Tag Archives: D.J. Eliot

02.02.24
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The solution to Temple’s defense is an old tune

The spell Everett Withers casts over Stan Drayton is the most puzzling one of his coaching regime.

The last great D.J. I saw at a Temple football game was a guy named Jerry Blavat, who connected with the boomers by spinning the hits of the 1950s and 60s.

RIP, Geator with The Heater.

The next D.J. was pretty good, a guy named D.J. Eliot, who turned chicken bleep into chicken salad by taking a questionably talented Temple defense in 2022 and doing some good things.

Would have rather had another Heater (Chuck) but Stan Drayton’s hire of Eliot turned out to be a solid one.

When Eliot left to be linebackers’ coach with the Philadelphia Eagles this time a year ago, Drayton rushed into getting his replacement before spring ball and hired Everett Withers on St. Patrick’s Day 2023. That day we wrote this about that.

D.J. Eliot

It probably wasn’t the worst decision made on St. Patty’s Day in Philadelphia history–thinking about bar-hopping in Center City and driving home to the suburbs might be worse (not me)–but Drayton at least made the second-worst SPD decision in Philly history.

His DC hire, old friend Everett Withers, came off a recent DC job (FIU, 2021), where he averaged giving up 40 points-per-game (OK, 39.7 but we’re rounding it off).

Withers piggybacked that with giving up almost the same amount of ppgs for Temple in 2023.

In the 140-year-old history of Temple football, there was only one worse defense (2005, Bobby Wallace).

Two historically bad defenses, one in Miami, one in Philadelphia. Presided over by the same guy, Everett Withers.

There’s a clue somewhere in there.

After the season was over, Drayton promised the assembled press that he would re-evaluate everything (“including the coaches”) and, for some unknown reason, he gave a pass to a DC who allowed an obscene 40 ppg but fired some lower-level staffers.

That was essentially telling Temple football fans, “yeah, we couldn’t stop anybody but we evaluated ourselves and we did nothing wrong.”

Now that the Eagles have hired another LB coach and Eliot is out of a job, the logical thing to do is for Drayton to offer Eliot is old job back. Drayton doesn’t even have to fire Withers to do it. He can shuffle the staff and move Withers to another spot.

This prediction predicated on Withers nailed the 2023 Temple football season.

Like everything Drayton and Withers’ related, though, all we have is radio silence from Temple out of the Edberg-Olson Complex.

Looks like Drayton is sticking with his buddy and, in essence, going down with the ship when he could have objectively thrown himself a life raft.

Not subjectively, objectively.

Comparing the Temple defense of 2022 and 2023, Eliot did a significantly better job in 2022 than Withers did in 2023.

If Drayton doesn’t rehire him, Arthur Johnson will have to ask why in his Stan Drayton Exit interview of 2024 because I can’t see this defense surviving another Everett Withers’ experience.

“Because we’re buddies” won’t be a good-enough answer.

Monday: A Deep Dive

02.14.22
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Simulated pressure: Something we’ve never seen before

This is how simulated pressures are supposed to work.

In the last two Temple football coaching regimes, Temple went from promising Mayhem on defense to absolutely no pressure on the quarterback at all.

Now Temple fans will get to see something they’ve never seen before: Simulated pressures.

Meh.

To me, I’ve always felt that the best defense is putting the bad guy’s quarterback on his ass and, in the process, hopefully separating him from the football, and picking it up and running the other way for a score. Plus, the benefit of hitting the guy so much is putting his head on a swivel looking for pass rushers instead of open receivers.

That’s the kind of Temple TUFF most fans like to see.

D.J. Eliot is considered a master of simulated pressures.

That was what essentially was promised by former coach Geoff Collins, the self-anointed “Minister of Mayhem” who rarely delivered what he promised.

Collins was the victim of his own hiring process, though, grabbing a guy from Kennesaw State (Andrew Thacker) to run his defense. In fact, his own staff was peppered with FCS coaches who had a hard time adjusting to FBS life. Still, the few times we did see Mayhem, it was a beautiful thing. The Owls had a pair of pick 6s (Christian Braswell and Ty Mason) caused by pressure on the quarterback as well as a Quincy Roche-forced fumble that Karamo Diaboute picked up and took to the house.

