Tag Archives: Everett Withers

09.26.24
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Everett Withers strikes again

Any good vibes after Utah State were destroyed by a terrible defensive game plan.

When Stan Drayton gets fired by new Temple president John Fry at the end of this season, one major CEO decision will be the only reason why he was sent packing.

Undeserved loyalty.

After his second unacceptable 3-9 season in 2023, Drayton promised to review the entire operation “including the coaches” and, instead of getting rid of the guy who was responsible for the worst Temple defense in history, DC Everett Withers, decided to jettison a couple of lower-level assistant coaches.

After a 42-14 loss to Army on Thursday night, a third-straight embarrassment on ESPN in front of the entire nation (coming off 55-0 to SMU and 51-3 to what turning out is a not-as-good-as-expected Oklahoma team), it’s clear that being a buddy of Drayton is good for Withers and terrible for Temple.

Hiring your buddy is the No. 1 thing that has ailed Temple football since Matt Rhule left in 2016 and nobody is a bigger buddy than Withers. Athletic director Pat Kraft, who played football at Indiana, hired his buddy Rod Carey, who also played football at Indiana at roughly the same time.

New Temple AD Arthur Johnson, the Texas football director of operations, hired buddy Stan Drayton, who was the Texas RB coach when he was there. Drayton hired longtime buddy Withers to be his DC despite Withers giving up 40 ppg as a DC at FIU in 2021.

Ugh.

The beat goes on and those black eyes belong to Temple fans who deserve better.

We can now compare Withers to another former Temple DC in Phil Snow.

In the opening game against Army in 2016, Snow stubbornly kept his base 4-3 defense and the Owls fell, 29-16.

Before the AAC title game against a better triple-option team, Navy, Snow studied the Army film and came to the conclusion that the reason the Owls lost that opener was because he left the “A gap” uncovered.

Before the Owls faced Navy in the title game, he also noticed that SMU left the same middle uncovered and Navy won in Dallas, 75-31, a couple of weeks before the title game against Temple. Snow decided the secret sauce for Temple to win was to alternate Averee Robinson and Freddy Booth-Lloyd at nose tackle, take away the fullback dive, and force the triple option from sideline to sideline.

Mostly, Robinson, a three-time Pennsylvania state heavyweight wrestling champion who not only destroyed the Navy center but stopped the Navy fullback every time for no gain. That left superior athletes like Haasan Reddick and Sean Chandler chasing the pitchman and forcing him out of bounds or, better yet, punching the ball free for Temple turnovers.

That’s what I’m talking about Willis.

That worked for a 34-10 championship win.

Withers?

Played the same base defense against Army on Thursday night that he played a couple of weeks ago in a 38-11 loss to Navy.

My only bet on this game was that the over would be accomplished because Withers likes to clock in a 9 a.m. and clock out at 5 p.m. and won’t do anything to change his base defense to scheme against the strength of the opponent.

This guy doesn’t give a shit about Temple, only the paycheck he gets from it.

Drayton, on the other hand loves Temple, but is also blinded by his love for mentor Withers.

It will be his downfall.

I was right once again. I wish to hell I was wrong.

What’s the definition of insanity?

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

What Drayton should have done at the end of last season is sever his relationship with Withers and gone out and replaced him with the best FCS defensive coordinator in the country.

Drayton might be more comfortable shooting the shit with Withers on Friday morning over the office copier than some stranger who might have shut down Army but Temple fans are the ones squirming now.

Unless Drayton does something drastic like replace Withers with linebacker coach Chris Woods next week, the new Temple president will notice and decide to do something about it. Woods was a successful DC in the USFL. Withers hasn’t been a successful DC since one game in the 1980s.

Unfortunately, Drayton is too nice a guy and we all know what Leo Durocher said about nice guys.

They finish last.

Monday: Avoiding the inevitable

03.01.24
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With winter over, hope springs eternal

Meteorological winter ended on Thursday while astronomical winter ends in about 20 days, so for the purposes of this space, we are acknowledging the former.

