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Bortles’ clutch play robs P.J. of his Day
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Logic fails TU braintrust once again
When this young person saw the Owls line up in a shotgun five yards back when they needed an inch, the fan wigged out. All the fans watching in Philly were screaming at the TV for the QB sneak, too. Can’t blame them.
Every fifth grade student learns this basic tenant in Geometry class: The shortest distance between two points in a straight line.
Either way, with Walker taking
the snap behind Friend,
you are giving it to either your
first- or second-best player following
either your first- or second-best player
Little Matty Rhule must have called in sick that day in 1985 because on Saturday, facing a fourth-and-inches from the Rutgers’ 15 with less than two minutes remaining, the Temple head football coach elected to run a play to the halfback, Kenny Harper, out of a shotgun formation instead of sneaking his 6-1 quarterback, P.J. Walker, straight ahead for the three or four inches needed for a first down.
Since Rutgers was out of time outs, had the Owls secured that first down, all that was left was three kneel downs for what would have been Temple’s first-ever AAC win. Instead, Rutgers stopped a slow developing play two yards into the backfield, got the ball back and quarterback Gary Nova executed an effective drive that resulted in a 23-20 win for the Scarlet Knights.
What made the curious play call all the more egregious was the fact that Temple has one of the best centers in the country in sophomore Kyle Friend, a 6-2, 305-pound behemoth who neutralized Notre Dame All-American Louis Nix III in the Owls’ opener. Arguably, Friend is the Owls’ best player. Before the season, Rhule said that the team gave out single-digit numbers to the nine “toughest” guys on the team but that the only reason Friend did not get No. 1 was because offensive linemen are not allowed to wear single digits. He might not be the best player only because of what has happened over the last few weeks, but certainly is the toughest.
Arguably, because the team’s best player over the last few weeks has turned out to be Walker, his true freshman quarterback. Either way, with Walker taking the snap over Friend, you are giving the ball to either your first- or second-best player followed through the hole by either your first- or second-best player.
For a head coach, failing geometry is one thing but failing logic is far worse.
Related:
Rocket scientists, they are not
How this guy didn’t get the ball 25 times against that defense with a 28-7 lead, I’ll never understand.
Today was the first time I’ve ever NOT been excited to have a 28-7 lead late in the first half.
“You watch,” I said to the people I was watching the game with, “with the rocket scientists we have running this team, we’ll lose.”
I never hated being right so much before, either.
Given the gift of 28-7,
you pound and ground so much
you make Steve Addazio
look like Air Coryell
Football is not rocket science. You have a 28-7 lead, you run Kenny Harper inside behind a 305-pound (average) offensive line against a defense that had trouble stopping people all year. Just to mix things up, you run the “read option” and pitch the ball out to Zaire Williams, who rarely fails to get around the end or, if nothing is there, have your talented quarterback turn the ball up inside. If you HAVE to throw, allow P.J. Walker to drop deep, draw the rush to him, and dump off safe screen passes to Williams, who is unstoppable on that play.
You accomplish two things by that strategy: Move the ball, score points, and keep the ball away from an uber-talented quarterback, Garrett Gilbert. Score points, chew some clock. Given the gift of 28-7, you pound and ground so much you make Steve Addazio look like Air Coryell.
Click on Dave Clawson for a blueprint on how to build three winning programs.
Score points, chew some clock, move the ball. Fortunate enough to get a 28-7 lead, that should have been the mantra. You might not get seven every time, but I saw no indication that the SMU defense was able to stop Williams the (too) few times he had the ball.
It should not take a rocket scientist to figure that out, but there is not an accomplished head coach on the staff among the rocket scientists running this program.
Heck, the only guy with head-coaching experience on the Temple staff, Ed Foley, was a failed head coach at Fordham. Dave Clawson was a much better coach there before him and Joe Moorhead a much better one after him (see inset story on Clawson).
I wish Clawson (my choice at the end of last season) would come here to fix things, but that’s water under the dam.
Damn.
Matt Rhule’s not getting fired. Temple’s got no money. No money. Fans who want to fire coaches have to understand the financial reality involved in hiring one. That’s a big commitment. When you make a decision to hire a coach, you stick with him until the contract runs out because this is a state-related school and Bill Cosby doesn’t pick up the tab for head coaches anymore (like he did with Ron Dickerson). Hopefully, it’s a year-to-year, but I doubt it.
