Tag Archives: football
Speed Kills and Speed Would Help
The Owls didn’t have the speed at tailback to get outside enough to keep drives going.
It’s funny (curious funny, not humorous funny) how football works.
The hope—at least with a lot of Temple fans—was that Navy would get beaten up so much by a bigger, stronger, faster, Ohio State team that it would suffer so many injuries that would help Temple a week later.
“Give Temple credit.
A lot of that was all
the third and twos
we couldn’t convert.
We have been converting
those in the past.
… but they beat
our guys up front.”
_ Navy coach Ken Niumatalolo
err, five years ago
Instead, Temple was the school that suffered so many injuries that last year’s starting corner, Anthony Robey, had to play safety. Still, the biggest takeaway from the day to me was the Owls’ shocking inability to play the option as compared to the 2009 Temple team. On that day in Annapolis, the Temple defensive front handled Navy’s offensive line in a 27-24 win. So much so that this is what Navy’s great coach, Ken Niumatalolo said afterward:
“Give Temple credit. A lot of that was all the third and twos we couldn’t convert. We have been converting those in the past. … but they beat our guys up front.”
That was then. This was now: Temple was painfully slow at both defensive ends after showing some speed last week. Don’t know whether it was the heat or not, but Praise Martin-Oguike and Sharif Finch played most of the down and distance situations a week ago against Vanderbilt and those two have outstanding DE speed. Their backups, though, who did get a lot of snaps—probably because of the heat— are slow as molasses. Molasses on top of Navy’s pancake blocking is not a good condiment.
How has Temple gone from “beating (Navy’s) guys” to being beaten at the point of attack? Recruiting should have gotten better after the MAC, not worse. I’d also like to know how Western Kentucky—with Western Kentucky talent—beat Navy’s guys last year in a 19-7 win. Or how Duke’s guys did it in a 35-7 win. Playing Navy is tough, but coaches like Bobby Petrino and David Cutcliffe—and, heck, Al Golden—proved it’s not rocket science.
Herbin did not get selected No. 1 in the players’ draft for the Cherry and White game because his teammates like him. He got that honor because he’s a playmaker in the mold of the Seattle Seahawks’ Percy Harvin. The Seahawks find innovative ways to get Harvin the ball. It’s high time for the Owls to find ways to get Herbin the rock.
Going into the game, I thought players like Matt Ioannidis and Averee Robinson would have so much success inside at blowing up the point of attack that they would stretch the option wide and Temple’s linebackers and ends would have the speed to string the option out to the sideline. Instead, Temple’s linebackers were doing the tackling seven, eight, nine yards downfield because Navy was able to turn the corner time after time. The fullback dive play, which did not work in 2009, worked too much on Saturday.
Not a good sign. Neither was wearing black anything on a 99-degree day. That wasn’t well-thought-out. The school’s colors are cherry and white and there are enough innovative ways to make cherry and white look good. The song doesn’t say “Fight, Fight, Fight or the Cherry and the White … and the black.”
Speaking of speed, it’s also becoming increasingly apparent that until Temple recruits someone with “Bernard Pierce” or “Matty Brown” speed and pedigree, the Owls should consider moving Khalif Herbin—who is faster than both Pierce and Brown were and just as shifty if not moreso—to tailback for at least a few snaps a game as a stopgap measure. No one runs any harder than my favorite Owl, Kenny Harper, but he’d best serve the team as a lead blocking fullback for players like Herbin and Jahad Thomas. Harper can still carry the ball a few times for running plays up the middle.
Herbin did not get selected No. 1 in the players’ draft for the Cherry and White game because his teammates like him. He got that honor because he’s a playmaker in the mold of the Seattle Seahawks’ Percy Harvin. The Seahawks find innovative ways to get Harvin the ball. It’s high time for the Owls to find ways to get Herbin the rock.
All of this can be fixed for the Owls to become the best team they can be. They were not the best team they could have been on Saturday. They have a couple of weeks to tweak and experiment and put the players they have in the best position to win.
This Year’s Chris Coyer?
Better Call Saul, err, Bobby
Click on photo of Matt Rhule to see who he can call to bust Navy’s triple option.
Twice as good as 1-11
Gotta wonder where this use of Chris Coyer was 10 other games (he missed one due to injury) because I think he could have won the Paul Hornung Award and the Owls would have been much more successful if he was targeted as little as five times a game.
Every so often, message board reading is about as good a way to check out the pulse of the Temple fan base as there is.
It used to be the post-game tailgates but, after an 0-6 start to the season, most of those familiar faces were gone.
So the message boards it is.