For Temple football fans like myself, hope springs eternal today.

Brandon McManus beats UConn with this OT field goal in 2012. The Huskies return to the schedule this season.

On the last day of meteorological summer, Temple will be playing at Oklahoma. That seemed like a good idea back on Halloween of 2015 when the Owls were trading blows with a then better team, Notre Dame.

Not so much nine years later due to a couple of things that didn’t exist then, the NIL and the transfer portal.

Because of largely those two things, Oklahoma will be playing downhill that day while Temple plays uphill.

There are reasons to believe, though, that the Temple season will will really start the next week during meteorological fall could be successful.

Since the Temple football schedule came out a couple of days ago, we can now go with our way-too-early projections.

Here they are:

Oklahoma 66, Temple 7 _ The Sooners recruit high school All-Americans and get the best out of the portal. The Owls recruit JUCOs and maybe lower end FCS and FBS players. Our guess is that Temple quarterback Clifton McDowell will avoid a hellacious rush and hit Dante Wright with a touchdown pass after Everett Withers’ defense gets predictably torched. 0-1.

Matt Rhule hugs Tyler Matakevich during his first win as a head coach. Rhule beat Army after an 0-6 start to his career.

Temple 34, Navy 16 _ If the dysfunctional Owls of 2023 could beat Navy by that score (and they did), it is only logical that a more functional team can duplicate the same feat. 1-1.

Coastal Carolina 31, Temple 19 _ Coastal has been a much better G5 program than Temple the last three seasons and not enough has changed for the Owls to catch up. 1-2.

Temple 34, Utah State 31 _ Utah State barely beat UConn and Temple was better than UConn at least last year based on the one comparable opponent. 2-2.

Temple 28, Army 24 _ Going with the hunch here that Temple wins a home game much like the 0-6 Owls of Matt Rhule’s first season beat visiting Army. Likely a Homecoming Game and Army doesn’t bring a big crowd. 3-2.

Our expectation is that Everett Withers clocks in at 9 a.m. and clocks out at 5 p.m. on non game days and that’s probably not enough to get Temple to improve from a 38.7 ppg defense to even a 30 ppg one but would love to see him prove us wrong.

Temple 37, UConn 30 _ UConn is finding out how difficult it is to recruit playing an independent schedule. If the Owls can beat Utah State, they must be able to beat UConn. 4-2.

Temple 31, Tulsa 21 _ Tulsa has much of the same recruiting problems as Temple and its student population. The Owls embarrassed themselves at Tulsa last year. They must turn that around. 5-2.

Temple 10, East Carolina 6 _ East Carolina might have been worse than Temple last year. If Withers holds them to a couple of field goals it will be his best job since a 1985 shutout of Louisville. 6-2.

Tulane 42, Temple 14 _ Jon Sumrall is a flat-out better head coach than Stan Drayton and will prove it on this day. 6-3.

FAU 35, Temple 14 _ Same for Tom Herman vs. Stan Drayton. 6-4.

UTSA 59, Temple 24 _ E.J. Warner put up 34 points on UTSA a year ago but that was at Temple’s Homecoming where the Owls typically overperform. On the road, McDowell puts up 24 but UTSA’s team speed embarrasses Withers’ defense again. 6-5.

UNT 45, Temple 34 _ McDowell does a decent job against a porous Mean Green defense but Withers does the same job he did a year ago against the Mean Green offense. Temple finishes 6-6, makes a bowl, but a four-game losing streak puts a damper on an otherwise good season.

The postscript of this season will be what might have been had Drayton made for the rest of the world was an easy business decision (but for him a difficult personal one) to replace Withers at the end of the 2023 season.

That’s our story and we’re sticking to it. We will revisit this prediction no later than December.

Eating crow after an 8-4 season or better would be our hope that day but the more likely scenario is that we’re probably overly optimistic.

Spring can do that to a psyche.