Make that 9 carries a 25 and Temple wins going away.
The reality is that Temple has lost to two teams it should not have lost to (Fordham and Idaho), beat a team it was supposed to beat, Army, and had 59 points scored on it by a two-win team.
Unacceptable, even for a first-year head coach.
When are we going to beat someone we’re NOT supposed to beat?
I’m not holding my breath.
Phil Snow’s not getting fired, either. I think Matt Rhule is “too nice a guy” to make the hard decisions he has to make at the end of this season and that’s not a hard decision for us, but it is for him.
A lot of that has to do with lack of talent on defense and poorer coaching schemes (geez, if the guy is going to throw 600 yards on you, might help by sending the best tackler in the nation straight ahead on blitzes instead of having him cover Deion Sanders’ kid … just a thought). People who preach patience have got to know that this team returned eight starters on offense and nine on defense, won four games last year, and was expected at minimum … minimum … to either match or improve that.
It’s not going to happen and I don’t think it’s Steve Addazio’s fault. That’s a damn shame because as good as P.J. Walker is, I see his career developing along the same lines as Henry Burris’ career did under Ron Dickerson: Plenty of yards and TDs, but plenty of losses. A 1-11 record is going to lose a lot of recruits and Temple is going to get caught up in the same losing spin cycle Burris did under Dickerson and players like Dan Klecko and Walter Washington did with Bobby Wallace. It’s a vicious cycle and I see no way of avoiding it other than getting someone in here who knows what he’s doing and that, sadly, is above Temple’s pay scale given they already have to pay this guy.
More reality: Temple was outscored, 45-21, in the second half. In three other games (Houston, Notre Dame and Cincinnati), Temple had zero points in the second half. If you get the idea that not much work is getting done at halftime, you get the right idea.
Good work before halftime, though.
Too bad college football doesn’t have a 14-point Mercy Rule.
Related:
One thing is certain: It won’t be a tie
Not my ticket. Two things that struck me about this. The game kicked off at 8:30 p.m. on a Friday night on the East Coast (and I don’t think TV had anything to do with it) and 31 seats in one row is a lot of seats.
Most people agree that Temple’s football game at SMU today (3 p.m., ESPN3; 97.5, The Fanatic) will be a high-scoring one, very unlike the last two meetings between the teams.
One thing it will not be that the other two games were are ties: SMU and Temple tied, 6-6, in 1942 and 7-7 in 1946. In the 1946 game, SMU was called for offsides on a missed Temple extra point that enabled the Owls to kick a second extra point.
Temple was the only team from the “traditional East” the Mustangs played that year.
I’m old enough to remember college football games that were tied and I’ve never really understood them. I became a Temple football fan while sitting through a Temple tie with visiting Villanova, 13-13, in the early days of coach Wayne Hardin.
At the time, I was just a young kid who was a fan of both teams: Villanova, because my dad went there; Temple, because its games were on Philadelphia television (Al Meltzer play-by-play, Charlie Swift color).
The SMU team Temple tied in 1946 played in the Cotton Bowl in a regular-season game against Texas A&M that same calendar year. Cotton Bowl was SMU’s home field back then.
When Villanova coach Lou Ferry took three knees to avoid a loss deep in his own territory, I saw all I needed to see. I became a Temple fan for life.
Temple, in my mind, was the team that always tried to win. Against Penn State years later, the Owls lost, 31-30, because they eschewed the extra point on the final play of the game. Temple also played a 17-17 tie at Cincinnati. To me, a wasted trip.
I’ve never understood the concept of ties. They didn’t settle for them in basketball and they should not settle for them in football.
While I like the new overtime rules better than the old ties, I’d still prefer to see an extra quarter before going to them. They must have had their reasons, though.
Another theme about today is the back-to-the-future aspect of TV-watching. I thought those days of being in the MAC and watching the game on the computer were over, but they are not. No local TV station chose to pick up the ESPN3 feed, but why not Temple TV (Channel 50 on Comcast)? Today, on Channel 50 between 3:30 and 6:30 is the following programming: Campbell’s Comedy Show, Jock Joint, The Grog Show, Temple Smash and a rerun of Temple Update. Seems to me like it would not take much to plug in the HDMI feed of ESPN3 and broadcast it over the air, with permission from ESPN. Maybe Cal and Lucille Rudman can look into this for the future. The last two games I watched on computer did not have a good ending: Temple at Bowling Green (2011) and Temple at Idaho (2013).
