former walk-on linebacker who earned a scholarship under Al Golden, sent us a note yesterday with this remarkably perceptive remark: “Excited to see what a real coach with good talent can do here, been a few years since we’ve had someone in charge I am excited about.”

Me, too.

The video didn’t prove that there is no bullbleep with the new coach, but it was at least Exhibit A in a case that will be proven over time.

Each coach Temple has hired has brought something to the table. Al Golden brought organization and terrific recruiting skills, Steve Addazio hired a staff that was a Power 5 one, not a G5 one. Matt Rhule contributed concepts learned from Tom Coughlin and was able to bake a delicious recipe from ingredients in the Golden and Daz cookbooks.

Collins?

I’m thinking. Guy was enthusiastic, I’ll give him that, but so were the others.

Carey brings in 52-30 record in a league Temple did not dominate, beat a team last year Temple could not beat (with lesser talent than Temple) and those credentials represent an improvement on the past.

Being brutally honest on opening day is just icing a cake which should be tasty.

Tuesday: Call To Season Tickets

Thursday: Pro Day Thoughts

Saturday: A Whole Lot of Stability

Monday (3/25): Return to Mon/Wed/Fri pub schedule until C and W Day

 

03.14.19
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Just a guess on number’s games

Only two players on the current Temple roster return inheriting their single-digit roster numbers.

One of the byproducts of the next month will be to find seven other guys to join Chapelle Russell (3) and Shaun Bradley (5) as the toughest non-offensive linemen on the squad.

Taking a guess at the other spots is a little like filling out the March Madness brackets next week: A fun endeavor but probably not 100 percent foolproof.

The good news is that there are probably about 20 deserving tough guy candidates out there. Before the players even vote, we’ll take a guess at these seven with the assigned number in parenthesis:

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Dan Archibong (photo by Zamani Feelings) is a good bet to earn a single digit.

Dan Archibong (9) _ For my money, the toughest and most talented player along the defensive line and ready to take the mantle from Michael Dogbe as the leader on the defensive interior.

Zack Mesday (4) _ Granted a fifth year of eligibility (see above video), this tough guy worked his way from walk-on to starter following the same path of fellow walk-ons to starters Nick Sharga and Rob Ritrovato so we will give him the same number.

narducci

Anthony Russo (8) _ Probably deserves P.J. Walker’s former number due to having to deal with the punishment of working with former offensive coordinator Dave Patenaude, whose concept of max protect was telling Russo to slide. Russo should thrive under a system with a little less RPO and a little more emphasis on the run game and play-action.

Isaiah Wright (1) _ Anyone who makes first-team All-American as a special teams’ performer is a tough guy. For the first three years of his time at Temple, two coaches have talked about getting the ball “more” in Wright’s hands but there’s only so many plays a wide receiver or wildcat quarterback can get. If Wright moves to tailback, he’s going to get the ball 15-20 times a game more and Temple’s offense should be 15-20x as effective.

wright

Sam Franklin (7) _ Franklin has been a “jack-of-all-trades” for the Owls, playing safety, defensive end and linebacker and effective in all three spots. It takes a tough and smart guy to learn three positions at the same time. He’s been a great leader who will probably slot into a starter’s spot wherever he’s needed.

Branden Mack (6) _ Nobody made more clutch catches in traffic than this former Cheltenham High star, including the catch that tied Cincinnati with 22 seconds left in regulation. Mack rips the ball out of defensive backs’ hands. That’s a tough guy.

William Kwenkeu (2) _ Wearing No. 35, Kwenkeu was the defensive star of the Gasparilla Bowl, a game he registered his first career start and had a pair of sacks. Due to a change in coordinators last year, he did not play as much as he should have but he has both the talent and toughness to reclaim his spot in the lineup.

Saturday: First Impressions

 

03.12.19
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5 Priorities for Temple spring ball

spring

At the start of every spring practice, Bruce Arians used to give a little speech to the Temple players.

It always closed with, in a strange Southern accent for a York, Pa. boy: “Get your work done.”

