Tag Archives: AAC football media Day

07.20.25
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This week: The AAC Discovers Keeler’s Plan

Plenty of “money quotes” in the above short six-minute interview where the AAC sent a media person into the Temple film room to interview K.C. Keeler.

To me, the big takeaway was that Keeler was so unlike his predecessor, Stan Drayton, that any objective observer has got to assume that the record is going to reflect that.

Drayton spent three years of spinning his wheels in the mud at Temple, going for the trifecta with the same record that got his predecessor, Rod Carey, fired: 3-9. Drayton never figured out a way push the bus out of the mud and get it moving forward.

I have that exact black jacket but it’s a pullover and not a full zipper. Would be sweet to find a full zipper in adult extra large.

Keeler spent six minutes detailing how he is going to put some straps around those Temple tires and have his new strength coach and big hogs up front pull this spinning vehicle out of the mud.

It’s sounds like a pretty good plan.

It’s a week of discovery for Temple football, not so much for the people inside the $17 million Edberg-Olson facility but for the AAC and maybe college football in general because they are going to hear Keeler’s plan to revive everything inside the building and at Lincoln Financial Field.

That’s because media day is in Charlotte on July 24th-25 and a lot of what Keeler said in the above interview will be on full display those two days. ESPN will cover the second day session but, by then, it should become apparent that Keeler’s approach is different than Drayton’s.

In the above interview, Keeler says that “we’re not going to be the kind of team on 4th and 1 where we’re going to bring five receivers in. We’re going to run the football.” Yet bringing five wide receivers in is what Drayton did on 3d and 1 at the 50-yard line in Year Two of his regime, throwing a pass with a lead against visiting ECU that turned out to be incomplete with 1:46 left in the game. He was forced to punt on fourth down and never saw the ball again in a 46-42 loss.

That wasn’t even Keeler’s best money quote of the week.

The money quote came not from the above interview but from Shawn Pastor’s excellent five-part series about Keeler, which just concluded on Sunday. (We recommend you subscribe to OwlsDaily.com to read all five parts. It’s well the few bucks a month it takes to subscribe.)

Here’s the Keeler Money quote:

“I didn’t come from Michigan. I came from Sam Houston, where we had very limited resources. So I see life a little bit different. I see this isn’t half-full here. This is overflowing in my mind. I think this is a gold mine.”

Compare that to what Drayton said on Nov. 10 on the same site after a 53-6 loss to Tulane: “Tulane has made the commitment to bring good players into the program. There’s definitely a gap there if we don’t catch up, no question about it. We have to level up.”

Two Temple coaches. Two very different opinions to what resources they have/had at their disposal.

One made Chicken Shit out of Chicken Salad.

The other is trying to make a Chicken Parmesan dinner, complete with Spaghetti and meatballs on the side out of the same base ingredients. He knows what he needs to put in the pot, even though his proven recipe is largely a secret. He’ll outline what the dinner will be this week, but not give away any KFC (or KCK) secret recipes.

When he gets back from Charlotte, he will be in the kitchen working on the first course to be served Aug. 30.

My educated guess is that it won’t taste like the same chicken bleep we fans have been eating as our post-game meal for the last four years.

Friday: Media Day Reactions

Monday: Biggest Turnarounds

07.28.22
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AAC Media Day: Temple Between the Lines

The question is always asked on these media days to coaches about expectations and the answer, at least for the last two Temple head football coaches has always been something like this:

“We won’t set a number on wins and losses we just want to play the best we can.”

Temple’s Stan Drayton broke from that mundane view on Thursday when he said “we have set expectations and we expect to meet them” in terms of wins and losses in separate interviews with members of the media (not shown in the above video).

Guess what?

Reading between the lines, just four wins is not acceptable to this coaching staff and that has been transmitted to the players.

What is?

Certainly a dozen would be but we get the distinct feeling from the way Drayton talks that a losing first season is not on his radar.

Nor should it be.

Those who don’t set goals never reach them and the last two coaches, Rod Carey and Geoff Collins, wanted just to “play well.”

That doesn’t cut it.

In Adam Klein, Victor Stoffel and Isaac Moore, the Owls have at least the foundation of a terrific offensive line and that was communicated to the media on Thursday.

What was surprising, though, was Drayton’s assertion that the DEFENSIVE LINE–considered coming into the season as the biggest question mark–was his biggest exclamation point:

That is surprising in the sense that the returning personnel didn’t get enough pressure on the quarterback last season (only 15 sacks for 104 yards of losses) but not so because new line coach Antoine Smith led Colorado State’s defensive line to a top 10 sackmeister rate last season AND Temple’s most talented defensive lineman, Xach Gill, did not play a year ago. Now he’s not only playing but becoming a leader of the returning guys.

The best way to win in football is protecting your quarterback and putting the bad guy’s quarterback on his ass. Games are won in the trenches and that’s exactly where the Owls plan to win at least six and maybe more this season.

Temple seems to have progressed a long way in both of those areas.

How far?

Nobody knows but Drayton already has set the bar and it ain’t low. That has to be good news for every Temple football fan.

Monday: Something no one has seen in 30 years