Tag Archives: Edward Saydee

11.10.23
by

If Temple wins, you can utter this four-letter word

New USF coach Alex Golesh and his players talk about Temple.

About a third of the way through a 55-0 beating at the hands of visiting SMU a few short weeks ago, Temple football was trending for a very bad four-letter word.

Mess.

Mike Edwards caught this great shot of Edward Saydee scoring one of his three touchdowns on the way to 265 yards against USF last season. Saydee had a nice game against Navy and should be able to get 100 against USF if that wasn’t a mirage.

Other four-letter words were worse.

Now, after a 32-18 win over a representative Navy team, Temple defensive lineman Jerquavion Mahone went on radio and associated Temple football with another four-letter word:

Bowl.

“All we’re thinking about is winning this season out and getting into a bowl game,” Mahone said on Wednesday night’s Stan Drayton Radio Show (97.5 FM). “We want to do it for all the guys who have been here through all of what we’ve been through for the last three years and we want to do it for coach Drayton.”

When someone is 6-4, 290 pounds, you tend to listen to what he has to say.

My guess is Mahone won’t pull a Quincy Roche and opt out of a bowl if he gets his way.

First things first, though, and tomorrow’s game is at USF (noon, ESPN+).

If the Owls win that one, they can think about beating UAB.

IF .. and that’s a big IF .. they beat UAB, it sets up a home finale the day after Thanksgiving where they can beat Memphis for a bowl game.

Must admit it would be sweet to go from an absolute mess to a bowl in a little over a month.

Whoa, Nellie.

If that happens, chances are that E.J. Warner will be the first Temple player in my lifetime carried off the field after a victory because they will need a Herculean three games from Warner to complete the trifecta. The team gave a preview of that by carrying Warner around the locker room after the win over Navy.

Beating USF is a hard-enough task but by no means is it impossible.

Temple fans even in this season like to look down on one-win UConn, a former rival, and say that this three-win Owl team is better and I think it is. Yet UConn “only” lost, 24-21, to USF and even with all the Owls’ problems, I think any team with E.J. Warner on it beats UConn by double-digits.

Now go ahead and prove me right with a touchdown win at USF tomorrow.

There is both good news and bad news here because the good news is that USF can’t stop anybody.

The bad news is neither can Temple.

Now the Owls showed some defensive fiersness against Navy, holding a triple-option team to zero first-half points. That really was the only reason Temple won the game because everybody knows that a triple option team no matter how good it is doesn’t come back from 17-0 deficits.

The Owls played a flawless first-half of defense by putting their best players in position to make plays. They had effective run- and pass blitzes and they need to do that going forward because they can’t get a rush from their base three.

If they do that against USF, they can cause havoc in the backfield and make a running quarterback put the ball up.

Our picks this weekend

When that happens, guys like Magee, Layton Jordan and Jalen McMurray have to use their talents to go get it and take it the other way.

Mahone will have to do his part by occupying blockers and getting a push up the middle.

The rest will be up to an offense that needs to utilize its most talented players–Warner and tight ends DMR and Jordan Smith–in mismatches against the USF defense. That doesn’t even include the guy who got USF head coach Jeff Scott fired last year, Edward Saydee. Weapons galore for Temple.

UConn didn’t have that kind of offensive explosiveness against USF.

Temple does.

If the Owls use it effectively, you can start saying a four-letter word about them and, for the first time in months, it can be said in polite company.

Late Saturday Night: USF Analysis

11.19.22
by

Temple-Cincy: Turnovers Don’t Add Up

Even Carl Friedrich Gauss, the 16th-century mathematician considered by many the greatest ever in his field, might be crossed up by some of the numbers in AAC football this season.

Particularly when it comes to Temple.

The Owls, a team that took Navy to overtime, lost 70-13 to UCF. Navy beat UCF on Saturday, 17-14, on the road. The Owls, who had gone two weeks without punting in putting up a 45-point average, punted the first two times of the game in a 23-3 loss to Cincinnati.

They should have been the first sign it wasn’t going to be their day.

Want more?

East Carolina, which visits Temple next week, beat UCF, 34-13, but lost, 42-3 on Saturday to a Houston team the Owls had beaten until 1:22 remained in the game a week ago. In hindsight, the Owls probably needed to run off a couple of more plays before E.J. Warner hit Zae Baines for the go-ahead score at Houston.

That was last’s week’s problem, though.

Gauss might have had the answer to this week’s one, though, because he was famous for citing variables to solve mathematical equations.

For Temple, what didn’t add up on Saturday was the turnover margin.

The Owls were able to avoid turnovers at Houston.

They were unable to against Cincinnati.

Temple lost two fumbles and had two interceptions.

Game, set and match.

When a team recruits as well as Cincinnati has (four-straight top AAC classes as ranked by either Scout.com or Rivals.com), the only way to beat a more talented team by the less talented one is to win the turnover battle.

