Tag Archives: Clifton McDowell

04.04.24
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McDowell proves Thomas Wolfe wrong

John Rienstra, unlike Clifton McDowell, made a name for himself at Temple and did more than OK.

The Clifton McDowell Era ended at Temple and, when the book of the Transfer Portal is ever written, McDowell may have provided the most unusual chapter.

Proving Thomas Wolfe wrong.

Wolfe, in his novel, “You Can’t Go Home Again” talked about the story of George Webber, who writes a book about his hometown that became a national success but the residents of said town are unhappy with what they perceived was a distorted depiction of them. They send him death threats and tell him he’s not welcome.

Fortunately for McDowell, he didn’t badmouth Missoula, Montana on the way out the door so his reported return to them yesterday will come with welcome arms. He wants his old job back.

Like Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone TV series, though, every good story has an ironic twist at the end.

My predicted twist–and I believe this will come true no later than September–is that while McDowell went home with the intention of reclaiming his starting job, a guy named Logan Fife will turn out to be the eventual starter. Fife was the very capable backup last year at Fresno State and Montana only felt the need to recruit him because McDowell left for Temple.

The Owls, on the other hand, don’t have a quarterback on the current roster with the resume of Fife, let alone McDowell. Fife was a much better backup at Fresno than Evan Simon was at Rutgers but that’s what Temple is stuck with at this current stage of the game. That, or a JUCO who looked like total crap subbing for E.J. Warner last year.

Maybe walking down the street in Missoula, Montana without looking over your shoulder means that much to McDowell, who didn’t turn out to be Temple TUFF.

What Temple needs now is a Fife-level transfer because, while the loyalty of the current quarterback room HOPEFULS (and we use that word loosely) is laudable, the undeniable fact is that the current leader, Forrest Brock, looked only about 1/10th as good as E.J. Warner in his lone Temple action last year. That’s even being generous to Brock. Stan, this is your one chance to get someone better than Warner. Settling for worse would be at your own peril.

I don’t know about you but I’d rather get a guy 10x better than Warner than one 10x worse.

The good news for Temple is that the transfer portal is getting ready to explode on April 15 and at least one very good P5 quarterback will shake loose from a No. 2 on his team’s depth chart to become available to Temple. If that guy is smart, he will turn down a $250,000 NIL deal to be a backup elsewhere and gamble that on himself and a very good chance to start at Temple to make a million down the road.

If McDowell’s leaving leads to Temple being smart enough to land one of those guys who can be better than Warner, and McDowell ends up as a backup in the middle of nowheresville bored out of his mind, that’s the kind of ironic twist that would meet with the approval of Serling.

Not to mention Temple fans who wouldn’t mind watching or reading a good ending for a change.

03.29.24
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The hard truth about the depth chart

Sol-Jay Maiava-Peters is a former teammate of current Owl starting running back Antwain Littleton.

Amid all the noise about no lopsided scrimmages and things looking good at Temple football’s spring practice is this indisputable truth.

The best quarterback on the team left for reasons unclear and there is no one on the current roster who possesses the same kind of skill set or talent level as Clifton McDowell.

Don’t believe me.

Quite a number of good uncommitted quarterbacks on that list but, for specific reasons connected to Temple, Stan Drayton should zero in on getting Sol-Jay Maiava-Peters.

Believe the numbers.

There is not a single quarterback on the roster who has put up the kind of numbers in college football as Clifton McDowell did.

If the season were to start on Cherry and White Day against Oklahoma and not a meaningless game between good guys and good guys, which is what the Cherry and White game has always been, the starter would be a guy who had four college touchdown passes against six college touchdown interceptions or a JUCO guy who did nothing above the JUCO level and looked like total crap in his only game against SMU.

Not good options.

Had to laugh when I read on message boards “next man up.”

Not a believer in “next-man-up.” Never was. Never will be. Temple’s got to go out and get a replacement for McDowell with similar athletic ability.