Monday: The Newest Trend

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

01.07.24
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Temple football: Too much hesitation

The playwright Joseph Addison first penned the phrase: “He who hesitates is lost.”

That wasn’t last year or two years ago but way back in 1713 in his play “Cato.”

True then. True today.

If Temple football has done anything over the last two years, it’s a lot of hesitation followed by a lot of losing.

The Owls needed a running back last season, didn’t get one worth a damn in the portal (although Liberty’s 1,000-yard back, Dae Dae Hunter, slipped through the cracks and ended up nowhere) and repeated their 130th-ranked running game in the 2023 season by going with the same backs that produced those same numbers.

It only figures that a 1,000-yard back would make your running game twice as good.

Apples to apples.

Albany quarterback Reece Poffenbarger has been in the portal since Dec. 13. That’s almost a month. This is the type of guy Temple should have swooped in on and shown love to no later than, say, Dec. 14th.

Temple needs to replace E.J. Warner and his 23 touchdown passes and Poffenbarger would bring 36 touchdown passes from this year to next year’s table.

Not very many names left in the portal, but Temple can offer an immediate starting job four upgrades from E.J. Warner and should.

That’s how you get better.

Touchdown passes are some pretty nice apples.

Instead, there is no indication that Temple went after either one of those guys and there has been a lot of hesitation and that’s a recipe for a lot of losing to follow.

Poffenbarger had not been linked to any school before last week when Miami swooped in and is pursuing him after getting turned down by Cam Ward, Kyle McCord and other P5 transfers. At Miami, Poffenbarger would have to compete with one 4* and two 3* QBs.

At Temple, all he would have to do is beat the Rutgers’ backup.

Had Stan Drayton come and and used the last 27 days to get Poffenbarger’s name on the dotted line instead of hesitating we might have our upgrade.

A couple of weeks ago we floated the idea in this space that Arthur Johnson bringing in Geoff Collins to be DC and “head coach in waiting” to upgrade the worst defense in all of college football and, instead of jumping on that idea, Temple appears to be set to go with the same DC in 2024 who produced putrid numbers in 2023, Everett Withers.

There is also an apples-to-apples comparison between those two.

Both of those guys had a one-year stint at the same place, Florida International. In Withers’ year as DC at FIU (2021), the Panthers gave up 39 points a game. That year the “lowest” point total Withers’ defense gave up to a FBS squad was 31 points in a loss at Central Michigan.

Collins is not only the best DC in FIU history (and Withers the worst), but he knows his way around the Edberg-Olson Complex. Happy Birthday to Nadia Harvin, by the way.

In Collins’ year as a DC at the same school (2010), the Panthers gave up 27.3 points per game and allowed a season-low 10 points in a 34-10 win over North Texas. At the same place, in the same job, Collins’ numbers were significantly better than Withers.

Now Collins is becoming the DC at North Carolina.

Temple might not have been able to woo Collins but getting in on him first and offering him the head coaching job in waiting might have been helpful to upgrading the overall defense and forced UNC to look in another direction.

Last year, Temple did a lot of hesitating in the offseason followed by a lot of losing in the real season. What were seeing (or not seeing) now appears to be a repeat of last offseason.

“He who hesitates is lost.”

If Joe Addison’s ghost could float into the E-0 today, he might say “I told you so” to Stan Drayton.

Friday: The two best portal decisions (so far)

10.20.23
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Temple-SMU: Quitting time?

You know the worm has turned when the national broadcasters who used to rave about “Temple TUFF” eight years ago are mentioning another four-letter word about Temple football:

Quit.

While quitting time for the week for most workers usually is 5 p.m. on every Friday, it will be less than three hours later the rest of the nation decides whether the Temple football Owls have punched the clock out for the rest of the season.

With good reason.

Bud Elliott of CBS Sports’ Cover 3 podcast casually stuck in that word at the end of his analysis of tonight’s Temple-SMU game (ESPN2, 7 p.m.).

“Temple might be on quit watch,” Elliott said.