Some of the stuff is pretty well-written, like a post this morning from someone who calls himself “Owlfather.”
Now I don’t know if he’s a father, but I assume he’s an Owl and he pretty much put both this season and next in a nutshell by saying Temple has “crossed the Rubicon” with Matt Rhule and, if the team finished 1-11, he’s going to be in a Catch-22 situation because he’s going to have a hard time holding together what was once the No. 30-ranked recruiting class in the country. (Now, depending on which recruiting service you subscribe to, it’s no higher than the mid-60s.) Catch-22 is a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions, which is what Matt Rhule faces after going 2-10. Failure on the field could lead to failure in recruiting (teams recruiting against Temple will love to point out the Owls were 2-10) and failure in recruiting could lead to further failure on the field–a classic Catch-22 situation.
Props to that guy for bringing up both Catch-22, required summer reading my junior year of high school, and Crossing the Rubicon to put this season in perspective.
Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, today’s 41-21 win at Memphis notwithstanding. (For those wanting to see a complete replay of the game, click here and follow down the list to the Temple game.)
I love historical analogies and “crossing the Rubicon” means there is no going back with Matt Rhule. It refers to Caesar in 49 B.C. faced with two choices: To cross the Rubicon, confront Pompey (not Keith) and begin a bloody civil war to become a ruler of Rome or retreat, thus obeying the Roman Senate. He chose to cross the Rubicon. The expression, crossing the Rubicon means that there is no going back, once a line or a point in time, however you’d like to interpret it, is crossed.
Same thing with Matt Rhule and Temple football. It has been my position all along that Temple will not fire him BUT that he’s got to do a better job next year than he did this. So I don’t think the 2-10 final record as opposed to 1-11 changed that dynamic considerably. Had Temple beaten the teams it was supposed to beat going into the season (Army, Memphis, Idaho, Fordham and UConn) and stolen the Rutgers’ game, it would have been making plans to attend the nicest bowl game the school has ever been picked as a participant. I also think that if you score 49 points in any game, you should have the defensive integrity to win it (SMU).
That’s got to happen next year and that’s why Rhule is going to have to look inward and ask himself if the soon-to-be 58-year-old Phil Snow is the right guy to stop today’s sophisticated pistol and spread offenses. I don’t think he is, but that’s a conclusion Rhule will have to come to on his own. Could he get Chuck Heater back? Heater had Temple’s defense ranked No. 3 in points allowed in 2011 and followed that this year by having Marshall ranked No. 23. Marshall, Marshall, Marshall. Or maybe Nick Rapone from the Arizona Cardinals? Would DC be a “promotion” from NFL DB coach? I think so, because Snow himself went from Detroit Lions’ DB coach (of an 0-16 team) to DC at Eastern Michigan and Rapone has Philadelphia roots. Speaking of Eastern Michigan, that school fired Ron English as its head coach and English was a very good DC at Michigan before he got the EMU job. Maybe he’s available. So there are better DCs than Phil Snow out there and let’s go get one.
Winning today made the offseason much more palatable but there is much more work to do and we’ll have a clue whether it gets done first by the staff decisions Rhule makes in the next few weeks and second by National LOI day if he’s able to hold the class together.
Fourth and inches? Since Rutgers, it’s been P.J. Walker behind Kyle Friend for three first downs in three attempts, something we were yelling for him to do at RU so maybe he’s either heard or learned at least something.
Great job by Morry Kamara. Thanks, Morry. P.J. Walker and Robby Anderson are stone-cold studs. Maybe next year is Temple’s turn to beat Penn State on a Hail Mary.
A Most Special Group of Seniors
My favorite internet photo of the Eagle Bank Bowl because it shows only about 1/10th of the Temple fans who were there. Twenty thousand Temple fans traveling to D.C. for a bowl game is something I will always remember.
While paging through my copy of the Eagle Bank Bowl program from the 2009 game, I was stunned to see many of the current football players for Temple on that roster.
A college career these days usually is four years and most of those players would have graduated by now but, in my mind, 2009 represented the rebirth of Temple football from what was essentially a 30-year slumber and a lot of those guys were there. Chris Coyer was throwing the ball to Ryan Alderman every day in practice and Coyer was named the Scout Team MVP the week before Vaughn Charlton started against UCLA in the Eagle Bank Bowl.
The best helmet this year. I hope they keep it.
Who knows would have happened had Coyer started the bowl game, but I think he might have made just enough plays with his arm and feet to have won it in the second half after Bernard Pierce went down in the first half. Al Golden was 100 percent right in preserving Coyer’s redshirt at the expense of a loss to UCLA in a bowl game but, in retrospect, he was probably a lot more talented than Charlton and Stewart even then. I do know for metaphysical certainty that had Joe Paterno granted Adam DiMichele his release he would have had an extra year of eligibility and Temple would have probably won the MAC that year and maybe have had the same kind of year Northern Illinois is having this season.