I saw Forrest Brock play in the SMU game and, if he was better than the kid from Ocean City (Tyler Douglas, got to assume he was because the coaches put him in first), Temple is bleeped. He didn’t show me any throws that indicated he could start at West Chester, let alone Montana. Next man up gets you beat 55-0. Forrest Gump might have played better. Hell, Forrest Tucker of F-Troop, a college football star before getting into acting, certainly would have.

I saw enough of Simon in the RU-TU game to know he was the second-best quarterback in that game.

Temple needs to get better than E.J. Warner at that position, not worse.

Sol-Jay Maiava-Peters would give Temple two QBs who were offensive MVPs in the New Mexico Bowl. (Chris Coyer was the first.) Hell, if he comes here, he might get another NMB MVP trophy for the Owls.

McDowell offered that possibility, having thrown 13 touchdown passes and only four interceptions for FCS national runnerup Montana. Contrast that to Warner’s 23 TDs and 14 interceptions for Temple last year and there was a chance that Temple would get better just on the turnover factor alone. Warner had this nasty habit of throwing Pick 6s at exactly the time Temple didn’t need them (Rutgers, 2022 and USF, 2023).

Temple head coach Stan Drayton knows what he has to do.

Get a big-time quarterback in the transfer portal.

There is a list published in the graphic of this post of the current big-time quarterbacks available. One, former Georgia Tech and Nebraska starter Jeff Sims, is available. I would not go that route, rather looking at quarterbacks with Sims’ talent but with a demonstrated history of protecting the football. (Temple already tried to get a 4* quarterback with a history of fumbling, Dwan Mathis, and that did not work out too well.)

Drayton has to ask himself this question: Is he more comfortable going into the Oklahoma game with possibly a quarterback (Brock) who lost, 55-0, to SMU in 2023 or a guy who beat SMU, 24-23, in the final game of 2022?

One possibility on this list of undecideds in the BYU quarterback, Sol-Jai Malavia-Peters. Kid led his team to a bowl win and is a great runner. Former teammate of Antwain Littleton at St. John’s (D.C). Like many other great football players in this transfer portal, Peters still does not have a home. He can help Temple and Temple can help him.

All Drayton has to do is call in Littleton after practice tomorrow and have him do the heavy lifting to recruit a guy who won a bowl game for BYU as a starting quarterback.

Since Littleton is 6-1, 235 pounds lifting that cell phone and selling Peters on Temple should not be that hard.

Monday: Ponzi and Temple

03.15.24
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ACC Might Have Taken The Wrong TV Market

The first Temple basketball highlight film ever on TFF. These guys deserve that honor.

After a couple years of misery for Temple sports fans, what the men’s basketball team did on Thursday night was super sweet.

No matter what happens now, history will read that SMU’s final men’s basketball game in the American Athletic Conference was a 75-60 loss to Temple.

At home in front of the same rich Mustang fans who put up the big bucks for SMU to move to the ACC.

In my mind, Clifton McDowell will be a huge upgrade from E.J. Warner for Temple in that he will be able to make all the passes E.J. made and give a multi-dimensional look that Temple hasn’t had since P.J. Walker.

In a tournament game that meant everything.

Now it’s up to the football Owls to prove one important point: The ACC might have taken the wrong TV market.

Philadelphia, despite being the sixth-largest city, is still the fourth-largest TV market due to the density of the population in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey suburbs that surround the city.

Dallas/Ft. Worth, the market SMU is in, is one market behind in fifth place but the big difference is this. TCU is also in that same market. That market was already taken by the Power 5.

The Philadelphia market is owned by Temple and available to any Power 5 conference that wants it. It is also the largest TV market without a P5 team.

Temple could change all that. If Adam Fisher has proven anything in his first year, is that he has immediately improved the Temple basketball program. It might not show in the 14-19 record but it shows in how competitive the team has been even in their losses. One more thing is that Fisher has been able to recruit. He is already bringing in the top player in the state of Texas, Dillon Battie, the son of former Owl great Derrick Battie and bringing in the best player in Delaware in Aiden Tobiason.