In a tribute to his hometown in New Jersey, Jahad Thomas channels his inner Fred Sanford eight years ago yesterday when the Owls’ made No. 22 in the AP poll.

It’s not a phrase he uses lightly. Unlike most national experts, Elliott has watched a lot of Temple. In fact, the “Cover 3 podcast” really is the only national podcast other than the “College Football Show” (Gary Seagers, Kyle Hunter and Parker Fleming) that ever talks Group of Five football. (Josh Pate, we are looking at you. The next time Pate mentions a G5 team will be his first.)

For the record, I don’t think the Owls have quit yet but NFL fans saw the Philadelphia Eagles “allow” the Jets to score a touchdown on Sunday and the entire defensive effort for Temple looked like that pretty much all year. In reality, the Owls aren’t laying down as much as they are following the schemes of an inept defensive coordinator, Everett Withers, who allowed 39.7 points a game in his last full-time DC job (FIU, 2021) and he’s doing his best to exceed those dismal numbers at Temple this season.

We warned everyone about that in this space back on St. Patty’s Day and we weren’t even drinking then.

Elliott is expecting SMU to put a “50 burger” on the Owls and it’s up to the players to disabuse him of that notion tonight and make it a competitive game.

Mostly the defensive players.

I will grant Bud this point: Last year the defensive side of the football fought like hell. Just think back to the Rutgers’ game when Layton Jordan was sacking Big 10 quarterbacks like it was going out of style and teammate Tre Thomas was the best defensive player on the field that day. Temple’s defense was taking off RU heads, figuratively of course.

I don’t see the same “Temple TUFF” his year. We are running out of days and nights to see that same kind of toughness again. The current Temple players owe it to the past Temple teams to try to shut out SMU. Show some life. Sack the quarterback and strip him of the football. Pick balls off on defense and take them the other way.

That’s what Temple football teams used to do not all that long ago.

The really sad thing about this is Temple was on the opposite of “quit watch” eight years ago this week.

On Oct. 18, 2015 the 7-0 Owls moved up from No. 25 the prior week to No. 22 in the AP ranking. That was the highest the Owls made it in that all-important poll since they finished No. 17 in both the AP and the UPI polls in 1979. By Halloween, they would make it to No. 21 and play a knockdown drag out battle with Notre Dame in the ABC Saturday Night Game of the Week before the largest Philadelphia TV audience that watched any college football game.

Ever.

Temple University as a school could not buy that kind of publicity and the result was a record freshman enrollment for the 2016 scholastic season.

Only four years ago this week Temple also made the Top 25 of the Coaches Poll.

Since then, we’ve seen a Midwestern coach flop his way out of Philadelphia like a fish out of water and the next guy hire a defensive coordinator “friend” with a terrible record of allowing points turning a group of better-than-average players into a team that seemingly doesn’t know where to line up and are tentative when they should be attacking.

Some friend.

Another blowout loss tonight and we know what four-letter word the nation will be uttering about Temple football.

Hint: It won’t be TUFF.

Tomorrow: Game Analysis and Saturday picks

10.14.23
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Temple football: At least one head needs to roll

Just when every Temple football fan thought we’d never sink to the depths of the Rod Carey Error, the Mariana Trench could not hold how far the program sank on Saturday.

Put it this way: Twice this season, Temple’s defense performed on a lower level than that of both Abilene Christian and Arkansas Pine-Bluff.

Much lower.

Lower than whale shit.

The Mariana Trench, near Guam and Saipan, is 36,000 feet under the surface of the earth–the lowest place near the center of the earth.

Temple Football Forever, March 17, 2023

Arguably, Temple’s defense was lower than that in a 45-14 loss at North Texas on Saturday.

You could make an argument that multiple heads need to roll but there can be no argument that one head needs to roll.

Everett Withers.

Withers inherited nine starters from a defense that didn’t wow anyone but did “hold” Navy to 20 points and Navy was a team that beat current Big 12 team UCF.