At least this Temple-SMU game will not end in a tie and hopefully the Owls will have this one wrapped up before they have to play an overtime. If they do, I will take back all of the bad things I said about Matt Rhule.
Err, at least some of them.
Early TV. Unfortunately, we get UConn-UCF on Channel 6 instead of RU-Houston.
On paper, not a good matchup for Owls
A plus from this film is that SMU does not appear to have a significant home field advantage.
Fortunately, they do not play football real football games on paper or Madden or Xbox because, if you input all of the relevant statistics into a computer, Saturday’s game (3 p.m., EST) at SMU does not favor Temple in any way.
The Owls have struggled against passing teams and the Mustangs are the No. 8 passing team in the nation. Heck, the Owls have struggled against passing teams for the last two years. These stats against just four foes illustrates that a lot better than mere words:
| Team | PC-PA-INT | Yards | Touchdowns |
| Notre Dame | 17-27-0 | 355 | 3 |
| Houston | 29-48-0 | 305 | 0 |
| Fordham | 23-36-0 | 320 | 2 |
| Cincinnati | 31-37-0 | 270 | 2 |
Not good. Not good at all. Add to that Idaho, freaking Idaho I call them because I still cannot believe Temple lost to that team, had 301 yards against the Owls and it’s hard to imagine SMU not pushing 400 through the air on Saturday.
I think the Owls do have some talent on the back line of their secondary, particularly in players like Anthony Robey and Tavon Young and maybe Young’s interception last week was the start of something big.
Let’s hope so. SMU has a big-time quarterback in Garrett Gilbert, a 6-foot-4, 220-pound senior who has put up some amazing statistics: 208 completions in 329 attempts for 2,096 yards and 11 touchdowns so far this season. Worse yet, the Owls have shown an alarming tendency for giving up the “easy” patterns, the slant and the out. Brendan Kay used the out to complete 31 of 37 attempts. Two Houston quarterbacks went 29 for 48 with mostly slants over the middle.
Click on the Vandy guys for 5 upsets this week.
SMU coach June Jones, an accomplished college football coach who knows what he’s doing, probably has figured that out by now.
What can Temple do, then?
I’ve always said there are three keys to winning in football, from the Pee-Wee Level to the NFL: 1) Limit turnovers; 2) Protect your quarterback; 3) Put the other quarterback on his ass.
Although all are important for Temple this Saturday, No. 3 should be the No. 1 priority this week if the Owls are going to have any chance to win. Guys like Matt Ioannidis, Shabaz Ahmed and Averee Robinson MUST put relentless pressure on Gilbert. It can’t be a part-time, some-time thing. It must be a full-time thing, both sacks and knockdowns. That’s a lot of pressure heaped upon very few young guys, but if they get to Gilbert early and often, they might be able to force fumbles and interceptions. Robinson had five sacks in the spring game. If he gets two or three in this one and Ahmed a pair and Ioannidis just one, the Owls win going away. Or any combination of five or more. No sacks mean no win. The guys up front must give guys like Robey and Young a chance to intercept the ball by pressuring Gilbert into mistakes.
Those guys have shown signs of coming on and they must all have good games on Saturday if the Owls are going to come away with a win. SMU is beatable. The Mustangs needed a last-second play to beat the lone FCS team on their schedule, Montana State, 31-30. Montana State is 5-2. The Owls failed to beat the lone FCS team on their schedule, losing on a last-second play to 8-0 Fordham.
Nothing on paper says the Owls will win, but this game will be played on the same sprint turf kind of surface the Owls practice on every day and, if they are able to put Gilbert on it enough, they can put the pre-game paper in the shredder.
Tyler Matakevich is going to become the first player in the nation to hit 100 tackles this season.
Chris Coyer: The James Casey of Temple
James Casey while playing quarterback for the Rice Owls.
All of this talk about James Casey being the “emergency quarterback” of the Philadelphia Eagles got me to looking up Casey’s credentials as a potential quarterback should both Michael Vick and Matt Barkley go down on Sunday.
