Tag Archives: ncaa-football

10.03.26
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Temple 17, USF 13: As Huge as Huge Can Be

An argument can be made that college football, really all sports, are as much mental as physical.

For those Temple football fans (raising my hand here), there was at least a thought way in the back of our heads that the problem with our beloved Owls was more mental than physical.

No more.

After Saturday’s 17-13 win over unbeaten South Florida, that thought can be permanently disabused.

The Owls with a game on the line against the last unbeaten team in the league made the plays that needed to be made to pull out a win.

The “best punt returner in the country” can do best punt returner things as a wide receiver.

How important was that?

After losing a 42-28 lead at Toledo and a 17-14 lead at home against Army in the last two minutes, the Owls might have been thinking “how are we going to lose now?”

(At least that was the sentiment among a good percentage of the fan base.)

Instead, the kids shed any negatively and forced the issue and won.

Now everything they ever wanted is still on the table.

The American Conference is still in play because the Army game is an outlier. Army not only lost to USF but it lost to Louisiana Tech tonight. That system the Cadets run is hard to beat but it is not unbeatable and other American Conference schools will be able to figure it out, just like USF did.

It is not likely a spot in the league championship game will come down to a tiebreaker between Army and Temple and because of that, a conference championship spot is still in play for the Owls. The Owls now have the tiebreaker with USF if they both finish in a tie for first.

That’s huge. As huge as huge can be.

There is much hard work ahead and, while Ajani Sheppard’s pocket passing can be maddening at times, it is a proven fact in college football that MOST (not all) of the great teams in this sport have a quarterback who can both run and pass.

Sheppard’s forte seems to be running and passing while on the run.

Temple’s brain trust now knows that and it’s the job of this highly paid coaching staff to put Sheppard into the best position he’s able to help this team win going forward.

That’s not as a pocket passer but as a guy who can pump fake, and either take it down and run or stop on a dime and hit wide receivers getting seams created by linebackers and safeties who are forced to honor Sheppard’s running ability.

What does that mean in the future?

A lot of games where the Owls score many more than 17 points against conference opponents and a defense that can feed off the success of the offense.

The Owls might not have had that in their minds going into Saturday but that’s certainly the case coming out of Saturday.

The rest of the season should be a lot of fun because this team now knows they can finish the job.

Monday: Temple’s Wally Pipp Moment

Friday: UConn Preview

10.01.26
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Time for the DL to Live Up to Press Clippings

Nobody got better reviews through four weeks of spring practice and five more weeks of summer practice than the Temple defensive line.

“I think our defensive line is going to be one of the biggest stories in our conference,” Temple head coach K.C. Keeler said midway through August. “We thought we had a good offensive line with everyone returning but there were a lot of times our offensive line couldn’t block our defensive line.”

Something has happened since.

The entire DL–with the exception of some plucky first-half play against Penn State–has been on one side of the milk carton that includes Temple tight end Peter Clarke on the other.

Both need to be located by Saturday night. The big difference is that Clarke is a proven playmaker once you get the ball into his hands, but the defensive line has only shown to be practice warriors.

So far.

We haven’t seen the playmaking ability from the DL yet this year that we saw from Clarke last year.

Toledo was able to block the DL. So was Army.

There are signs, though, that South Florida won’t be able to do the same thing in an ESPNU matchup (7:30 p.m.) on Saturday night at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa.

For Temple to taste victory, the first chapter of that “story of the year” Keeler was talking about must be written now.

The USF offensive line’s Pro Football Focus pass-blocking grade of 53.6, ranks No. 121 in the country and the Bulls haven’t faced a single defensive line with the talent of Temple’s. Even in their win against Army, the Cadets were playing without any starters on the DL returning from last year.

About a 60 percent chance of rain on Saturday night.

For the season, USF quarterback Michael Van Buren has been sacked eight times, six times last week against Bowling Green and the Falcons are one of the worst teams in America.

Time for the DL to both get off the ball and get to the quarterback and also continue to stuff the run the way it has all season.

If the Owls exceed those six sacks that BG was able to have, Temple will win.

If they get only a tepid pass rush and hurries instead of sacks, the Owls will lose.

Time for the defensive line to put their money where coach Keeler’s mouth is and that time is now. Nothing helps out a secondary which has struggled better than putting the bad guy’s quarterback on his ass, which often leads to tipped ball interceptions and fumbles that go the other way.