Too few and far between.

This is the best example of “real” and not “simulated” pressure.

The guy who succeeded Collins, Rod Carey, made no promises on defense and delivered on that promise.

Now new head coach Stan Drayton is delivering the keys to his defense to a “simulated pressure” specialist in D.J. Eliot.

In terms of points and sacks, they haven’t delivered much in Eliot’s last three stops but he has a chance to draw up the X’s and O’s here in a way that have his linebackers and safeties getting to the quarterback faster than Matt Rhule’s defensive ends did and, if that happens, all will be forgiven.

Just remember that in the greatest Temple victory of maybe all time, the Owls put the bad guy’s quarterback down 10 times and six of those were credited to defensive linemen and only four to linebackers (Nate Smith and three for Tyler Matakevich). The only sack that came as a result of a “simulated pressure” was Smith’s on a two-man rush.

Sometimes the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, which was proven that day.

Another kind of day starts with the opener at Duke and pardon at least one Temple fan for being skeptical at this point.

Friday: Which coaching job is better?

02.11.22
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The Case for the Defense: Keep hope alive

If this win doesn’t give you hope for the Temple defense, nothing will.

Sometimes reading through the bios of Temple coaches, both past and present, provides some useful clues for anyone trying to look into a crystal ball and predict the future.

Having had a course in sports information at Temple to get some insight into the guys I was going to be dealing with for the next several decades in sports journalism, I found out a big part of their job is to put lipstick on a pig.

Maybe D.J. Eliot gets his first career shutout at Duke. We can only hope.

There were two major defensive coaching hires made by Stan Drayton, one I liked and one I didn’t, and the guy I liked went off to the Denver Broncos on Wednesday, and the one I didn’t remains here.

Maybe the silver lining in this development is that the successful guy, co-DC Ola Adams, won’t have to butt heads in the coaching room with the unsuccessful guy, DC D.J. Eliot. Let’s put it this way: If Eliot went to Denver and Adams was elevated to sole DC, I might be more optimistic about the future.

That didn’t happen, though.

Now the show is all Eliot’s. Soon we will find out if it’s a long-running hit or a circus. Logic doesn’t look good but, as the above video indicates, at Temple there is always hope.

Hope doesn’t get me to a bowl game.

So to Eliot’s bio I went. Here are some highlights (my comments are in italics, the other is from Temple PR people):
 
Kansas: In 2020, true freshman cornerback Karon Prunty earned Freshmen All-America honors by 247Sports.com after having the most pass breakups of any true freshman in the country. Additionally, Kyron Johnson earned All-Big 12 Honorable Mention at outside linebacker, along with Prunty. Up front, redshirt freshman Marcus Harris totaled 7.5 tackles-for-loss, which marked the most by a Kansas freshman since 2012.

Err, nice but who did he shut out and how many points per game did he allow? Kansas lost every game that year and gave up 36.1 points per game. Ugh as in ugly.
 
Colorado: Eliot led the Buffaloes to one of the best defenses in the Pac 12. The Buffs ranked fourth in the conference in yards allowed per play (5.24), while tying for fourth with 29 sacks. Colorado also ranked third in opponent third-down conversion rate (36.36 percent) and fourth in red zone touchdowns allowed (51.6 percent).

Fourth in yards allowed and fourth in sacks and fourth red zone touchdowns allowed ain’t going to get it done in the AAC. Temple has got to get guys who were first in their conference, not fourth.
 
Kentucky: Eliot joined the Colorado staff from Kentucky, where he was the Wildcats’ defensive coordinator and linebackers coach for four seasons (2013-16). He helped coach UK to the 2016 TaxSlayer Bowl, the first postseason appearance for Kentucky since 2010. Eliot also helped Kentucky land the 22nd-ranked recruiting class in the nation, marking the first time the Wildcats assembled a Top 25 recruiting class.

In Kentucky’s best season under Eliot, the Wildcats were 7-6 but allowed 42 points to New Mexico State (3-9 that year), 38 points to Mississippi State (6-7), 21 points to Missouri (4-8) and 38 points to the only winning team he beat, Louisville (9-4).

 Those were his most recent stops.