Since Nick Foles already is out with a concussion, it looks like Casey would not be in over his head as a quarterback because he was more than a serviceable at that position while playing for the Owls.
The Rice Owls.
Call James Casey the Chris Coyer of Rice. Or, if you will, call Chris Coyer the James Casey of Temple. Very similar skill sets. Very similar-type players.
Temple’s Chris Coyer catching at a halfback option pass from Jalen Fitzpatrick for a first down in front of Deiontrez Mount and Keith Brown. (See, trick plays do work.)
Casey, like Coyer, made a position change his senior year and, like Coyer, moved from quarterback to tight end.
Unlike Coyer, though, the coaching staff at Rice used Casey wisely as he became the first player in the history of the NCAA to do this: Throw a touchdown, run for a touchdown and catch a touchdown all in the same game. Casey did this twice for the Owls.
Casey was second in the country in 2008 with 111 receptions, which set a Conference-USA record. He caught 13 touchdowns, rushed for six more and threw a pair. Those are the kind of stats I thought Coyer could have put up if he was targeted enough in the Temple offense this season. That’s not going to happen, but that doesn’t mean he can’t throw for a touchdown, run for a touchdown and pass for a touchdown in one or two or more of the remaining Temple games.
Since there are five games left, I’d like to see Coyer do this twice, maybe three times, for Temple.
Heck, five times would be nice but I realize I’ve been spitting into the wind all season on this issue.
Coyer is a pretty talented player. Those of us who have seen him all these years, even his one or two detractors (don’t get those people, but they are out there), have to agree on that.
He can run. He can throw. He can catch. He can block.
I realize Coyer is needed to block now more than ever, but I would like to see some plays to free him up to throw the ball out of non-Wildcat formations. On those plays, Chris Parthemore (see his perfect seal block in the slideshow below) can be used as a blocking tight end.
Since there currently are no plays in the Marcus Satterfield playbook for the tight end reverse, pitch and throw downfield, maybe line Coyer up as a fullback, have him rip off a few runs to set up a toss pitch option pass downfield.
Great play for Coyer, running to the left, not the right as shown here.
Too much to ask?
Yeah, probably.
I asked Chris after the game on Saturday if the tight end reverse, toss and throw downfield off it was in the playbook and he said no.
My immediate reaction was to say a four-letter word preceded by the word “Oh.” (Sorry, Mrs. Coyer.)
There should be a way, though, to have Coyer run the a couple of plays out of the fullback position, establish himself as a threat running the ball inside the tackles and then quick toss and have him throw the ball down the field. I’m 90 percent certain you can get a safety to bite with that kind of setup.
It worked a few times for the Rice Owls with James Casey.
It can also work for the Temple Owls with Chris Coyer.
Howard Smith’s photos from an Owl win
Congrats to Owls on First Win
Click here for story on P.J. Walker that ran nationally. Congrats to the Owls and coach Rhule.
Live coverage of new Temple Stadium announcement … not
With a 4-2 record, this sketch might have been unveiled at the inaugural today.
Right around the Notre Dame game, I got a couple of emails from well-connected people I trust at Temple: “Mike, President Theobald will say something about a new stadium in his inaugural address. Book it.”
Then I talked to a few people at the Houston tailgate who said pretty much the same thing independently. After Fordham and Idaho all such talk dried up.
I haven’t heard a peep about a new stadium or even re-upping the lease at Lincoln Financial Field since it became apparent Temple couldn’t beat the only FCS team on its schedule or the worst FBS team in the country.
No excuses allowed tomorrow. Just win.
I marked down in my calendar as early as a couple hours after Notre Dame that today might be a good day to blog live about the new stadium initiative that Theobald seemed to be open to as recently as 10 days ago.
I listened intently to Theobald’s inaugural address today. No mention of new stadiums. No mention of re-signing the Lincoln Financial Field lease. Heck, no mention of athletics at all.
Instead, Theobald talked about “six commitments” and the first three of those were lowering student costs, improving the faculty and improving relations with the City of Philadelphia.
Pretty surprising considering that one of Theobald’s two stated priorities when hired was to “win in the Big East.” (The other was making tuition affordable.)