Either way, as a Temple fan in D.C., freezing your ass off watching a football game never felt so good, at least for the first half.
Kamal Johnson, a defensive tackle, had a sack in the Eagle Bank Bowl and another in the New Mexico Bowl and is the only Temple player I’ve ever known to have sacks while playing for the Owls in two bowl games.
I hope he’s not the last.
Click on the photo for five upsets this weekend.
One of the current seniors, Sean Boyle, spent much of the 2008 year (no, that’s not a typo) centering the ball to Adam DiMichele. Imagine that? Boyle played on an offensive line in front of DiMichele, Charlton, Coyer, Chester Stewart, Clinton Granger, Mike Gerardi, Connor Reilly and as a teammate to P.J. Walker. I once said “Hi, Pat” to Sean and he shot back, “Mike, I’m Sean.” Could not tell the difference between Sean and his twin brother Pat. Sorry, Sean. I will always remember both guys as great Owls.
I will go to my grave thinking that Chris Coyer was grossly underutilized by an offensive coordinator, Marcus Satterfield, who never really understood how his versatility could have created so many more scoring opportunities in the passing and running game.
While Ryan Alderman was not my choice to return punts this year (I would have picked the redshirted Khalif Herbin), I walked up to him and thanked him after an early game for not fair catching. “We need to make that an offensive play,” I told Ryan. (He’ll probably get off a good return tomorrow night. That’s my prediction.)
Juice Granger could have quit when they moved him from quarterback but he didn’t and caught a touchdown pass in the Cincinnati game. That was a great moment in a year devoid of great moments. Whatever you think about Juice, just remember, he was the quarterback who “managed” the team to 63 points in a win at Army last year and would have “managed” the team to more than 50 points against Fordham if the team adopted a similar game plan this season. The team was getting six yards a pop (5.8, exactly) against Fordham on the run in the first quarter but then inexplicably stopped running.
I talked to Cody Booth’s dad before the Houston game and lamented they haven’t thrown the tackle eligible pass to him. They still haven’t. Kid has the best hands on the team and he plays tackle, they should throw at least one tackle eligible pass in his direction. In the NFL, this is allowed on any play in which a lineman declares to the ref to be eligible. In college, it’s allowed only on fourth down FG attempts, which would be a perfect fake from a FG formation for Temple. In fact, I have serious doubts that this coaching staff even knows HOW to draw up a tackle eligible play on the blackboard. In the diagram below, the right tackle (in this case) would be eligible:
Cody Booth would be eligible if he lined up on the far right as a RT in this formation.
Paul Layton is the Montel Harris of punting. He will go down in my mind as one of the three greatest punters in Temple history, right up there with Brandon McManus and Casey Murphy. He understands the art and just doesn’t boom for the sake of booming. Temple’s downed more kicks inside the 10 this year than I remember in a long time. I think his game translates well to the next level.
In many ways, this is my favorite group of seniors because they were all around when it changed from losing to winning.
Things did not turn out the way I expected for them this year because of dumb coaching last year (running the ball 75.9 percent of the time on both first and second down, setting up third-down disaster scenarios) and even dumber coaching this year: No quarterback sneak robbed the team of a win at Rutgers, using a punter to attempt a 25-yard FG against Houston when a perfectly good backup kicker (Nick Visco) was available cost them a 16-15 lead with less than 2 minutes left in that one. Visco later went 7 for 7 in from the same distance in extra points at SMU. That cost the team two wins right there. Not pounding the ball against terrible run defenses (Fordham and Idaho) cost the team two more wins. Matt Rhule spent this year learning on the job and these seniors were the Guinea Pigs. My stance all season was Rhule should have learned on the job at place like Kutztown, not a place like Temple. At the Temple level, this is a too big a business to hire a CEO who requires on-the-job training. The Temple community learned that lesson the hard way with the bottom line being 1-9 and there are simply no excuses for 1-9.
So it is with great sadness that we as Temple fans say goodbye to these players tomorrow night (7 p.m., ESPN3) in their final home game at Lincoln Financial Field. UConn is the opponent.
They deserved a lot better.
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| Some of these guys I had the pleasure to meet and they are great people. |
Bortles’ clutch play robs P.J. of his Day
Click on the photo for game coverage. Analysis from the Temple perspective tomorrow after a 24-hour cooling off period.
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.
Temple Football Forever 