An example of how Temple owns the Philly market over Penn State is that Penn State played Notre Dame six times on ABC prime time and never even approached the numbers Temple was able to put up for this one game. The X Factor was Temple, not Notre Dame.

There is reason to believe that the men’s basketball Owls can immediately go to the head of the AAC class next year. No bellyaching from Fisher about the transfer portal or NIL. He’s finding a way to win and get recruits. Women’s basketball coach Diane Richardson won the AAC regular-season title in her second year.

The one thing holding the university back has been the abysmal performance by the football program.

Stan Drayton gets a pass for the first year’s 3-9 because he showed the kind of competitive improvement that Temple fans needed to see after the Rod Carey Error.

The second year, though, was as bad as Carey’s 1-6 and 3-9 seasons from a competitive standpoint and raised major red flags.

Now Drayton is slowly–maybe too slowly–is showing signs he gets it. Short of bodies last year, Drayton overbooked the personnel flight and is now seven scholarships over the limit.

That means the Owls can have a physical spring practice and they need it. They had the worst-tackling game in recent Temple history in a 45-14 loss at North Texas and got only marginally better after that.

They lost a record-setting QB in E.J. Warner but Drayton showed he “gets it” by not settling after signing Rutgers’ backup Evan Simon. He went out and got a difference-maker in Clifton McDowell, who can do things Warner never dreamed of doing. They improved their running game by signing two first-team JUCO All-Americans and a solid Big 10 backup.

Now if the Owls can put that physicality together with the explosiveness of McDowell and Company, the football Owls can shock the world the way the basketball Owls did on Thursday night.

Do that enough times, and thousands of fannies return to the seats and millions of eyeballs to the screen and the ACC might be wondering if they picked the wrong TV market.

02.11.24
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Temple football: The rest of the recruiting story

Terrez Worthy is going from a field with (sometimes) no yard lines to the best stadium in the NFL.

Watching the Super Bowl on Sunday night was a study in contrasts, the old versus the new.

At least at the quarterback position.

Patrick Mahomes’ 25-22 overtime win for the Kansas City Chiefs over Brock Purdy and the San Francisco 49ers represents a win for new school football, where the quarterback who is mobile and can complete any pass beats the immobile one who can do the same.

That’s already happened in college football. The championship quarterbacks in each conference can move and throw. The middling teams don’t have that guy.

Temple will be making that same transition in the 2024 season with Clifton McDowell, a mobile quarterback who can make any pass, replacing E.J. Warner, an immobile quarterback who can do the same.

Forget what Pravda is telling you about Evan Simon winning the Temple quarterback position. That ain’t happening. Just remember you read it here first. McDowell is a poor man’s Patrick Mahomes. Simon is a homeless man’s Brock Purdy.

What about the rest of the story, though?

Temple’s cloudy kicking situation just became sunny and bright with the addition of Maddox Trujillo.

Football is a 22-man game, not a one-or-two-man one.

The small picture is that Temple improved the passing game by moving the pocket and the running game by replacing Edward Saydee and Darvon Hubbard with a pair of JUCO All-Americans and a Big 10 running back.

The rest of the story is the bigger picture.

The only known photo of a current Temple recruit blocking an extra point.

Temple bulked up both lines and increased its depth while doing so.

For a deeper dive, this is a pretty good place to start but there are a couple of players who stick out.

A high school player from New Jersey, a defensive lineman named Giakoby Hills, is 6-5, 270 with four blocked kicks. The athletic ability to block that many kicks is impressive and Temple has not blocked an important kick since a 6-5 wide receiver named Deion Miller blocked a field goal that would have given UConn a win over Temple a dozen years ago. The best kicker in the country then, Brandon McManus, then made one to give the Owls a 17-14 win.

