Watching the Super Bowl on Sunday night was a study in contrasts, the old versus the new.

At least at the quarterback position.

Patrick Mahomes’ 25-22 overtime win for the Kansas City Chiefs over Brock Purdy and the San Francisco 49ers represents a win for new school football, where the quarterback who is mobile and can complete any pass beats the immobile one who can do the same.

That’s already happened in college football. The championship quarterbacks in each conference can move and throw. The middling teams don’t have that guy.

Temple will be making that same transition in the 2024 season with Clifton McDowell, a mobile quarterback who can make any pass, replacing E.J. Warner, an immobile quarterback who can do the same.

Forget what Pravda is telling you about Evan Simon winning the Temple quarterback position. That ain’t happening. Just remember you read it here first. McDowell is a poor man’s Patrick Mahomes. Simon is a homeless man’s Brock Purdy.

What about the rest of the story, though?

Football is a 22-man game, not a one-or-two-man one.

The small picture is that Temple improved the passing game by moving the pocket and the running game by replacing Edward Saydee and Darvon Hubbard with a pair of JUCO All-Americans and a Big 10 running back.

The rest of the story is the bigger picture.

Temple bulked up both lines and increased its depth while doing so.

For a deeper dive, this is a pretty good place to start but there are a couple of players who stick out.

A high school player from New Jersey, a defensive lineman named Giakoby Hills, is 6-5, 270 with four blocked kicks. The athletic ability to block that many kicks is impressive and Temple has not blocked an important kick since a 6-5 wide receiver named Deion Miller blocked a field goal that would have given UConn a win over Temple a dozen years ago. The best kicker in the country then, Brandon McManus, then made one to give the Owls a 17-14 win.

Speaking of kickers, the days of kicking the ball out of bounds–which have been four dark years–are seemingly over with the addition of Austin Peay kicker Maddox Trujillo, who made 38 of 53 field goals and 96.2 percent of his extra points. If he does those percentages at Temple, he will be second only to Don Bitterlich in both categories and better than the best kicker in the nation in 2012, McManus.

There are plenty more “worthy” of mention but we will end this with a guy named Worthy. Terrez Worthy was the most valuable player for Maryland in the 2022 Big 33 game against Pennsylvania, giving Temple its third MVP from a Big 33 game (Adrian Robinson and Jalen Fitzpatrick were the others). Both of those guys did great things at Temple and, if Worthy, who is 5-11, 190 with breakaway speed does the same, Temple will have its best running back since Ryquell Armstead.

All good things on paper.

Now let’s see them do it on the field.

Friday: New Coaches