Spring ball at Temple, which begins today, has changed a lot since Arians. The rock-strewn practice field is now the Pavilion. Geasey Field is waiting for a stadium that will probably never arrive.

Back then, the work pretty much started on the first day of spring ball. Today, it’s just a continuation of a 365-day deal. Just because the NCAA insists on a spring ball structure that includes 15 organized practices, that doesn’t mean nothing gets done on the other days. The work continues, not starts, today, but should be at least five points of emphasis near the top of new head coach Rod Carey’s list (in no particular order):

photo

Return to Normalcy 

That means structured depth charts, not vague “above-the-line’ concepts. Since Carey is starting with a clean slate, everybody else does, too, so don’t expect a full depth chart until after the spring game. It also probably means less D.J. playing and band participation while the work is getting done.

Restoring Depth 

Carey has said the difference between being a new coach at Temple and elsewhere is that a new coach elsewhere has to start from scratch with a bad football team. At Temple, this new coach inherits a good football team across those two first-team depth charts. One of the challenges this year, is finding depth, particularly on the offensive and defensive lines. It’s great to have players like Zack Mesday, Karamo Dioubate, Dan Archibong and Dana Levine returning along the defensive line, but it’s time to identify their replacements. The same can be said for the offensive line.

wright

Finding a Running Back 

Unless you count current wide receiver Isaiah Wright, a one-time running back No. 3 on the depth chart under Matt Rhule, there is no Ryquell Armstead, Jahad Thomas or Bernard Pierce-level talent on this roster. That’s why you have you have to count Wright since the Owls did not go out and get a big-time JUCO or grad transfer there. Will Carey have the courage to experiment with Wright back there? Having an embarrassment of riches at wide receiver (Sean Ryan, Branden Mack, Jadan Blue, Freddie Johnson, and Randall Jones) should buy a lot of courage. Blue is particularly interesting because he was by far the star of the spring game last year and had to sit out the fall.

russo

Fixing the Offense 

Right at the top of winning football is protecting your quarterback and getting to the bad guy’s quarterback. Offensively, Dave Patenaude thought the best way to protect a quarterback with an NFL-level skill set was telling Anthony Russo to slide. The Owls will have to do much better than that this year and take a page out of Bill Belichick’s book and abandon the RPO offense. Belichick won a championship by keeping his prototypical NFL skill set quarterback upright with an effective running game that set up all sorts of interesting play-action options downfield and that is the way the Temple personnel is set up.

Sound Defensive Concepts

Mayhem was promised by the last coaching staff but rarely delivered. Geoff Collins’ schemes often gambled and produced some effective takeaway stats, but also factored into games where the Owls gave up 57, 52 and 45 points–all losses. In a halftime basketball interview with Harry Donahue, Carey said he puts a premium on a defense that keeps the bad guys out of the end zone even if that means fewer turnovers.

That sounds like a plan. The work doesn’t begin today but continues in a more structured environment.

Bruce Arians would probably approve of the approach.

Thursday: Numbers Guessing

 

03.09.19
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Armstead’s 4.45 makes him intriguing for Eagles

armsteadcherry

Forget the over 1,000 yards rushing and 13 touchdowns last year.

Temple running back Ryquell Armstead made a lot of money at the NFL combine with a 4.45 40-yard dash, the second-fastest among the running backs invited.

Armstead came into the combine listed as a “potential seventh-rounder or undrafted free agent” but moved up at least a couple of rounds with that eye-opening time.

Screenshot 2019-03-08 at 3.07.47 PM

Maybe even with the Philadelphia Eagles, who need a running back. The Eagles have been reluctant about drafting Temple players in the past and leaked a story to the Philly media about their interest in Florida Atlantic running back Devin Singletary. The FAU back bombed in this speed time at the combine, clocking a 4.73. They have also shown interest in Memphis’ Darrell Henderson even though a number of AAC coaches (including former Houston coach Major Applewhite) called Armstead “by far the toughest running back in our league.”

