Temple: Killing two monkeys with one rock

Took a philosophy course because I needed an easy elective due to pulling 60 hours a week putting out The Temple News back in the day.

(It was a daily then.)

Had a bearded professor who smoked a pipe in class and described a situation where two problems were solved at the same time.

I raised my sleep-deprived hand.

“You mean, like killing two birds with one stone?”

Chalk up another win to the Cherry helmets, which looked particularly good with the White uniforms today. Let’s keep the best helmets in college football going forward.

The guy with the beard took a puff of the pipe, stroked his beard, waited about 10 seconds, and said:

“What an unfortunate way of putting it, Mr. Gibson, but I guess you are right.”

It’s one thing killing birds with stones and it’s another thing to take out a couple of monkeys with a rock and that’s exactly what Temple’s football team did today.

Two monkeys off the Temple football back. One, the first road win since 2019 and, two, the first time the Owls have won more than three games since the season prior to that one.

All because of a 49-14 rout at Charlotte. (Should have been 56-14 because the Owls fell on a scoop that could have easily been a score, but we’ll let that slide.)

Kyle Pagan of Crossing Broad bet 2x as much as I did way back in July. God bless him and everyone who had confidence in this team.

Important milestones if you put your money where your mouth was back in July, like I did. Way back on May 28, I picked the Owls to win six games and get to a bowl.

When challenged by a poster on OwlsDaily.com about that way back in July, I put my money where my mouth was and bet the over 3.5 wins.

My response to his post was this: “If I had $100,000, I would have bet that but since I only bet what I can afford to lose, I put $50 on the Owls.”

I’m $57 richer today.

Would have been $100K richer if I had the money to bet back then.

My reasoning then was simple: One, the Owls upgraded not only at the head coaching level, but also at the key coordinator positions.

In 2025, I reasoned, the Owls would pick up one or two more wins because they wouldn’t have the plethora of pre-snap penalties they had in the three years under Stan Drayton and the three years before that under Rod Carey.

Building on that reasoning was the way K.C. Keeler approached his important role as CEO of the program, which meant plugging some roster holes with key pieces.

Add those two things and it was easy to come to the conclusion that Temple could make the jump from three to six.

Keeler, in my mind, already has proven himself to be the best head coach we’ve had here since Wayne Hardin. Ironically, that was the guy who told him that we didn’t have enough scholarships for him back in the late 1970s and then turned the conversation to golf.

Keeler didn’t want to talk golf but headed to Delaware.

Now he’s back where he should have been in the first place. In my opinion, he’s the best coach at Temple since Hardin because he’s had to do it with a transfer portal and NIL that Al Golden, Matt Rhule, Bruce Arians and even Hardin didn’t have to deal with. Arians deserves a lot of credit because he had two winning seasons against Top 10 schedules but he got to keep all his players then.

Temple ran into trouble after Golden and Rhule and Keeler has righted that ship.

Killing two monkeys with one stone is impressive enough.

If somehow he is able to run the table with this team and this schedule, a big Gorilla is in sight and that might be an American Conference championship game.

Let’s get greedy.

Monday: Tulsa Week

Temple-Charlotte: Long past time for a trick play

Halfway through the season one thing Temple fans know about both offensive coordinator Tyler Walker and head coach K.C. Keeler is that they don’t like trick plays.

Walker has shown an innovative offense with a lot of motion that causes both defensive coordinators and defenses in general to scratch their heads.

CBS Sports and Emory Hunt made Temple a highlight game and like the Owls. Great photo of Temple center Grayson Mains here. The Owls’ offensive line led the way for 518 yards of total offense against Navy and deserved the win.

What he hasn’t shown is a “trick play” and, by that I mean, a throwback pass to Kajiya Hollawayne (a quarterback at UCLA), who draws the defense to him and leaves JoJo Bermudez wide open on the other side of the field for six.

Saturday (3:30 p.m., ESPN+) would be a good time to dust that one off because the Owls need a booster shot after being made sick by a heartbreaking loss to Navy.

When asked about trick plays two weeks ago, Keeler said he was hesitant to use them “when we’re not playing well.”

He didn’t say anything about the first play of the game.

Not going to be an easy game for the Owls because it’s Charlotte’s Homecoming in this compact 15,000-seat stadium.

The Owls have played six games and, on five of them, the first play of the game has been a standard handoff to Jay Ducker. I know that. You know that. The bad guys certainly know that.