Withers also inherited the same players who “held” Tulsa to 29 points. That seems like a comical hold but not when you consider Withers took those same players and “held” Tulsa to 48 points less than a year later.

Temple Football Forever on Dec. 3, 2021–a dozen days BEFORE Stan Drayton was hired as head coach here.

How do Arkansas Pine-Bluff and Abilene Christian factor into this?

Well, APB held Tulsa to fewer points (42) than Temple did and Abilene Christian gave up the same number of points Temple did to North Texas.

Temple was a once-proud program. It is not that anymore. It cannot be dragged to the depths of Abilene Christian and Arkansas Pine-Bluff. It needs to rise to respect level of at least Syracuse, Maryland and Pitt.

You have to ask this question: How did Temple devolve from a team that beat Penn State in 2015 and Maryland in consecutive years (2018 and 2019) to a team that is performing on a worse level than Arkansas Pine-Bluff and Abilene Christian?

The answer is bad hires.

Stan Drayton’s hire looks very bad right now. Everett Withers’ hire looks much worse.

Drayton, to his credit, didn’t have a track record for being a head coach and maybe Arthur Johnson deserves a pass for that hire. Still, if you are a Temple person, you have to question a “Texas director of football operations” hiring a “Texas assistant coach” for the top job at 10th and Diamond.

Drayton himself does not deserve a pass for his hire of Everett Withers. Everyone in America knew Withers had a terrible record as a DC before Drayton hired him in March but for some reason nobody understands, Drayton looks at Withers like Travis Kelce looks at Taylor Swift.

Temple was trending nationally at 3:30 Saturday for all the wrong reasons.

Somebody needs an eye exam and it’s not Kelce. It’s not like Drayton doesn’t have good options. Chris Woods is a former USFL defensive coordinator and he’s working at 10th and Diamond now. He could not do worse than Withers and there’s a real good chance he could do much better.

If Drayton doesn’t fire Withers no later than Monday, he is telling you in as many words he cares more about long-term friendships than he does about Temple or his players or even you the fans.

If he tells you that, more than one head will need to roll and the sooner the better.

Monday: The Fix Is In

10.13.23
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North Texas: The Eclipse Game

Sometime in the middle of the second quarter of Temple’s game at North Texas, a solar eclipse will darken at least 80 percent of the sun for maybe 17-29 minutes of the game.

It will be the first eclipse game in Temple football history. Maybe the eclipse changes the Owls’ fortunes. Maybe not. Think the Eagles at Chicago Bears’ “fog bowl” for a historical perspective.

Of all the games in the country, Temple will be the darkest game in the middle of the second quarter. I’m guessing they have science at North Texas and know this.

Gotta hope the folks at North Texas are aware of that and keep the lights on for the short time day becomes night in Denton.

Around that time, though, the light has to turn on for Temple football or this season is over.

Some people who do not wear Cherry and White glasses (see above video) believe in Temple here. The line has dropped from North Texas being an 8.5-point favorite (Monday) to a five-point favorite (today) and that means the “wise guys” are backing Temple.

The hard reality is that Temple will not be favored in another game this season unless the Owls are able to string two or three wins together.

Our picks this week.Logic is SDSU has much better coaches than Hawaii. Troy is a sneaky good team, the Charlotte kids play incredibly hard and the Iowa State loss at a good Ohio team was as fluky as it comes. For the season we are 8-8 against the spread and 16-8 overall.

This might have been what the “general public” expected but not what I expected listening to the glowing reports coming out of camp from March spring practice until the kickoff of the first game against Akron. We were told this was the best offensive line at Temple in years and all we’ve seen is that Isaac Moore’s blocking has been missed more than we thought and nobody can keep the bad guys away from E.J. Warner on any consistent basis. On top of that, we haven’t seen anything like Edward Saydee’s 254-yard game against USF last year and that’s a big indictment on the offensive line.

Worse, the defense had nine returning starters and a “normal” defensive coordinator replacement for the departed D.J. Eliot (Eagles) should have been able to post a shutout or two.