Armstead has always put up the numbers on the field, the only question was about his durability and how he would fare in the combine. The fact that he fared much better in the combine than a couple of other Eagle targets has to at least put him in the conversation because of the Eagles’ emphasis on combine numbers in the past.

For a team that sorely missed Jay Ajay last year, Rock would be a significant upgrade in that area and probably can be grabbed in the fourth or fifth round, enabling the Eagles to address other needs in the first few rounds.

Let’s hope Howie Roseman and company in thinking about that because whatever team adds Armstead is getting a potential starter who has the speed to be an explosive cog in the running game.

 

03.07.19
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A New (Old) Twist to Single-Digit Tradition

tyler

Tyler Matakevich was the ultimate single digit, a walk-on turned national POY

What do new Coke, Team Jeopardy and the Temple football single-digit tradition under Geoff Collins have in common?

All represent a failed attempt to improve a product that was already perfect.

Fortunately, we can say for all three traditions, sanity has been restored.

swaggyt

The Temple football single-digit tradition was established by Al Golden with one purpose in mind: Have the players all work hard to achieve a goal and have them recognize other players who have stood out among their peers. Voting was limited to players only because Golden always felt that they know who the tough guys wearing the numbers 1-9 were. Matt Rhule, who coached under Golden, felt the same way.

Two carpetbaggers from Florida, Steve Addazio and Collins highjacked the process by picking the tough guys with only limited input from the players.

 

Much to his credit, new head coach Rod Carey has brought back the tradition the way it was intended.

“We’re going to let the players pick them,” Carey said. “From listening to some people here, that’s the way the deal was originally intended and I kind of like the players having control of that.”

Screenshot 2019-03-06 at 10.31.42 PM

A question on Jeopardy last week.

There are a couple of things there that impress me about Carey. He’s willing to listen to the Temple guys–most likely we’re talking assistant coach Ed Foley here–and he wants full player participation in this endeavor.

I like it, too.

Players get in the meeting room, write the guy’s name on a piece of paper and drop it in a hat and the guys with the most votes get digits 1-9.

The only sad thing here is that offensive linemen are prohibited from NCAA rule from wearing the numbers 1-9. Otherwise, you know guys like Dion Dawkins, Kyle Friend and current center Matt Hennessy would be wearing them.

As a big Jeopardy fan, watching the show in the last two weeks was pure torture because there was much discussion about strategy than playing the game. We were back to the show the way it was originally intended and it was a good enough game to begin with that never needed tinkering. Alex Trebek, who is facing an uphill cancer battle, established a solid brand with a good formula that never needed to be tinkered with.

The same can be said of Temple’s single-digit brand.

Leaving the single-digit tradition at Temple to a players’ only deal falls into the same category. Kudos to Carey for recognizing that.

Saturday: Making That Money

03.04.19
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Tribute to a Legend: Al Shrier

This space was supposed to be occupied today by a discussion about a new twist to the Temple single-digit tradition.

We’ll get to that some other day because that seems so insignificant now.

Al Shrier, the Temple Sports Information Director before I was born and the school’s SID through my education at Temple and much of my subsequent career in the sports writing business, has taken his famous briefcase to the other side.

Legend is a word thrown around far too much these days, but Al Shrier was a legend in the way the word was meant to be used.

1409

“Bill, listen to me. Hire. Matt. Rhule.”

The news that Shrier passed away was incredibly sad for anyone at Temple and elsewhere who has ever had a positive interaction with him, in my case several hundred.

I wrote here several years ago that Skip Wilson, the long-time baseball coach, belongs on Temple’s Mount Rushmore with Wayne Hardin, John Chaney, Harry Litwack and Al Shrier.

People were somewhat taken aback that I put a SID on that mountain, but that’s where Shrier belonged. For a long time before Hardin or Chaney or even Wilson got there, Shrier was, if not the face, the mouthpiece of Temple sports.

Only Litwack, the basketball coach, pre-dated him.