None of those handoffs have gone for more than 3 yards.

Why not fake that handoff to Ducker, toss a throwback to Hollawayne and have the former UCLA quarterback hit Bermudez in stride for six?

Why not indeed?

This is how wide open JoJo Bermudez would be on a throwback pass from Hollawayne.

That would get the sideline pumped.

Mentioned this to Evan Simon’s dad the last couple of tailgates and he agreed. Also brought it up with Grayson Mains’ dad and he didn’t hate the idea.

Don’t know if these dads enough pull with their kids for them to draw this up in the dirt like a sandlot play but it wouldn’t be a bad idea for this game particularly.

This team is hurting (hell, I’m still hurting) from the toughest of tough losses and getting off to a spectacular start would just be what the doctor ordered.

That doesn’t mean a 3-yard handoff to Jay Ducker.

Showing the world that the Owls have bounced back means a touchdown on the first play of the game. Nothing ventured nothing gained is a great saying for a good reason.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis

Enjoy The View

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=23&v=SAvWwIK9GwY

Be there or be square.

One of those morning shows that targets largely a women’s audience has a perfect slogan that should apply to particularly this Temple football season: “Take a little time to enjoy the view.”

Kyle Friend blew a hole open here that 3 guys could have followed for a TD

Kyle Friend blew a hole open here that 3 guys could have followed for a TD

Even if it was a little wet and foggy last night in a very satisfying 37-3 win at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (the guy on Camera No. 5 really needed a towel or a shirt or something to clean off his location), a pretty spectacular view is starting to come into focus. After surviving a stumble last week at UMass, the Owls now have a blueprint of how to win out. They now have to take care of business against a Tulane team for Homecoming, a UCF team that lost to Furman but is always dangerous and an ECU team that has revenge on their mind and a huge home field advantage.

Still, winning those three games, one at a time, is doable if the Owls keep doing what they did against Charlotte: Play good defense and special teams, run the ball on offense, and pick their spots in the play action passing game.

It’s not a particularly flashy style of winning, but any kind of winning is a beautiful sight.

The view last night included:

  • Nick Sharga playing fullback, seeking out and destroying a linebacker that allowed Jahad Thomas to get an eight-yard gain and then, later, subbing for Tyler Matakevich at linebacker, making a Tyler Matakevich play to stop Khalil Phillips at the line of scrimmage. Haven’t seen that kind of two-way impact since first-round NFL draft choice John Rienstra led the way for a Todd McNair touchdown against BYU and then came in on goal-line defense and sacked Robbie Bosco.
  • The P.J. Walker to Robby Anderson connection being revived on a pair of touchdown passes. That was good to see. It was evident on a nice hookup in Cincy, but this is the first time it worked for multiple TDs. Love for P.J. to go up top and hit Robby in stride. That hasn’t happened yet, but will.
  • Probably the greatest Bruce Arians’ interview on the CBS Sports Network ever ended with a “go Owls.” Great to see a nice photo of Matt Rhule with Bruce. True story: The day after Matt was hired as Temple head coach, I casually mentioned to Matt that I had Bruce’s cell number. He asked for it and I gave it to him. (That’s for all of you people who think I hate Matt Rhule; I don’t.) I hope Matt and Bruce become as good friends as Matt and coach Hardin are. I also hope Temple University can pull up that interview and post it online. Without a doubt, Matt and Bruce are the two nicest guys to ever become head coach at Temple University.
  • The Temple defense not breaking, even though we could do without the bending part.
  • Something tells me all of those February practices in the snow are paying off. Temple does not seem fazed by inclement weather. Temple Sunshine.
  • Nate L. Smith making a real impact on the special teams, although not in the punt returning role he might be better-suited for. He showed he still has a nose for the end zone, though.
  • This team played like it didn’t want Charlotte to take them down to the wire and that’s the kind of ferocity they need to play with going forward.

The Owls are now 4-0 for the first time since 1974 with a Homecoming Game against Tulane coming up in a week (noon start). They deserve a crowd of 40,000 or more and any fan who ventures down to the stadium is going to get a great view of a good football team on a mission.

Take a little time out of your schedule to enjoy it.

….. and now a few words from the bad guys ….

Weather: The Great Equalizer

richardson

Playing at Jerry Richardson Stadium will be like playing at Northeast High.