Defensive havoc needs to happen and it needs to happen now.

It would be nice to have a big lead and turn it into a bigger lead for a change.

Keeler is not prone to “coachspeak” nor is he overblowing their ability. Remember, this was a Temple offensive line (returning pretty much intact) that blocked well enough to put up 515 yards of total offense against Navy last year and Navy was a team USF lost to a year ago. If that Temple OL couldn’t block this Temple DL in practice, that had to be something Keeler saw on his own.

That USF team who lost to Navy had a better QB, a better head coach and better overall personnel–many of whom are starting at Auburn now–than this USF team.

If Temple is able to get seven sacks or more, Temple wins. Even with fewer sacks and a solid effort against the run, the Owls are in good shape.

You can’t write the story of the year without a compelling first paragraph and Saturday night is not a good time to get writer’s block.

Saturday (approaching midnight): Temple-USF Game Analysis

09.26.26
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Temple football: It’s Getting Late Early

Here we are about to play the fifth game of the season, and the theme of K.C. Keeler’s post-game press conferences the last two weeks were that the Temple kids battled.

The truth is that the Owls of a year ago got pushed around for a closing 10-minute drive a year ago at Army and, on Friday, they allowed a killer six-minute drive for the win when they went up 17-14, and a lot of those plays were with eight men in the box. (It might have been an eight-minute drive if the Owls didn’t wisely their timeouts on defense.)

Evan Simon had a knack of finding secondary receivers if his initial target was covered. The Owls’ current QBs appear to lock on the primary receiver.

Yet they lost both games.

At some point, battling will not be enough and we’re about to reach that point when the Owls go on the road for their next game in South Florida.

Yes, the same South Florida team that not only “battled” Army but beat them. How come they can battle and win and we battle and lose?

I’d rather fight a skillful retreat and win than battle hard and lose but maybe that’s me.

The Owls had one job after losing a pair of one-point games to Army and Navy last year and that was to turn those one-point losses into wins, preferably by more than one point. From roster construction to game planning, they needed to figure out a way to turn those 3-to-4 yard gains Army and Navy live by to 1 and 2 yard gains. They didn’t figure that out.

Instead, they turned one half of that two-headed monster into a four-point loss to Army.

Keeler has said the roster is better, the team is deeper than last year but if the results are the same 5-7 does it really matter?

Death by a thousand paper cuts a year ago and death by a thousand paper cuts this year are pretty much the same.

Hard to see the improvement when the ledger at this point says 1-3. Just to get to 5-7–which I would consider unacceptable–the Owls have to split the last eight games of the season.

That’s why it’s getting late early. Pretty soon the math won’t be there for a winning season.

Last year the team started 5-2 and faltered late. Maybe this year’s team is built to finish 5-2 after faltering early.

You’ve got to hope so but there are several concerning signs out there.

One, they no longer appear to have a quarterback with the savvy of Evan Simon, a guy who was able to toss 25 touchdown passes against only two interceptions. Simon was particularly adept at finding mismatches in the secondary, often to secondary receivers, and a reliable safety valve was Peter Clarke. Simon was the Steve Carlton of the Owls and Clarke was the Tim McCarver, Simon’s personal catcher.

Now you might as well put Clarke’s face on a milk carton that’s how MIA he has been this season through no fault of his own. On the final drive of the game, Clarke was wide open over the middle at the 10 and Ajani Sheppard forced the ball into the end zone to JoJo Bermudez, where he was covered by three Army guys. If I had to choose one Temple All-American I’d rather not see play, it would be punter Dante Atton over Peter Clarke. Instead, we see too much of Atton (no offense, literally) and not enough of Clarke.

Two, the much-praised defensive line, which Keeler called 10 deep, was pushed around in the same fashion last year’s lesser praised defensive line of guys like Sekou Kromah, Khalil Poteat and Cameron Stewart were.

Maybe it’s better but the proof is in the pudding. Or the putting of the bad guy’s quarterback on his ass, which we haven’t seen much of so far.

Three, the Owls were supposed to have a reliable field goal kicker in Carl Hardin and the stats back that up because Hardin went 11-for-14 last year. Yet two of the misses came in one-point losses to the academies, one from 45 and the other from 38. On Saturday, he hit the crossbar from 42 yards out. Had he hit that one early, he would have lined up for another makeable game-winner. Rather have him miss the 52-yarder at Georgia Tech last year in a 42-24 loss and hit the 38-yarder in a 31-30 loss to Navy last year.