Putting sports, the front porch of any university, out there in a positive light was Shrier’s job and he did it extraordinarily well.  He set the standard for all SIDs to follow. He was named the nation’s top SID four times and is a member of five Halls of Fame: the CoSIDA Hall of Fame:, the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame, the Philadelphia Big 5 Hall of Fame, the Temple Athletics Hall of Fame and the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

That doesn’t even begin to tell his story because you would need a thick volume to do that.

As a former sports editor of the Temple News, Shrier had an especially soft spot for those who followed him in the same spot. Some of them included Ray Didinger, Phil Jasner, Dick Weiss, Joe Juliano, Craig Evans, Mike Ferretti and a host of accomplished journalists. Somewhere in there, I spent a stint on what was then a 7-day-a-week job to put out a daily from Monday through Friday that took up more of my time than my full course load.

Nobody helped me more than Al, who arranged interviews and trips for us with the teams. Later, as the Temple beat writer for Calkins Newspapers, Al made sure I had a seat on every football charter flight, often calling me before I called him.

As late as 2012, Shrier still had a hand in making decisions at Temple. He took then-athletic director Bill Bradshaw aside the second time Matt Rhule applied for the head football coaching job and said, “Bill, listen to me. Hire. Matt. Rhule.”

Bradshaw said it wasn’t until that moment he made the decision and he told that story at Matt Rhule’s opening press conference. Four years later, Temple was rewarded with its first-ever major football championship because of that decision.

Ironically, because he was reluctant to fly, Al only made the road games he could drive to but he still made sure the Temple story was told. Everywhere he went, he had his legendary briefcase. He never told anyone what he carried in that.

That was probably the first question St. Peter asked a few hours ago.

Thursday: Single-Digit Twists

03.02.19
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Pure Gold: Temple-Rutgers 1988

Prospectors made a dangerous trip across the continent in 1849 looking for a few nuggets of good near a mill owned by a guy named Sutter.

Different things have varying value to people but I found some real value in a Throwback Thursday post the other day from former Temple offensive lineman Ray Haynes (No. 71 in your program in the above video).

Screenshot 2019-03-01 at 4.00.15 PM

To me, the value in this Temple vs. Rutgers game (1988) was that it only existed in my memory. I was in the press box that day and remembered a lot of detail but, in my searches on the internet, was not able to find it until Ray posted it. That’s the problem with a lot of past Temple games. You can get almost every game Alabama has played in the last 50 years, but it’s almost impossible to find any Temple game film in the 1980s or before.

I used to have the national broadcast of the Garden State Bowl but I lost that tape. I hope to see it again someday.

Screenshot 2019-03-01 at 11.40.50 PM

I don’t know how Haynes got this Rutgers’ game  (maybe an old recording on a VCR) but I’m glad he did. It was a trip back into a simpler time when a road game meant not a trek across the country but a simple hour drive up Route 95 and 206. It also meant shorter trips to places like Syracuse, Penn State and West Virginia.

Maybe all of these Eastern Regional schools will one day see the logic in forming a football alliance again, but probably not in any of our lifetimes.

It also reminded me of the rivalry Temple and Rutgers used to have and how that Rutgers’ team was able to beat Penn State and Michigan State that year, but not Bruce Arians’ Owls.

Screenshot 2019-03-01 at 11.41.41 PM

It was abundantly clear how hard-fought that game was and how Bruce Arians’ teams played with a purpose, especially on offense, that made a lot of sense. To me, Arians’ schemes were more sophisticated and effective in 1988 than any of the schemes we’ve seen from Al Golden, Steve Addazio, Matt Rhule and Geoff Collins since.

Hopefully, new Temple coach Rod Carey will bring that kind of gameday expertise back to the Owls and be able to raise the level already good talent here and that will create a domino effect that begets wins and more talent.

That’s the kind of Gold maybe Pat Kraft was prospecting for when he took a chance on Carey.

Meanwhile, finding this precious memory Pure Gold.