Not exactly, in my mind, the stellar resume I would look for in a defensive coordinator. There’s a lot of “he developed this guy and he developed that guy” in his resume, but I could not find a single team he shut out during his tenure as a defensive coordinator anywhere. For comparison, former Florida and Temple DC Chuck Heater shut out Ball State and Bowling Green in consecutive weeks (not years) for the 2011 Owls.

To me, keeping the bad guys out of your end zone is a prerequisite for being a good defensive coordinator, not “developing guys.” Developing guys for someone else (like the NFL), doesn’t hold the same appeal for me as sacking the quarterback playing against Temple, getting turnovers for Temple and, most important, pitching a shutout against the team Temple is playing that day.

Hell, maybe Adams walked into a room at the E-O and had the same feelings before leaving for Denver. We might never know but now Adams joins Manny Diaz in having the two shortest tenures of any ex-Temple coach.

Maybe this will work out to Eliot’s advantage but hope will have to defeat logic.

It happened for Temple at least once before.

If the 1998 Temple Owls could prove the naysayers wrong in upsetting No. 10 Virginia Tech, maybe Eliot can, too.

Shutting out Duke would almost be as shocking as that win. Maybe more.

Monday: Pressures


 

01.16.22
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The Temple coaching tie that binds

At least Texas State has a nice on-campus stadium

When things get particularly boring or depressing in the defensive coaching room at Edberg Olson Hall this fall, at least the new Temple defensive football coaching staff can talk about old war stories in San Marcos.

We’re not talking about the WW2 Italian campaign led by Fifth Army commander U.S. General Mark Clark.

We’re talking about going to war leading the football team at Texas State in San Marcos, Texas.

No less than five Temple staffers, mostly on defense, spent some time at Texas State and three of them (defensive line coach Antoine Smith. linebacker coach Chris Woods and cornerbacks coach Jules Montinar) coached for current Temple football Chief of Staff Everett Winters, the head coach there from 2016-2018.

The war there did not go as well for Winters and his troops as it did for Clark in the big one. Between 2016-18, the Bobcats finished 7-28 with a pair of 2-10 seasons.

Winters has his fingerprints all over these hires and, while he might be pleased with them, had new head coach Stan Drayton consulted NFL Hall of Famer Bill Parcells, he would have nixed those hires in the bud. Parcells was famous for this one line: “You are what your record says you are.”

Spoiler alert: It’s not good.

In the 2016 season, the Bobcats gave up 64 to Houston, 42 to Arkansas, 41 to Georgia State, 40 to Louisiana Monroe, 47 to Idaho, 50 to New Mexico State and 40 to Troy. That was the same year Temple held the then highest-scoring team in the nation, Navy, to just 10 points in winning the AAC championship.

The next year wasn’t much better: 44 to UTSA, 45 each to three teams (Monroe, Wyoming and New Mexico State) and 62 to Troy.

Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you to what is mostly the new defensive staff at Temple University.

Ugh.

New DC D.J. Eliot doesn’t get off free in this comparison. He also coached at Texas State, albeit in 2003 and 2004.

Presumably, he knows he knows the cuisine in San Marcos as well as the other guys.

If doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity, these guys better remember what they did at Texas State and do the exact opposite here.

If not, somebody will be eating crow and that person could be former Texas (not state, though) Director of Football Operations Arthur Johnson, who opened the floodgates for all of these Texas guys to relocate to Philadelphia.

Friday: Building Blocks

01.07.22
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Staff hires: Almost done, and a mixed bag

The first month of the Stan Drayton stewardship of the Temple University football program has gone according to plan.

It’s his plan, not the plan of many Temple football fans, and that’s his prerogative because he will ultimately bear the blame or the applause.

Still, an objective observer can still step back and judge.

Getting good vibes out of the strength hires, one of whom looks a little like former great Owl lineman Kevin Jones.

If that observer says it’s a mixed bag, it probably will be closer to the truth than otherwise.

While the Villanova defense under Ola Adams was a formidable one against the opponents it played, no one can say that any defense under the other defensive coordinator, D.J. Eliot, was ever formidable. Another guy with Texas in his past (an assistant at Texas State and Houston), Eliot was never a part of a defense that shut out anyone. (For comparison, former Temple DC Chuck Heater recorded consecutive shutouts in the 2011 season for the Owls.)