First, the good news: the weather for Temple’s football game at Charlotte could be a whole lot worse than things appear now.

Tropical Storm Joaquin “meandered” off the cost of Bermuda for so long, stopping, then going southeast, before making a slow turn up the coast and apparently headed for North Carolina that it will not get there until Sunday. Although Jerry Richardson Stadium (15,000 capacity) seats about 6K more than Northeast High and 7K less than Allentown’s J. Birney Crum Stadium, it does have a state-of-the-art turf field that should absorb rain.

joaquin

Now the bad news: there’s going to be a whole lot of rain and wind and that is never good for the more talented team. Ask UConn in 2008 when the 17.5-point favorite Huskies needed overtime (and an incredibly bad holding call on Temple wide receiver Travis Shelton) to win, 12-6, in overtime. Ask ECU last season when a double-digit road favorite came out a double-digit loser, thanks to turnovers. The forecast changes every few hours, so there is always hope.

andujar

Bad weather is never a friend of a more talented team with multiple weapons that thrives on a dry field and that’s what Temple is on Friday night (7 p.m., CBS Sports Network).  Temple is a 24.5-point favorite, the largest road margin in Temple history.  The previous road favorite margin was -15 at Akron in 2011 (the Owls won that game, 41-3, but it was on a dry field). Charlotte has had some interesting results, more so last year when it beat FCS No. 23 Albany, 31-28, on the road and hung tight with this year’s SMU-killer James Madison, 48-40, at home. This year, though, the team has two wins over cupcakes before being torched for 73 points by the only decent team so far on the schedule, Middle Tennessee State. Don’t expect the Owls to score 73 points, though, because MTSU is a much-better coached team, offensively, than Temple is and recognizes that the tight end is an eligible receiver and can be utilized as an effective weapon.

The biggest question coming out of this game is going to be whether the Owls are the team that beat Penn State and Cincinnati or struggled against a truly horrible UMass team. I think UMass was an aberration. At least that’s the hope.  The big difference was that the Owls had a commitment to the run in the first two games that they abandoned in the UMass game. For this team to realize its potential, it must be successful in establishing the run and throw off play action. The weather could dictate a lot of what the Owls do on Friday. So we might have to wait until next week against Tulane to get a better reading on the Owls because weather could be the great equalizer here. Got to think the Owls win this one; it just might not be 25-0.

Temple biggest home margin came as a 29.5 favorite in 2010, also against Akron. In a great testament to the people in Vegas, Temple won, 30-0. (It’s amazing how close these lines are sometimes.) One line-killer is weather and, tropical storm or not, it does not look good at this point for the favorites.

Bad weather never does.

The Big Cleanup

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDUTSSd0F7Y

I thought “Matt” gave way too much credit to UMass in this presser.

Probably the biggest cleanup in Philadelphia history came over the weekend, when an army of people knocked down barricades and grandstands and swept away a whole bunch of garbage from the Pope’s visit.

The second biggest cleanup, hopefully, was occurring at roughly the same time on Sunday night and Monday afternoon when the Temple Owls had to address some major issues leading up to Friday’s 7 p.m. at Charlotte (CBS Sports Network).

Here are five things that needed to be addressed:

Penn State v Temple

  1. The Run Game

The Owls took the nation’s third-leading rusher, Jahad Thomas, into the game against UMass and came out with a 67-yard rushing effort against a defense that gave up 390 yards to Colorado and 457 yards to Notre Dame. Colorado is a mediocre team, as proven by its loss to Hawaii. It looked like the Owls overreacted to the Minutemen’s stunts and abandoned the run game too early. That cannot happen going forward. If the run game isn’t working inside, the coaches have to take the run game outside.

  1. Killer Instinct

When it was 14-0, Temple, got to find a way to make it 21-0 against these inferior teams like UMass. If Temple TUFF really means anything, you have to put more helmets on their helmets and knock them back off the ball. If that means putting Nick Sharga in at fullback running lead interference for the tailbacks, so be it. Head coach Matt Rhule said “it’s going to be 17-17” but against teams like UMass and Charlotte, it should never be 17-17. Temple has much, much too much talent to b be playing the likes of UMass 17-all at half. Newsflash: UMass is not going to win the MAC in this century or maybe even the next one.

sharif

  1. Turnovers

The Owls have to find a way to limit their turnovers in the passing game and one of the ways to do that is to cut the number of throws from 48 against UMass to the more manageable 15-for-20 P.J. Walker had against Penn State. To do that, they have to establish the run first, then throw off play-action. That brings the LBs and safeties close to the line of scrimmage and more susceptible to the play-fake.