Instead, we got a friend of the boss (Stan Drayton) with a dismal record of stopping modern offenses coming into the season and he proved that old saying from Bill Parcells “you are what your record says you are.”

Everett Withers’ record screams “I suck” and has since 1985. (When he posted his last shutout as a DC.) Withers strikes me as a guy who punches the clock at 9 a.m. and punches out at 5 p.m. and if additional film study is needed at midnight to help his kids stop any future foes he just says “fuck it. I’m outta here.”

That, apparently, never bothered Drayton and he has reaped what he has sowed. He loves the guy evidently more than he loves Temple because it has not bothered him sufficiently enough to fire him after he gave up 48 points against Tulsa and 49 against UTSA. Blind spots will get you fired as a head coach and Drayton has a blind spot with Everett Withers.

I love Temple and if I was the Temple head coach, I would not have tolerated 48 and 49 point games from any defensive coach. Even given the hiring freeze by Temple, I would have told Withers he was free to go elsewhere and promoted a professional defensive coordinator (Chris Woods, USFL) to the top job.

A North Texas offense that has had success against any defense other than Navy last week figures to feast on Temple tomorrow (noon, ESPNU).

The only hope the Owls have is to outscore the Mean Green.

That is possible only if E.J. Warner’s replicates his five-touchdown, 472-yard performance against UTSA a week ago.

It figures to be a shootout. I’m guessing E.J. Warner has studied more North Texas defensive film than Withers has Mean Green offensive film.

Knowing E.J., I think that is a better bet and that’s sad because he’s not pulling down the half million Withers is stealing from Temple.

Temple 39, North Texas 35.

Let’s hope this is the start of something big. Failing that, something bigger than we’ve seen so far. In a 2-4 season, we’ve had enough of watching the Owls come up small.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis

10.07.23
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Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Defenses

After Saturday’s Homecoming 49-34 loss to UTSA, the math just doesn’t add up for Temple.

With six games left, the football Owls have to win four games just to become bowl eligible. That doesn’t look likely. Hell, Stan Drayton’s stated dream of “winning championships” at the school will have to wait another year.

Or two unless he hits the portal as hard as he should.

Or maybe never with this guy in charge of his defense.

You could make a strong argument that the math didn’t add up all the way back on St. Patrick’s Day when Drayton handed the keys of his defense to long-time friend, Everett Withers, after D.J. Eliot left the same DC position to become a linebackers’ coach with the Eagles.

If Drayton learned anything this season, friends don’t let friends drive defenses.

Were there more qualified people available?

Sure.

The last time a head coach handed the keys to his defense over to Withers was not all that long ago in 2021 and Withers got the head coach, Butch Davis, fired at FIU. Of the 130 FBS teams that year, FIU finished 128th in total defense, giving up just over 496 yards and 39.7 points per game. That’s hard to do on purpose, let alone ostensibly trying to tackle people.

That’s not the kind of resume you take into a job interview.

Yet Drayton probably didn’t vet Withers because he knew the guy and liked him.

When I was sports editor of two daily newspapers, I never hired a guy because I liked or knew him before. I would sort through the resumes and find the best guy for the job. When I was 24, I was given the responsibility of hiring someone for an assistant editor’s position.

Nobody worked out. They were either too slow or too sloppy or too unreliable. That is, until an experienced guy walked in and killed the tryout. Wrote the best headlines, made the best edits, laid out the best-looking pages.

“This is the guy I want to hire,” I told my Editor-In-Chief.

“But he’s 50,” my editor said. “Are you sure?”

“Fifty isn’t old,” I said.

“You’re getting a raise,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I’m 50.”

Editor was true to his word with the raise and he let me hire the guy, who turned out to be one of the best hires I ever made. I didn’t become his friend until after the hire.