When the more talented team forces turnovers–really, from Temple’s perspective they were unforced errors–the less talented team has no chance.

That pretty much sums up what happened to the Owls on Saturday. The Owls had two reviewed fumbles (initially called down) overturned, a run by Edward Saydee and a reception by Zae Baines. One of the interceptions was a perfectly threaded pass from E.J. Warner to D’Wan Mathis but the ball went off Mathis’ hands and into the Bearcats in the end zone. Mathis wouldn’t have even been in there had not Amad Anderson been suspended for a game and he was missed. The fact that it was only a one-game suspension probably means it wasn’t anything too serious.

Still, along with the turnovers, losing players like Anderson and top pass-rusher Darian Varner (injury) really hurt. Temple can’t afford to lose good players like that.

Cincinnati wasn’t able to beat any league foe by more than 10 until it arrived in Philadelphia simply because it was not able to go plus four in the turnover margin in its prior 10 games.

It was on Saturday. That was not because of their talent but because Temple couldn’t protect the rock. Tugging on Superman’s Cherry Cape didn’t help. With the loss, dating back to the 2012 debut of Matt Rhule, Temple is 2-17 wearing black uniforms against FBS opponents (wins over only Tulsa in the Geoff Collins Era and this year’s win over UMass).

The unis were the tugging on Karma. The turnovers were spitting into the wind.

Now an ECU team that has beaten up Temple the last two years knows the way to beat the Owls is to win the turnover margin.

That shouldn’t be a secret because that’s a tried and true football axiom.

On its end, Temple knows it has to protect the football like it’s the Hope Diamond in order to go into the offseason with some momentum.

The Owls should have known that before the Cincy game but this embarrassing loss illustrates that the focus this week should be on protecting the football. Even Stan Drayton pleaded with his team earlier this week to “eliminate the things that are slowing us down.”

Against Cincy, they didn’t listen.

Maybe in seven days they will.

Logically, the Owls should be able to beat a team that lost, 42-3, at home to a team the Owls lost to 43-36 a week ago. Lose the turnover battle, though, and all logic goes out the window.

Even the brightest minds in history know that.

Monday: Some Other Numbers

11.06.22
by

The reaction: Admiration but not respect (yet)

 Regarding visual artistry, no one quite matches Temple University’s official team photographer, Zamani Feelings. The guy shoots from different angles and gets shots no one else does that are pretty breathtaking.

Telling a story, though, the champion is a fan in the stands and former Temple player Mike Edwards.

When the entire fan base was wondering if junior running back Bernard “The Franchise” Pierce would be coming back for his senior season (which would have been in 2012), a shot Edwards took captured the moment and removed all doubt.

The pre-game discussion about Pierce in the tailgates was split. Half of the guys thought had he come back for his senior year at Temple he would earn first-round money the next season. The other half said Pierce needed the third-round money now. Nobody thought he’d be higher than a third-round pick if he left after his junior year so we were looking at keys to his intentions and we got it later that day.

Pierce went over to then-head coach Steve Addazio and hugged him as if to say his Temple home career was over. Daz wasn’t happy and went out and convinced ACC Preseason Player of the Year Montel Harris to transfer to Temple in an attempt to replace the production of an NFL third-round choice.

Harris was the last Temple player to do what Edward Saydee did in a 54-28 win over USF: Gain almost a quarter of a mile on the ground. In 2012 at Army, Harris went for a school-record 351 yards and seven touchdowns in a 63-32 win.

Saydee didn’t reach that number, but getting 265 and three touchdowns was pretty darn good. On Saturday, Edwards captured the pretty neat photo at the top of this post.

So many stories in that one photo. 1) Saydee leaving both teams in the dust; 2) Adonicas Sanders way in the back with his finger in the air; 3) Isaac Moore celebrating a job well done with a block; 4) Stan Drayton reliving his All-American running back past by running for the touchdown, too; 5) A vertically challenged person holding what looks like a medical bag on the sideline (presumably oxygen for Saydee); 6) the smiles of the Temple players on the sideline.

That pretty much seems up the Temple reaction in one snapshot. As Henrik Ibsen first said, a picture is worth a thousand words.

The outside reaction, though, was somewhat less impressive. One UCF fan offered his congratulations and said he “admired” the Owls because they tried hard in a 70-13 loss.

Vegas, though, has not shown respect just yet.

If you thought the win over USF might bring down the point spread for Saturday’s game at Houston to low double digits (which I did before I checked), you’d be mistaken. Houston opened as a 20-point favorite despite having a defense that gave up 77 points on the same day Temple dropped a 54-burger on USF.

The message was loud and clear. The nation does not respect Temple quite yet and the Owls are going to have to go out and get it.

Just like Daz got Montel Harris.

Friday: Houston Preview