Tuesday: The 360 Single Digit Twist

Thursday: The Season Ticket Call

Saturday: Spring Practice To-Do List

02.28.19
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Gabe Infante Hints at New Offense

MO-gabe-infante-colin-lenton-940x540

National High School Coach of the Year Gabe Infante will have a positive impact on both Temple’s game plans and recruiting

A few weeks back, a writer for Philly Voice named Joe Santoliquito (who I will henceforth drop the journalistic norm and refer to him as Joe in any second reference) made a big splash by spilling some locker room gossip about Carson Wentz.

No names were attached to the quotes in that piece but it got a lot of attention.

Nice story and it got a lot of clicks for a website called Philly Voice but a more newsworthy story Joe did last week received as much splash as a pebble skipping across a puddle on 13th Street.

In other words, none.

Screenshot 2019-02-28 at 12.01.03 AM

It deserves mention here because it says a lot more about the other Lincoln Financial Field football tenant, Temple University.  Full disclosure here: As a big fan of the Catholic League, I’ve followed Infante’s teams closely over the last decade and I can write without hesitation that it was the best-coached team, college, high school or NFL, I’ve seen in that time frame. Infante will have a positive impact on Temple’s preparation and recruiting, which has been lacking in the past couple of years.

Joe did a story on new Temple running backs’ coach Gabe Infante and, in it, Gabe went on record as saying more revealing than anyone said in that Wentz story: “There’s no chance to catch your breath and learn how to do it, while you’re installing a new offense.”

On the surface, that’s a pretty innocuous remark. Of course, moving to a new job would naturally involve a new offense except for the fact that St. Joseph’s Prep and Northern Illinois ran essentially the same read-option offense a year ago. It was also pretty much the same offensive look Dave Patenaude ran at Temple last year.

Screenshot 2019-02-28 at 11.13.05 PM

While Prep and NIU had the personnel to run such an offense, Temple does not. The Owls have a classic NFL skill set passer in Anthony Russo and fans had to cringe every time Patenaude was asking a talent like that to slide, which he did rather well.

Maybe this group of accomplished coaches looked at the current Temple personnel grouping and decided to fit the offense around the skills of the players they have and not tried to force a system onto ill-fitting players. The offense Temple should run is the exact same system Bill Belichick ran while leading the New England Patriots to the NFL championship–heavy use of the fullback to establish the run and explosive downfield plays in the passing game as a result of play-action.

Definitely the antithesis of the RPO game and something to look forward to in the weeks ahead.

Joe wrote a story that had a lot more meat to it than his Wentz one because it attached a name to a quote and hinted at real positive change.

We should find out soon enough but, with Infante around, the Owls should be in pretty good shape.

Saturday: Pure Gold

Tuesday: The Annual Season Ticket Call

Thursday: 5 Things to Watch in Spring Practice

 

02.26.19
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Carey Tweets Up a Storm (for him)

Screenshot 2019-02-25 at 1.28.05 PM

Pedestrian is a pretty good word to describe Rod Carey’s approach to social media.

His twitter account usually consists of shoutouts to the other Temple athletic teams, mostly men’s basketball, and a season ticket promo.

So that’s why when the new Temple football coach came up the tweet at the top of this post it could have raised a few eyebrows and definitely both of mine. Carey isn’t as savvy as Collins was with social media, but Collins wasn’t as savvy on game day as I would have liked. To me, I can do without the social media savvy and if the tradeoff is some good old-fashioned game-day coaching.

I think it is. We will find out not in August against Bucknell (I could probably coach the Owls to a win on that day), but the early part of September.

Since Carey did not specify the reason for being so fired-up, the timeline of the tweet matches up with the Owls getting their first commitment for the 2020 recruiting class and that is Dyshier Clary, a defensive end from Woodrow Wilson High in Camden, N.J. A couple of things here. Clary is 6-3 and 210 pounds and, while the 6-3 part is good for a major college DE, the 210 part is not. He’s going to have to do a lot of filling in and weight training to get up to even what a good AAC DE usually goes but the good news is that he has a senior year to do that.

The best thing about the Carey tweet is some of the responses:

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The above was the first response to Carey, but I’m afraid they are keeping even Temple football coaches out of the loop regarding stadium news. It’s interesting that neither Carey nor Manny Diaz even mentioned the stadium in their pressers while both Matt Rhule and Geoff Collins said they had seen the stadium renderings and “would do everything they could” to make it a reality.  Since we heard nothing from those two, I’m convinced the BOT has either soured on or tabled the entire project indefinitely.