Withers is 60 but he could be 30 and still wouldn’t have been the best person for the job. In his last season at FIU, he allowed 54 to Texas Tech, 31 to Central Michigan, 58 to FAU, 45 to Charlotte, 34 to Western Kentucky, 38 to Marshall, 47 to Old Dominion, 50 to MTSU and 49 to North Texas.

Most not FBS powerhouses but he made them look that way.

I’d rather have a 90-year-old guy who knows how to stop a modern offense than a 60-year-old who appears to be in over his head.

So far at Temple, against FBS opposition, he’s given up 21 points to Akron, 36 to Rutgers, 41 to Miami, 48 to Tulsa and now 49 points to a 2-3 UTSA team.

He has Temple on par to break the dismal record of the 2021 FIU defense.

That’s a shame because an offense that scored 26 points against Tulsa and 34 points against UTSA has done enough to win. E.J. Warner woke from his season-long slumber and became the E.J. we knew and loved at the end of last year. He and the offense deserved better. The defense once again didn’t hold up its end of the bargain.

Sometimes you have to take the keys from your friend and tell him he can’t drive anymore. If Stan doesn’t do that to Everett, he’s staring at another 3-9 season.

That’s only if there’s at least one team out there Temple can win a shootout against.

Monday: Post-mortem

09.28.23
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The Indiana Football Curse Strikes Again

Everett Withers could be the greatest friend and the nicest guy in the world but he has been complete garbage as a DC for FIU and now for Temple. He’s killing Stan Drayton. He needs to go like yesterday.

Many things can be true at once.

For Temple, the four truthers in a 48-26 football loss at Tulsa on Thursday night at Tulsa were:

One, defensive coordinator Everett Withers can’t stop a nosebleed. We already knew that.

Two, E.J. Warner’s sophomore slump is official. We “kinda sorta” expected that before this but it is now confirmed.

Three, Temple should avoid hiring buddies as football coaches.

Looks like Pat Kraft hired the wrong Indiana football coach.

Four, and maybe most importantly, The Indiana Football Curse struck again.

A former Indiana football person once again killed Temple.

Kevin Wilson, the Indiana head coach from 2011-2016, coached the pants off Stan Drayton. Wilson joins former Indiana player (and current Indiana quality control coach) Rod Carey as killing any Temple football hopes. Carey’s accomplice was former Temple AD Pat Kraft who could have hired anyone but chose his fellow Indiana alum. He picked the wrong Indiana guy.

The first and third killers are directly related because Withers is a buddy of Drayton and hiring buddies is a proven disaster at Temple. What was that Peter, Paul and Mary song? “When will they ever learn?”

Bill Bradshaw hired his buddy (Fran Dunphy) and that didn’t work out.

Kraft hired his buddy (Rod Carey) and that didn’t work out.

Arthur Johnson hired his buddy (Stan Drayton) and that doesn’t appear to be working out.

Stan Drayton hired his buddy (Everett Withers) and that has definitely not worked out. We saw that coming a mile away if you count St. Patrick’s Day as a mile.

Let’s sift through the resumes and hire the best person for the job and abandon this buddy system. That, unfortunately, is a hard lesson to learn and the Owls’ football program maybe has run out of time. When you have a bean-counting BOT that doesn’t even think painting the field is worth it, can the program itself be that far behind?

Our picks this week. As long as Withers is the DC, it’s money in the bank to pick against Temple.

Very little hiring oversight at Temple and that is showing through on national television.

As a result, a once-proud Temple football program is a national laughingstock. It pains me to say that but the evidence was there on Thursday night for any TV in any bar in America that was tuned into this game. (My guess it was on one TV in the far corner of every one while the NFL game was on every other TV.)

A 2-2 start to a season that started with so much promise pretty much ended on Thursday night. You can’t lose to a team that lost games by 66-17 and 43-10 no matter how good the teams that had the 66 and the 43 were.

This “Waiting for Warner” to be as good as he was last year needs to stop. Anybody who was shut out in the first three quarters by Rutgers and held to three points in the first half by a horrible Tulsa defense is just not good enough for Temple going forward. Stop babying him and worrying about him leaving. If he’s not turning the scoreboard into an adding machine, and he’s not, he needs to sit.