That talked dried up, too.
Nothing blunts forward momentum in sports like losing and losing in the way Temple football has lost this year: Generally undisciplined play that shows up in things like penalties and blocked field goals. Add to that poor offensive game planning (i.e., making a three-tool talent like Chris Coyer disappear and failing to recognize that Fordham had a high school JV-sized defensive line) and overall passive play on defense and you have a formula for 0-6.
That’s just where we find ourselves today.
Frankly, if you can’t beat Fordham
or Idaho with this talent,
you probably never deserved
to be here in the first place
Tomorrow is Homecoming and this is the first year I’ve actually dreaded going into the stadium since Bobby Wallace was the head coach because I know this team has a lot more talent than the coaching staff is getting out of it. Even in Al Golden’s first year, I skipped into the stadium because I knew it was going to get better.
Now I’m not so sure. If this coaching staff can’t beat Fordham and Idaho with THE TALENT CURRENTLY ON THIS ROSTER, that doesn’t bode well for the future, either immediate or long-term. Frankly, if you can’t beat Fordham or Idaho with this talent, you probably never deserved to be here in the first place.
The website Coacheshotseat.com lists Matt Rhule’s salary as $1.2 million. I seriously doubt that figure (I think it’s closer to $850,000) but let’s say it is true: I would say he’s getting paid $1.2 million per win but since he’s got no wins, he’s getting paid infinity per win.
Theobald did not mention football, stadiums or even sports today in his inaugural address. Let’s just hope it was an oversight.
Yeah, that was probably it.
Related:
http://www.sacbee.com/2013/10/18/5832722/president-theobald-outlines-vision.html
http://college-football.si.com/2013/09/30/paul-pasqualoni-fired-uconn-football/
http://www.dailytribune.com/sports/20130929/usc-fires-coach-kiffin-after-7th-loss-in-11-games
The blueprint for beating Army
One of the best sights of this season was seeing a guy like Juice Granger celebrating in the end zone. He’s been an unselfish Temple Owl for three years and deserves a win this Saturday.
A year ago around this time, Juice Granger threw four times, completed 50 percent of his passes, added 85 yards on the ground and orchestrated an offense that produced 63 points.
Former Temple head coach Steve Addazio left the blueprint for beating Army on the field at Michie Stadium last year.
Run the ball. Run it again and run some more.
Click over the Duke coach for five upsets this week.
Matty Brown started it all with two touchdown runs, then he got hurt and Montel Harris added a game for the ages: 351 yards, 7 touchdowns. Even Kenny Harper added a touchdown run.
Mostly, though, it was Interstate Highway-sized holes being opened up by several members of the current offensive line, with the exception of Martin Wallace who has gone on to the Cleveland Browns. They can open those holes up again for Harper and Zaire Williams, if this coaching staff permits it. While Harper and Williams might not be as talented as Brown and Harris were, they can certainly negotiate their way through those kind of holes.
It’s all right there on what former Temple football coach Bobby Wallace used to call the “fill um.” Current Temple head coach Matt Rhule was in attendance that game but he can check the film if memory of how it was done escapes him.
Or he can ignore the evidence, do things his own way, and join Wallace in Alabama as an assistant Division III offensive line coach next season.
We’ll know if Rhule learned from his mistakes against Fordham and Idaho as early as the first quarter. Army is at a size disadvantage against a Temple offensive line that includes at least two future NFL players in Kyle Friend and Cody Booth and quite possibly a third in Pete White.
If at least 12 of the first 15 plays are not runs, you can leave at that point and head to the parking lots because Temple will lose.
If the Owls run a clean (penalty-free) dozen, they will win and maybe handily no matter how successful those plays are because it will set the tone that will enable Temple to wear down Army on the ground over four quarters. There is an ancillary benefit to running the football against a team like Army: Chewing up the clock and keeping the ball away from a team that scored 50 points a week ago.
If the Owls do what they’ve been doing so far in an 0-6 season–throwing 10 long bombs of about 50 yards–they are opening themselves up to turnovers and a loss. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Hopefully, sanity returns to Lincoln Financial Field in the form of a pound-and-ground Homecoming win on Saturday afternoon. If it doesn’t, we’ll have to find a new guy to draw up the blueprints.
Related:
Temple Football Forever 