Tag Archives: Jon Sumrall

11.07.24
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Temple-Tulane comes down to a question of trust

This could have been at 12th and Norris had Lewis Katz had not gone way too soon.

Back in 2014 when Temple was beating Vanderbilt on the road, 37-7, fellow AAC member Tulane was opening Yulman Stadium.

It was a 30K on-campus stadium for a school used to playing in a big NFL stadium and it revitalized campus life and the football component.

In Philadelphia at the same time, Temple’s Board of Trustees was going in the same direction, approving a 35K on-campus stadium that had all the same intentions of Yulman Stadium, only bigger and better. Yulman was a big-time donor.

On Memorial Day of that same year, Lewis Katz died in a private jet crash.

What Yulman was to Tulane, Katz was to Temple.

Who knows?

Jon Sumrall is a great head coach. Stan Drayton is not. Temple needs a guy like this.

Maybe the Temple Stadium would have been named Katz Stadium and maybe Temple’s upward trajectory would have continued well past the Matt Rhule years.

Now Katz is gone Temple plays Tulane on Saturday (4 p.m., ESPNU). Katz had a lot to do with both the hiring of Steve Addazio (bowl winner) and Matt Rhule (AAC conference champion) as the head of the athletics committee at Temple both times.

Had Katz lived, do you think he would have hired guys like Geoff Collins, Manny Diaz, Rod Carey and Stan Drayton?

I don’t think so but we will never know.

Saturday’s game comes down to a matter of trust.

Do you trust Temple with Drayton and his sieve-like DC Everett Withers or do you trust a guy who made Troy a national power (Jon Sumrall)?

Not a betting man when it comes to the school I love but, if I was, I would lay the 25.5 points on the Green Wave and not blink an eye.

At Troy, Sumrall was a guy like current Temple OL coach Chris Wiesehan–an assistant who had the blueprint of success at that school drawn up by current West Virginia head coach Neal Brown. Wiesehan has all the secrets of Geoff Collins and Matt Rhule, two guys he worked under, at Temple.

When Brown went to the Moutaineers, Troy said, hey, we have a diamond in our own backyard in Sumrall. We don’t need to go elsewhere.

Sumrall took those receipts and made Troy better.

Now he parlayed that into a better job at Tulane, bringing with him his DC and OC and faces a RB head coach in Drayton and a DC who hasn’t been able to stop anyone in the last two decades. It’s Homecoming there. In a packed on-campus stadium that revitalized Tulane football from a few thousand fans rattling around the New Orleans Superdome to a college experience students will remember the rest of their lives.

Tulane went out and hired a head coach who proved he could get it done.

As a head coach, not a running back coach.

Who would you take?

I’ll be rooting hard for my team but I don’t trust my coaches. Have no doubt that my kids will play hard but I don’t see a DC who has ever believed in putting the other quarterback on his ass to my satisfaction. In fact, he lets every QB Temple faces pick his defense apart. Bruce Arians famously said while head coach at Temple that the best pass defense is putting the other quarterback on his ass. Everett Withers’ philosophy is to drop way to many guys into pass coverage and never risk sending way too many guys to force sacks and fumbles.

That’s a passive defensive philosophy and definitely not Temple TUFF.

Hate to say this, I trust the bad guys’ coaches a lot more.

Tulane 48, Temple 10 is about the right prediction. Praying for Temple to win, 24-23, but God might be saying: “Mike, hey, I’m God, but I can only do so much.”

Late Saturday Night: Tulane game analysis

10.16.23
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For Temple, a quick fix is a must

All over college football, Group of Five teams with resources similar to Temple’s are doing big things. The Owls are not.

My much older friend is irritated by my lack of patience in waiting for Temple to stack together some wins this year after teasing us with some close losses last season.

“Stick with us,” he says, “it takes a long time to build a program.”

Ten years or so ago, I might have agreed.

Heck, five years ago a compelling argument could be made for his case.

Not now.

Jon Sumrall was an assistant at Troy in the successful regime under Neal Brown. When he was asked to come back as a HC in 2022, he didn’t have to undergo a learning curve at his new school.

All over college football Group of Five teams are firing head coaches one year and turning things around the next.

Look at Troy, which went up to Army and won, 19-0, on Saturday.