In fact, according to college football guru Pete Thamel, Eliot’s main claim to fame was “simulated pressures” when he was DC at both Colorado and Kansas. Simulated pressures are simply this: A lot of linebackers and safeties running up to the line at the point of attack, then backing off, and allowing the quarterback a good five to six seconds to survey the field and pick out an open receiver.

That’s not going to work with Temple fans, who were used to a more attacking style of defense in consecutive 10-win seasons under head coach Matt Rhule and DC Phil Snow. In those days, simulated pressures were actual pressures and the bad guy’s quarterback ended up on his ass more often than not.

That’s Temple football. That’s Temple TUFF.

Adams is more in sync with the Rhule/Snow way of doing things so it should be interesting to see what happens when he gets in the same room with complete stranger Eliot. Since the talented Adams is listed as a “co-DC” with the sole job going to the less accomplished Eliot, that could be a problem.

I’ve thought about it and I’m not Drayton.

Just imagine late August, 2022……

D.J. Eliot gave up 36 points a game as a DC at two Power 5 schools.

Eliot: “Luca Diamont is the Duke starting quarterback. Here’s how we’re going to attack him: Run a couple of safeties and linebackers at him and then back off at the last minute, putting everyone in coverage and trying to confuse him.”

Adams: “How about putting the m-fer on his ass by sending more players than they can block, knocking that thing out of his hand and having one of own guys taking it to the house?”

Eliot: “Too risky.”

Adams: “C’mon, man. Former Temple coach Bruce Arians said it best: No risky, no bisky.”

Eliot: “We never did that at Kansas and Colorado.”

Adams: “That’s why you guys never won shit.”

Eliot: “That’s why you were at Villanova and I was at Kansas and Colorado.”

Adams: “You want to go? Let’s go. You and me on 10th Street. If I win, we blitz the hell out of Duke. If you win, we sit back and play prevent.”

Eliot: “Stan, help me out here… “

Is that the kind of headache Drayton wants right away?

I don’t think so but I don’t know if he has thought this dynamic out. If the two start arguing in the coach’s room at the E-O, I hope Drayton puts his foot down.

Does Drayton have the gonads to get rid of Eliot if he brings that 36 ppg career average as a DC to Temple and give the job completely to Adams, whose Villanova defenses allowed 15.7 ppg? We will see.

That’s the part of the bag with holes in it.

Ola Adams was a key member of the Villanova defensive staff, holding Geoff Collins to 17 points.

Now to the more sturdy part of this mixed bag.

The additions of Chris Wiesehan (offensive line) and Adam Schier (special teams) certainly balance the bag. Wiesehan was credited with the development with two of the best centers in Temple history (Kyle Friend and Matt Hennessy) and a terrific versatile guard/center in Vince Picozzi. Schier made the Rutgers’ special teams the best of the Scarlet Knights’ three units and, if the Owls start blocking kicks and returning them to the house like they used to in the pre-Rod Carey days, it’s a home run hire. Vince wants to come back and let’s hope Chris brings him back.

On the plus side of this mixed bag also are the strength coaches, Chris Fenelon (Ohio State), Andrew Broocks and Bruce Johnson. Carey’s strength coach is still being investigated for mental and physical abuse of players by an internal Temple probe. Hopefully, these new guys earn the trust and love of the Temple players, who were completely pushed around in a 3-9 season.

If any FBS program needed a complete overall of its strength department, it was Temple.

So far, the support staff looks as Texas-centric as the Carey staff looked NIU-centric. On-field guys like Preston Brown and Wiesehan might be bones to throw to Temple fans, as Carey did when he initially kept Fran Brown, Gabe Infante, Ed Foley and Adam DiMichele. Everett Withers, who will be off the field, was a former head coach at Texas State. Another off-the-field employee, Tory Teykl, was at both Houston and Texas. Johnson was an assistant strength coach at Texas from 2001-2007. My guess is that there will be more hires with some experience in Texas, which is a vastly different experience than Temple.

When Carey got rid of the three Temple guys to keep the NIU guys, all doubt about Carey’s future here was removed.

Drayton needs to lean on the Temple guys to turn Temple around. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Monday: The Jimmies