  1. Big Plays on Defense

The Owls gave up big plays on defense because they could not get to the quarterback against UMass. Getting to the quarterback is the key to limiting the big plays. They do not have to sack every quarterback 10 times like Penn State, but at least get in the QB’s face so he does not get a good look downfield.

  1. Negative Plays on Offense

The Owls lead the country with 15 negative plays on offense. One way to negate that is to take more shots down field—again off play fakes to the running backs. Robby Anderson was extremely effective making those kind of explosive downfield plays in the passing game and it is high time that he returns to that role. The best way to get Robby involved is to fake it into the belly of Jahad, pull the damn ball out and find Robby streaking down the left sideline.

Fifteen Perfect Plays=73 Points

Matt Rhule has a test coming up on Friday and Rick Stockstill has all the questions and answers right on that sheet.

Matt Rhule has a test coming up on Friday and Rick Stockstill has all the questions and answers right on that sheet.

Sometimes you get the process, sometimes the process gets you.

Or, as in the case of Temple head coach Matt Rhule, looking over the shoulder of Middle Tennessee State coach Rick Stockstill while studying for his next test should reveal a more perfect process.

statistics

Hopefully, when breaking down Charlotte for next Friday’s road game, Rhule and his staff will take note of what Stockstill did in the first quarter of a 73-14 win over the 49ers. It was a gift-wrapped process that the Owls would do well to borrow for the nationally televised game (Friday, Oct. 2, 7:30, CBS Sports Network).

The Owls have shown stubbornness for sticking with their own process instead of using one that worked against their opponents previously. It was shown in the UMass when Colorado, despite facing eight in the box, ran at will on the Minutemen by taking the inside runs outside and it accounted for 390 yards of rushing and a comfortable 48-14 win.

After watching a replay of the game, we counted only 15 plays used by MTSU the entire game. Most of the 73 points the Blue Raiders scored were set up by 15 perfect plays, but we will concentrate on the first two scores in a 42-7 first quarter. Both were seam routes to the tight end, right over the middle, the same kind of play Chris Coyer scored on at Memphis in 2013. Those two TE plays basically broke the game open and had the 49ers’ heads spinning, allowing the other 13 to work on a semi-regular basis. The other 13 were mostly variations of crossing passes over the middle, deep wheel routes, tight end screens, and pitches to the tailback on the edge.

Jordan Parker, a tailback, attacked the soft middle of the Charlotte defense for 140 yards and three touchdowns on 14 carries. Parker also was effective on wheel routes out of the backfield—a play where the quarterback rolls to one side and hits the running back down the other.

player

The Owls have that wheel route in their playbook, as fans will remember P.J. Walker hit Jamie Gilmore in the hands with a perfect pass that would have been six against Memphis a year ago. They should dust it off for this game.

While UMass was susceptible to the run, Charlotte is the opposite—susceptible to the big play.

The beauty of those plays is the Owls have the athletes and the offense to execute them rather flawlessly.  Kip Patton is a guy who has the body of a tight end and the speed of a wide receiver and, if the 49ers had a problem covering tight end Terry Pettis, they are going to have more than their hands full with Patton. Establish the run on the first couple of plays, put the ball in the belly of the tailback, pull it out and then find Patton free over the seam. The 49ers have trouble covering the middle of the field and that’s an area the Owls should exploit. Pettis scored on touchdown receptions of 75 and 76 yards. Pettis’ 75-yard touchdown catch was the first of three one-play drives, also proving that the 49ers are susceptible to big plays. The Owls have plenty of those in their arsenal, too, and crossing patterns over the middle to Robby Anderson and Adonis Jennings should be open all night. MTSU wide receiver Ed’Marques Batties, a player with a similar skill set to Anderson, finished five receptions for 120 yards and three touchdowns and most of those were the result of deep crossing patterns over the middle.

Whatever Stockstill did, Temple should do. You cannot argue with 73 points.  When it is over, “Matt” can send Rick a thank-you card.

Tomorrow: AAC Football Night on ESPN

Saturday: College Football TV Guide

Sunday: Game Week Begins

Monday: Unpublished Temple Photos of Interest

sellout