They say the best predictor of future success is past success and, judging the 2026 Owls so far, the future doesn’t appear to be all too bright.

Battling is OK but winning is better. The winning needs to start now because it’s later than most would think.

Monday: The Breakdown

09.24.26
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Some signs that Temple is the side Friday

Way back in February when the American Conference released its schedule, I wrote in this space that Army is the most important game for Temple this season.

Not Rhode Island.

Not Penn State.

Army doesn’t have the speed to stop this guy.

Not Toledo.

Army.

There were a couple of reasons for that back then that still hold true today.

One, Temple’s goal is not and should not be to win the national title. Selling out to beat Penn State and, to a lesser extent, Toledo, would have served that unrealistic purpose. The only realistic goal for Temple is to win a league of like-minded schools, The American, and this is the first American Conference game.

To win the American Conference beating Army on Friday (4 p.m. start, ESPN’s flagship station), is a must because the next game at South Florida figures to be a tougher task. To get into the American Conference championship game means no more than one conference loss and it can’t be Army and it can’t be at home.

When All-American tight end Peter Clarke evaluated the team a month ago at the conference’s media day, he said anything less than a league title would be unacceptable. He was responsible for keeping this team together so it appears he is dead serious.

There are some clear signs that Temple is the side tonight.

Chief among them was my hope that one quarterback would seize the job and run with it. After the first two games, it looked like it might be a back-and-forth with Jaxon Smolik and Ajani Sheppard that served no good purpose for Temple.

It didn’t matter how someone seized the job. It mattered that someone did. I thought that might never happen.

Fortunately, I was wrong.

Sheppard was that guy with 162 passing yards and 99 rushing yards in the 49-48 OT loss at Toledo. He proved that this is a guy you can win the conference title with. Incredible relief that one of those two guys have the “it” factor, and right now, it’s Sheppard.

Two, Temple head coach K.C. Keeler–18-3 against the spread in his last 21 games as an underdog– wisely held out an 85 percent Sam Brown–a high-end quality “Big 10” back–in the first and second games to wait until he was 100 percent.

Army might be able to stop Sam Brown or Keveun Mason, but they can’t stop an entire team of weapons that include Ajani Sheppard, Colin Chase, Peter Clarke and JoJo Bermudez. Cadets can’t match that kind of athleticism.

Three, a “100 percent” Brown proved what a weapon he was against Toledo, rushing for 105 yards and making a couple of all-world catches, one for a touchdown.

He’s the kind of special player Army does not have with the possible exception of quarterback Cale Hellums nor the inexperienced Army rushing defense figures to stop.

Here’s the difference between Army and Temple in the athlete department: Army is returning only three defensive starters from a year ago and Temple has quality edge athletes in Brown, fellow running back Keveun Mason and receivers Clarke, Colin Chase and JoJo Bermudez.

Those are the kind of guys who have speed that Army can’t counter.

There is, though, a flip side and a mental to physical aspect of the game.

Can the Owls shake off the searing disappointment of losing to Toledo in overtime in one of the toughest losses in Temple history?

That’s a damn good question.

The last time Temple had a two-headed rushing game against Army Matty Brown scored the first two touchdowns of the game, went out with a hammy and was replaced by Montel Harris, who went for 351 yards and 7 touchdowns in a single game, both Temple records. Temple won, 63-32. I will sign for that now if I can get it. Here, Montel explains why he is so fast and Army captain and linebacker Nate Coombs (22) was so slow. Two great athletes and my favorite Temple post-game photo of all time.

Temple seems to have the physical edge but head coach K.C. Keeler said in Monday’s presser than they worked extra hard with a “24-hour rule” to put that Toledo game out of their minds.

If it lingers anywhere in the back of those minds, the Owls will lose. If the Owls use the physical advantages they have, most importantly speed, they will win.

Any Temple alums or students who want to help out the kids show up and be heard would certainly make a difference. This is not the time for any of the 250,000 alums within an hour’s drive of the stadium to sit home and watch on TV. Hopefully, the 12,000 students who live on campus will take advantage of those free subway rides that take them from the main campus to the stadium in 10 minutes.

This win would totally wipe out the disappointment of a week ago and is way more important than what has happened since opening day.