Jon Sumrall turned Troy around in one year, (not two, three or five) last year. He replaced Chip Lindsay, who went 5-7 before getting fired in 2021. In one year, Troy went from 5-7 to 12-2.

Never expected Temple to go from 3-9 to 12-2 but 3-9 to 5-7 should not have been asking too much in 2022 and that should have set the Owls up for a winning season this year.

That’s progress. What we’re seeing is not.

Temple went from 3-9 in Rod Carey’s last season to 3-9 in Stan Drayton’s first season. It’s hard to imagine right now where Temple’s third win will come this season. The product the Owls put on the field this year is a disgrace and much more an indictment of the coach and the overall organization than the players. Last year’s “progress” was linear. This year looks like a regression. You could see the players fighting like hell last year, even in losses. I don’t see that same fight this year. They have a new guy pushing buttons on defense and he’s pushing all the wrong ones. Players who left were not replaced. Depth which could have been built with portal transfers was ignored. Three scholarships that could have gone to established FCS stars were left on the table and given to Temple walk-ons instead.

The overall plan needs to change.

Go on the Troy message boards and you will find the same posts ripping Lindsay’s incompetence that you found on the Temple boards ripping Rod Carey. They accused Lindsay of setting Troy’s program back five years, just like Temple fans did Carey.

Sumrall didn’t want to hear any of that. He rolled up his sleeves and went to work.

How did Troy do it?

They hired someone very familiar with the Troy recruiting base in Sumrall and a guy who hit the portal hard for (mostly) FCS players. That’s a real good level of football, a few steps up from Temple’s stated plan of recruiting JUCOs and high school players. With 19 new starters last year, mostly FCS starters who Sumrall identified in the portal, Troy went 12-2. Sumrall’s familiarity with a successful prior regime cannot be understated. The closest coach at Temple who currently fits that profile is offensive line coach Chris Wiesehan, who was a big part of both Matt Rhule’s and Geoff Collins’ success here.

Troy did not get a 70 burger dropped on it in Sumrall’s first season like Drayton got dropped on his first team.

There is no big bag of NIL cash at Troy to entice those players, just an opportunity for success at a next level up.

Betting against Everett Withers has been money in the bank so far this season, he’s been that predictably bad. I’d rather lose the bet and see Temple win but if I’m going to suffer I want to get paid for it.

Temple does not have time to recruit and develop high school recruits anymore nor should it. The Board of Trustees is watching the school’s athletic reputation dragged through the mud like Drayton is dragging down Temple’s reputation by losing big to no-names like Tulsa and North Texas. You’ve got to think that it is considering cutting its losses if some serious progress isn’t shown on the field soon.

Charlotte hired a new coach in Biff Poggi, who brought in 70 new players and none of them were high school kids. The Charlotte kids play hard and were within a touchdown at SMU in the fourth quarter this season. They lost on Saturday to Navy, 14-0, but they were not embarrassed by either Maryland (38-20) or Florida (22-7). There is progress there this year in his first year that hasn’t been shown at Temple in Drayton’s second.

Last year, G5 schools like Marshall (beating Notre Dame), Georgia Southern (Nebraska) and MTSU (Miami) had big-time wins and this year no less than 11 G5 schools have beaten P5 schools.

Temple isn’t one of them.

Schools like Troy and Charlotte have crafted a blueprint for Drayton to follow. Drayton is old school trying to build a program an old way that won’t work in the transfer portal era. He needs to get with the program fast or we might not have one to follow.

This year might be a wash but next year doesn’t have to be.

Hit the portal hard and get some great players from the FCS level who would appreciate the opportunity to shine. Recruiting high school kids and waiting for them to develop is something Temple does not have time for anymore.

The time to win is now. Last year should have been the developmental year.

Those who think it “takes a long time” to build a program will invariably find out they’ve run out of it.

Friday: SMU Preview

Saturday: SMU analysis

10.24.22
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Dancing on their own: The Temple Owls

This is the happiest I’ve seen the Broad Street Subway since Sept. 5, 2015.

Disc jockeys in this town like Jerry Blavat and Pierre Robert made a national reputation by taking a chance on a demo song, playing it, and then watching it go to the top of the pop charts first here, then nationally, by call-in requests.

