Something Temple offensive coordinator Tyler Walker said about quarterbacks and getting them up to game speed stood out like a (not so) sore thumb.

Or leg.

Or shoulder.

Watch out! 👀 @joey_schlaffer #TempleTUFF pic.twitter.com/l4LkoddJRK

— Temple Football (@Temple_FB) August 13, 2026

The Owls quarterbacks are not allowed to get hit in practice, anytime, anywhere.

Problematic any year, but particularly in a year that the Owls have two guys who’ve never–really seldom–have been hit in a real game.

“They’ve been getting better from the spring and the summer,” Walker said. “They put in a lot of reps. The one thing that I can’t recreate is the game reps. That goes without saying. We had a guy last year in Evan Simon who has 2,000 game reps. We just don’t have that. So there’s going to be some ups and downs. There’s going to be some trials.”

One of the highlights in Thursday’s practice was a 5-yard run for a touchdown by Ajani Sheppard. That would have been all the more impressive except for one thing.

The Temple defenders were not allowed to touch Sheppard on that 5-yard ruu.

Unfortunately, the Rhode Island defenders in Game One will not have that similar restriction.

The solution seems obvious. Make the quarterbacks live and take the orange jersey off but that’s not how college football works in 2026. It’s how college football worked in 1974 and 1979, but it hasn’t worked that way for a while.

Now Temple fans will have to find out if the Owls’ QBs can take a hit roughly about the same time the QBs themselves will find out if they can take a hit.

We’re exaggerating for effect here, but only a little.

According to ESPN.com, Jaxon Smolik–the Owls’ expected starter–played in only two games last year, Iowa and Nevada. In both games, he had no completions, no attempts, no carries.

Most importantly, he wasn’t touched.

Neither was Sheppard, who did not appear in a single game last year.

Yikes indeed.

Now we can see why Walker was shaking his head when describing game reps.

The irony of all this is that the three highly regarded true freshmen coming in–Lamar Best, Brody Norman and Brady Palmer–have plenty of gameday hits under their belts a year ago.

It hasn’t helped them move up the depth chart yet, but don’t be surprised if the first group gets challenged by the second group sooner than later. Practice makes perfect, but there is a lot to be said about games themselves. That is the rock and hard place Temple finds themselves with respect to the quarterback position.

It’s a practice, not a game. How important is that?

Just ask Allen Iverson.

Monday: Speed To Burn

Fittingly on Cherry and White Day, a Temple grad hosted Saturday Night Live.

Colman Domingo.

Not much to takeaway from that coincidence other than the fact that Domingo was the fifth Temple graduate to host SNL (Bill Cosby, Tom Sizemore, Bob Saget and Quinta Brunson were the others).

That’s a lot of acting and comedy talent out of one place.

Probably a few of them have gone to Cherry and White games.

That’s always been a day where the football talent in the school was the main focus and it looked like Temple put enough talent on the field to make some noise in the American Conference.

Not the kind of noise that comes with comedy or acting, but certainly singing.

As in singing T for Temple U, which we haven’t heard enough of over the last seven-straight losing seasons.

No sweeter sound at the end of football games than hearing that and to hear it more often than not certainly is the goal this season.

We really won’t know for sure until September because the structure has changed so much in the last 50 years or so.

From Wayne Hardin’s “real games” that included kickoff returns with real tackling, and a score that gave declared a Cherry winner or a White winner, we have evolved to this:

For The Cherry & The White 🍒🦉#TempleTUFF pic.twitter.com/HKD0sdUwhZ

— Temple Football (@Temple_FB) April 11, 2026

Saturday’s “game” did not include a final score, and Avery Powell took the opening kickoff to the house except he didn’t. (Nobody was allowed to tackle the returner, and the whistle was blown once Powell got by everyone.) We predicted a 60-yard field goal by Carl Hardin and what we got instead was a 58-yarder that clanged off the left post. Close enough.

The 3,000 or so Temple fans who made the trip should consider themselves lucky. Not only did Temple have perfect weather (72 degrees and sunny), but it looked more like a “real game” than what we’ve seen more of the last seven years.

For one, former rivals Pitt and Rutgers didn’t even have games. For another, there was real tackling out there. Pitt and Rutgers are doing something a lot of schools have done but Temple has stayed the course and held the closest thing to a game without a score you can have. (I’m going to follow up to see how teams that didn’t hold spring games fared, record-wise, vs. those who did and we’ll post this at the end of the season.) For another, both Stan Drayton and Rod Carey avoided contact whenever possible.

There was plenty of contact on Saturday.

Head coach K.C. Keeler took the microphone and exactly 2 p.m. and said: “I want to welcome the greatest fans in the world. You are my people.”

Then the hitting began.

It’s always hard to tell the football end of things when the good guys are playing the good guys. When Jaxon Smolik throws a sidearm pass simultaneously 20 yards across his body and 40 yards downfield for a touchdown, it’s a great throw, sure, but then you worry about the defense.

When the defense shuts down the running game, you worry about the offensive line and on and on.

One thing we do know is that Smolik, Penn State’s third-string QB last year, looks like he has more ability than Ajani Sheppard, who has a backup at both Rutgers and Washington State yet that might have not been fair to Sheppard because quarterbacks weren’t allowed to show their open-field running ability.

If I had to give an honest evaluation, Evan Simon looked much better in last year’s spring game than both Smolik and Sheppard and that’s a concern.

Keeler said summer practice basically begins on June 1 and I for one am hoping that true freshman Lamar Best balls out and makes the starting quarterback decision for Rhode Island a three-way dilemma. Put it this way: Had BYU named a starter after spring ball, Bear Bachmeier would not have had a chance to lead the Cougars to an 11-1 regular season. Like Best, he didn’t participate in spring ball. Like Bachmeier, Best has the “it” factor and is both dynamic and explosive. Can’t say I saw dynamic and explosive in either of the two quarterbacks on Saturday. Maybe consistent and steady are the best compliments I can muster at this point.

Other than that, the major takeaway is that the defensive line–the second area of concern–had a great spring and pressuring the quarterback will be improved over a year ago.

Does that mean more renditions of T for Temple U this year than last?

Who knows but judging from the way the current players sounded belting out a tune, maybe a SNL hosting gig is in one of their futures.

Friday: 5 Biggest Surprises from Spring Ball