Friday Near Midnight: Game Analysis

09.20.26
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This Temple loss was the hardest ever

This guy is all of us. We Temple fans should be able to enjoy a 42-28 lead but too often defeat is grabbed from the jaws of victory.

As a kid, I was a Penn football fan.

Watched every game on TV. Went to every home game and watched running back Adolph Belizaire, wide receiver Don Clune and a quarterback from Bishop Egan named Billy Creeden terrorize Ivy League defenses.

Still, something was missing.

Never understood why Penn was big-time in football and gave that up to pursue academics. There was a void in the City of Philadelphia, one of the largest cities in the country without a big-time football team.

I was a football fan, not a chemistry class fan, and looked on the other side of the city and saw a legendary coach named Wayne Hardin try to fill that void with Temple.

For awhile, he did.

The ultimate metaphor how Temple fans felt: K.C. Keeler all alone on the field after Saturday’s game.

That’s when I became a Temple fan and turned down a full academic ride to Cabrini University (RIP) to walk on (err, pay my own way with a college job at the Philadelphia Bulletin) with the Owls and try to get a journalism degree. All the while my goal was to cover my new favorite sports team, the Temple football Owls.

That dream was achieved both at The Temple News and professionally elsewhere.

Temple had four-straight winning seasons under Hardin capped off by a No. 17 ranking in the country with a 10-2 season in 1979.

To me, if Hardin proved Temple football could be a factor on the national scale, subsequent coaches could.

So far, Bruce Arians did. Al Golden did. Matt Rhule did so those “eras” only reinforced my belief. Winning football is not only possible at Temple, but winning football on a national stage.

If they can do it, and they did, it can be done.

Still, as a Temple fan, I experienced a lot of heartbreaking unexplainable losses along this journey.

None took me to the special place in hell quite like Saturday’s.

Some say the 53-52 Ron Dickerson loss at Pitt was the worst in Temple history. Or the 2024 29-20 loss at UConn was bad but none, in my mind, surpassed the debacle we saw on Saturday at Toledo.

Maybe it’s recency bias but based on what I saw last week against Penn State, this defense should never have given half a hundred to anybody else.

Penn State tried for a white out in Temple’s home stadium, but there was plenty of Cherry as in this photo from the press box. Doubt there will be this much Cherry for Army after the Toledo debacle.

Even Hardin had his brutal losses but the difference between his 26-25 loss at Franklin Field in 1975 and the next year 31-30 at Veterans Stadium, both against Penn State, is that Hardin made no tactical errors in those two losses, coached brilliantly, and lost.

On Saturday, at Toledo, Temple made plenty of coaching mistakes.

The first as detailed here on Saturday was not rushing the passer. The second was throwing a fade to the tight end in the end zone when every Temple fan in America who followed Hardin, Al Golden and Matt Rhule knew the call would have been a rollout pass for a mobile quarterback. Those coaches took advantage of the unique talents their players had. They would have not turned Ajani Sheppard, a rollout passer, into a pocket passer with the game on the line.

Mental mistakes that turned a 42-28 lead with 1:11 on the fourth-quarter clock to a 49-48 OT loss.

Unacceptable.

Everybody has said that North Carolina State’s fumble in the end zone that led to a 35-31 loss to host Vanderbilt was the most brutal loss on Saturday.

To me, that paled by comparison to Temple’s because all the Owls had to do was put the bad guys’ quarterback on his ass or roll out the good guys’ quarterback for a run/pass option that Toledo could not stop. If the easy flare toss to, say, Colin Chase, wasn’t there, Ajani Sheppard would have took it in for the winning 2-point conversion and a 50-49 win.

Don’t force your running quarterback to be a pocket passer on the most important play of the game but that’s what Temple did. The baseball analogy here is that a guy tries to bunt to get on with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning. Instead of getting past the pitcher the bunt goes right to him and the pitcher for some inexplicable reason throws to second instead of walking the ball to first for the underhanded throw to end the game. Taking the analogy further, the pitcher throws the ball over the second baseman’s head and loses the game. Temple had a nice underhanded throw to first but for some inexplicable reason decided for the tougher throw to second which goes over the guy’s head.

Tried to watch and enjoy the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday but could not enjoy it because I kept thinking about the Temple loss. When the Eagles lose, nobody calls for the team to drop out of the NFL but for the last 24 hours or so on social media, I’ve had to listen and read the bullshit that Temple should drop football for losing to a team that was a 6-point favorite. When the Phillies lose two straight to the Mets, nobody has to hear that the Phillies should shut down Citizens Bank Park.