If the present-day Philadelphia DJs still took requests, chances are a song by the alternative pop star Robyn called Dancing on My Own would top the list at least this week. That’s the unofficial anthem of the Philadelphia Phillies, who will steal much of the thunder from the unbeaten Philadelphia Eagles over the next couple of weeks.

Jon Sumrall has Troy at 6-2 after three-straight losing seasons (one more than Rod Carey had).

Ironic the Phillies adopted it because the theme is heartbreak and isolation, about someone watching her boyfriend dance with a new girlfriend.

Today, the Phillies are feeling loved and included, while it is the Temple Owls who are feeling heartbreak and isolation.

That’s what happens when you lose to a team 70-13 one week, then turn around to watch that same team get spanked, 34-13, by a league rival you once owned the day after you lose, 27-16, to a two-win team.

If the team that beats you 70-13 gets beat the next week 34-13, what does that tell you?

At least Robyn was dancing on her own inside the club.

Temple proved it could win the AAC title here. With 1,564 players in the portal, it doesn’t need to wait more than one of two years to repeat

Right now, the Owls are on the outside looking into the AAC football club, pressing their collective noses against the window after being denied entry by the bouncer.

Or so it seems.

First-year coach Jim Mora Jr. is not talking playoffs, but certainly entertaining a realistic shot at a bowl game after a 1-11 season last year.

The reality of this season is that Rod Carey got fired for a lot of 63-21, 52-3, 49-7 and 61-14 losses. Then the school ate $6 million of Carey’s salary to hire a new guy and the new guy loses 70-13. You can talk about the change in attitude and culture inside the E-O but, until it shows up on the scoreboard on game day, that’s all it is.

Talk.

Maybe it’s not so much the coach as it is the players.

Or maybe it’s a combination of both.

There were 30 new FBS coaches hired last year and Athlon Sports ranked Stan Drayton 29th. That might have been because he had never coached anything above a position but Drayton hasn’t proven those guys wrong yet.

Drayton still has a chance to prove the so-called experts wrong, but the reality is that he has not this year and probably won’t. Other coaches inherited the same or worse records a year ago and have done better than Temple has. Temple has some good players like linebackers Jordan Magee and Layton Jordan, defensive back Jalen McMurray and tight end Jordan Smith but it needs a lot of Magees, Jordans, McMurrays and Smiths and doesn’t have time to wait for high school recruits to develop.

Sadly humorous tweet from a fan watching the Temple-UCF game.

Other schools got good in a hurry by reaching that same conclusion and the solution is staring Drayton right in the face.

The same names Carey was being called by Temple fans could be attributed to past coaches at places like Georgia Southern, UConn, Troy and Duke but those places, unlike Temple, see new coaches prove themselves by the most important metric–the scoreboard.

Georgia Southern, also 3-9 a year ago, had only four starters returning on offense and two on defense and was able to beat a Big 10 team (Nebraska) and post a 5-3 record under former USC head coach Clay Helton. That guy also had the same number of months to build a roster and did so by bringing in 16 transfer starters from the portal.

UConn was 1-11 with only two starters on offense returning and three on defense yet first-year coach Jim Mora Jr. remade the roster to the point where the Huskies are 3-5 with a win over Fresno State and a decent chance for a bowl game.

Troy’s Jon Sumrall has his team with a 6-2 record after Chip Lindsay had three straight losing seasons there (one more than Carey did at Temple).

Duke also had a 3-9 record and fewer starters returning than Drayton did, somehow first-year coach Mike Elko is not taking long to turn things around there. The Blue Devils are 5-3, coming off a 45-21 win at Miami. That’s just four first-year coaches. Temple is not the only place in the world that had an awful coach ruin their program but those places hired guys who made an impact right away. Others, like Mike McIntryre (former Temple assistant) at FIU and Tony Elliot (Virginia) also have better records than Drayton does in the same time frame Drayton has had.

They did it by remaking the roster with high-end transfer portals. That’s the blueprint they left for Drayton to follow this coming off-season.

It’s something he probably should have done nine months ago but better late than never.

Otherwise, he’s setting Owls fans up for another year of heartbreak, isolation and dancing on their own on the subway going Northbound away from the Linc.

Friday: Navy Preview