Speaking of kickers, the days of kicking the ball out of bounds–which have been four dark years–are seemingly over with the addition of Austin Peay kicker Maddox Trujillo, who made 38 of 53 field goals and 96.2 percent of his extra points. If he does those percentages at Temple, he will be second only to Don Bitterlich in both categories and better than the best kicker in the nation in 2012, McManus.

There are plenty more “worthy” of mention but we will end this with a guy named Worthy. Terrez Worthy was the most valuable player for Maryland in the 2022 Big 33 game against Pennsylvania, giving Temple its third MVP from a Big 33 game (Adrian Robinson and Jalen Fitzpatrick were the others). Both of those guys did great things at Temple and, if Worthy, who is 5-11, 190 with breakaway speed does the same, Temple will have its best running back since Ryquell Armstead.

All good things on paper.

Now let’s see them do it on the field.

Friday: New Coaches

01.26.24
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Better late than never: Stan Drayton’s best week

Temple would never have had a shot at recruiting a player like this without the portal.

One wonders what would have happened had this time one year ago Stan Drayton had grabbed a halfway decent running back in the portal.

My guess is that things in 2023 would have been better for the overall Temple football team in general and, specifically, Drayton himself and then quarterback E.J. Warner.

The additions of Clifton McDowell and Antwain Littleton means Temple fans could be smiling again very soon.

Now we will never know but the past is the past and, in a winter much worse than last year’s weather-wise, Drayton might have just completed a sunny and warm week as head coach. Last year at this time we begged Drayton in this space to upgrade the running back position and he did not, relying on Edward Saydee as the feature back. Partly because he didn’t get a great running back or a decent line, he lost a great quarterback who decided to transfer.

That’s a couple of steps backward.

Enter Antwain Littleton, a running back.

In Littleton, Drayton finally got a halfway decent running back with legitimate bonafides and may even have upgraded over that great quarterback.

Enter Clifton McDowell, a quarterback.

Two steps forward, maybe three because both are better–at least via the eye test–than the two players they replaced.

A pretty good week and, in our estimation, his best week of work in nearly three years as head coach.

These are exactly the two “types” of players we’ve been pleading for at Temple since the start of the portal.

One, a player from a big-time conference (the Big 10) who made a positive impact at his prior school but was looking for a more prominent role at his next one.

That’s Littleton.

Two, a player from a division just below Temple that became a star there but was interested in moving up a tick.

That’s McDowell.

Better late than never but not better late than to have done this last year.

That’s the formula teams like Troy, JMU and New Mexico State have been using to prove to the rest of the college football world you don’t need deep pockets and NIL money to win in the Group of Five and it’s really the only formula Temple has going forward.

I’d love to win the Powerball and contribute half of it to make Temple the highest-paid G5 team in the nation over the next couple of years but since that isn’t happening, some thinking out of the box is required and this week Drayton used his head for more than a hat rack.

Littleton upgrades the running game significantly. Before the portal, he was just the kind of guy Temple had no chance landing in the regular recruiting process, a ballcarrier with Big 10 offers.

McDowell led his Montana team to the FCS championship game and represents a chance for Temple to upgrade over Warner. Even if McDowell doesn’t match Warner’s 23 touchdown passes, he brings athleticism to the position that Warner did not have and a winning mentality.

What good are Warner’s stats if the legacy he leaves behind is 6-17 (Drayton is 6-18 but one of those losses was on Dwan Mathis)?

McDowell will be able to make defenses pay by seeing that open space if front of him and taking off should a play breakdown. Warner was both unwilling and unable to do that.

McDowell will also be able to see over defenses and avoid those pesky Pick 6s Warner had that directly resulted in at least two losses (Rutgers, 2022 and USF, 2023).

Drayton has punched the clock for over 100 weeks as Temple’s head coach and it’s almost impossible to find a better week than the one he just completed because he might have finally figured out the recruiting formula going forward.

Hint: It does not include JUCOs.

Monday: Right and Wrong