Another fan asked the question: “Is Bryce Harper moving close by?”

My hope was that the Owls dropped Bucknell in favor of an opening-week trip to Rutgers, of course helping the Bison schedule a game with UMass (which is scheduled to play at Rutgers that Friday night).

That would fire me up, but Carey has a whole other set of priorities with building a first full recruiting class so we will just have to settle for that.

For recruiting, as in tweeting, you have to walk first before you run so we can’t expect anything more than pedestrian at this point.

Thursday: New Offense?

Saturday: A Special Trip Down Memory Lane

Tuesday: Season Ticket Push

 

 

02.23.19
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Temple 2019: Upgrading The X’s and O’s

The great Bear Bryant once said: “It’s not about the X’s and O’s, it’s about the Jimmie’s and Joe’s.”

Given Byrant’s six national championships at Alabama, there is a lot of street cred behind that remark.

Still, when it comes to Temple’s football history, if you really look at it, it’s more about the X’s and O’s.

bright

Mark Bright, a “legacy” recruit, became the MVP of the Garden State Bowl

 

Look at the 1979 team for instance. The above video is the coaches’ game film from the 28-17 Garden State Bowl win over California. (A big thanks to Zamani Feelings for unearthing this pure gold. I once had a copy of the national broadcast of this game but lost it.) In it, you will find a lot of guys who had only one other scholarship offer or none outplaying a lot of guys who were four stars for one of the PAC-10 powers of the day.

None other than Bill Belichick has said that game film illustrated a masterful coaching job by Wayne Hardin that day. “I looked at that a lot and I lot of things didn’t make sense at first, but then rewound it and said, ‘Geez, I knew what Wayne is trying to do there and now it makes sense.’ ”

Bright

Mark Bright was the son of Jim Bright, the starting fullback of the 1950 Owls’ team.

The MVP of the game, fullback Mark Bright, had no scholarship offers out of William Tennent High school in Warminster but Hardin took a flier on him because Mark’s dad, Jim Bright (the then principal at New Hope-Solebury High), was a starting fullback for the 1950 Owls. “At Temple, we take care of our own,” Hardin said the day he signed Mark.

Hardin broke down film as well as he made it mandatory viewing for other legendary coaches and he saw something in Bright’s game that he liked. Same for starting quarterback Brian Broomell, who was recruited out of Sterling High in South Jersey as a strong safety. Broomell was good enough to crack the starting lineup as a true freshman on defense, something that never happened in those days and Hardin, needing a quarterback, converted that athleticism to the offense the next year.

finalpoll

Other players on that team like linebackers Steve Conjar and Mike Curcio became the Jimmies and Joes under Hardin they probably weren’t before they got to Temple and it all added up to the best team in modern Temple history. Hopefully, with 2019 being the 40-year anniversary of that first bowl win they will be honored at halftime of a game this fall.

That’s where 2019 comes into play. There are a lot of Jimmies and Joes on the team along with the documented fact that Rod Carey is the first proven winning FBS-level head coach to come into the school since Hardin.  Geoff Collins really did not have that kind of knowledge nor did even the Sainted Matt Rhule or the devilish Steve Addazio. Carey is not Hardin, but if he’s even close it’s a significant upgrade in the X’s and O’s department.

Mix the knowledge of X’s and O’s that Carey has with the Jimmies and Joes who have been mostly the product of Matt Rhule’s hard recruiting and this could be a special season. For it to be the most special season of all, this is the minimum benchmark: 11 wins, including a bowl game, and at least a No. 17 or better ranking in both major polls.

The 1979 Temple team proved you needed both X’s and O’s and Jimmies and Joes and it should be fascinating to see if the 2019 team can use that same formula to produce similar results.

Tuesday: Tweet Storm

Thursday: Hinting at a New Offense

Saturday: Season Ticket Call