Quincy Patterson needs a shot from the beginning and not just in garbage time. He’s a big guy who, unlike Warner, can see over defenses and, also unlike Warner, can take off and run and do some damage should the play break down.

That’s probably the only thing to look forward to in the future. That, and discovering if Stan Drayton has the gonads to fire a friend for the overall advancement of the organization. That’s what great CEOs are able to do. Unfortunately, I very much doubt it.

For now, the reality is that the Indiana football curse struck Temple again and, ironically, Pat Kraft hired the wrong buddy.

Update on picks: Went 12-3 this weekend. Since they were all on the moneyline, going to keep those separate from my 8-4 against the spread in the previous two weeks.

Season: 20-7 overall

Spread: 8-4

Monday: Tweaking A Recruiting Model

Friday: Sense of Urgency

08.25.23
by

Bulletin Board Material for Everett Withers?

The website Wager Talk places any blame for TU failures this year on Everett Withers.

Don’t know what motivates new Temple football defensive coordinator Everett Withers but do know one thing:

He was a competitive enough guy to have made it all the way to the NFL as a player so when someone tells him he can’t do something or they are not confident in him doing something, the competitive juices usually flow the other way.

Withers trying to answer the question what kind of offense Joe Moorhead runs.

That was Withers the player, though.

If Withers, 59, the coach is the same way, Temple should be in good shape.

The website Wager Talk is not a big fan of Withers. Nor am I.

My concerns about him are well-documented in this space and have been since he was hired by Stan Drayton to take charge of 1/3d of the team in March.

One, in his last sole role as defensive coordinator–not all that long ago in 2021 for FIU–his defense hemorrhaged points like a motorcycle rider does blood falling off his bike at 60 mph without a helmet.

Two, he was sole DC at Austin Peay (1989), Louisville (1995-97), Minnesota (2007), North Carolina (2008-10), and FIU (2021) and doesn’t have a great record in any of those places.

With UNC in 2008, his teams gave up double-digit points in every single game with the exception of a 28-7 win over Georgia Tech. In 2009, the Tar Heels’ best defensive effort was a 19-6 win over Duke (every other FBS game giving up double digits) and in 2010 they did not hold a single team to 10 points or less.

In fact, you have to go back all the way to 1995 when Withers shut out an FBS team.

College football offenses have changed a lot since 1995.

Just as an example, Chuck Heater–who is without a job right now–shut out FBS teams in consecutive weeks for the 2011 Temple team. That was 16 years after Withers shut anyone out and more than a decade ago.

To say it’s a concern for this Temple fan is an understatement. However, it’s not a concern for head football coach Stan Drayton so if the Owls give up 30 or more against Akron, it should be on the CEO, not the DC, to step in and fix things. Withers is Drayton’s buddy and evidently Drayton’s comfort factor with Withers outweighed any thought about hiring a DC with a better track record.

Akron head coach Joe Moorhead has proven he can put points on the board with lesser talent than Temple before (Fordham, 31 points, 2013) so that should set off all kinds of alarms inside the Edberg-Olson Football Complex.

Withers would have to be living in a bubble right now if he’s not aware of criticism over his record stopping modern college football offenses.

If I’m him, I’m in the E-O until midnight studying every single damn play Akron ran in scoring 28, 44 and 22 points in its last three games of 2022 and devising a plan to stop the 10 most successful ones. I’d be hitting that rewind button a million times and taking notes and delivering them to Jordan Magee and Layton Jordan and company next week. In practice, I’m making sure those guys know what’s coming and are ready for it. I’d make sure they are in the right spots and, if they are not, I’ll be asking the scout team to rerun the play until the defense gets it right.

Somebody saying you can’t do something should be a motivating factor to prove them wrong. We will find out if that applies to Everett Withers in a week and a day.

Monday: Game Week