Every Temple loss, Temple fans have to listen to this crap.

That’s why every Temple loss cuts deep followed by the knife being stuck in the next day with the reaction. Things were supposed to be different with this winningest ever head coach in college football and we were going to show these losers that we are winners this year.

So, yes, this was the toughest Temple loss ever and there have been many. Hopefully, the kids are more resilient than the adults who have loved this team for the longest time but the flip side is those kids have done the hardest work and have nothing to show for it. Maybe some will say fuck it. Let’s hope not.

They have a choice now. Turn that hard work into a 10-2 season or turn that disappointment into more losses down the road.

They will now have to do it without a lot of Temple fans who saw what happened on Saturday and checked out. Getting them to check back in will take a few wins at least.

Friday: Army Preview

09.13.26
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Plenty of good to like on Saturday

Pretty hard to get a White Out when there is this much Cherry in the stands.

After 24 hours of stewing over a game that should have been closer, a few things became clearer about Temple football from a 30,000-feet perspective.

Stop the count …

One, from a sheer physicality standpoint, the Owls on both sides of the football more than held their own with one of the most talented rosters in college football. What needs to be cleaned up is getting the Owls’ athletes in space to turn the scoreboard into an adding machine and that did not happen enough. The Toledo game (3 p.m. Saturday, CBS Sports Network) will determine if the Owls fix that issue.

Two, Penn State fans actually thought Lincoln Financial Field was going to look like this …

… when, in reality, it looked like the photo at the top of this post. Even Co-Pilot noticed:

For the most part, the 12,500 students who currently live on the Temple campus deserve a big thumbs up from this space because that’s the largest student involvement at a Temple game since Luke Butler led the Cherry Crusade in the Al Golden years. Strong student leadership led to scenes like this back then:

More of this, please, for the Army game and the rest of the season … this is when Luke Butler had the Cherry Crusade rocking.

If the students are going to show this kind of support for the rest of the season, the team should be in good shape because the players feed off that kind of energy. My only regret is that the Owls didn’t score more and we didn’t hear “T from Temple U” being sung from the stands enough because of it. A lot of Penn State fans were puffing their chests about their fan turnout but, for a team with seven-straight losing seasons, the Temple turnout was nothing to sneeze at. It’s easy to show up when your team has been in a bowl every year. It’s hard to show up when your team rarely sniffs a bowl. Memo to President John Fry: Close classes on the afternoon of the Army game so the kids can have some fun at LFF.

A lot of Penn State fans who thought the score was going to be 50-0 or worse left disappointed but their disappointment could wane if the Owls, say, won the American Conference title. More importantly, the disappointment of Temple fans. That means the Owls getting their athletes in space in one-on-one matchups. The best way to do create that space is to have a pass/run threat at quarterback who the defense has to account for and maybe even spy. After two weeks of watching these two quarterbacks, I have the nagging feeling that kind of dynamic runner and passer is maybe a year away from playing (Lamar Best). What we saw is the offense sputter after taking that lead into the second quarter. Interesting that in the 2015-win, Temple scored 27 straight points and in the 2026-win, Penn State scored 27 straight points. Both scores would have been 27-10 if the Owls just took the XP. Owls got great QB play from P.J. Walker that day, but neither of these two guys is P.J. Walker.

I hope I’m wrong and one of these two guys grab the job and show the kind of “it” factor in putting points on the board that Evan Simon had last year. There is not enough evidence of that yet.

That should be the goal and for the Owls to fight as hard as they did and refuse to be pushed around was the good that came from the loss.

That, and the students showing up. Good times ahead if that’s a trend and not an anomoly.

Friday: Toledo Preview

09.11.26
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TU-PSU: Penn State is in trouble

“I wonder how many Temple fans will be in the stands?” Answer: A lot.

Since there are about eight million Penn State Youtubers and Temple has none, these are the thumbnails that have come across my recommended feed just in the last two days:

“Temple is in trouble.”

“The Penn State Pregame Show: Another blowout probable.”

“Huge Mismatch: Penn State-Temple 4 Things to Watch.”

Well, turnabout is fair play.

We’re going to be the only site on the internet this week with a specific headline: “Penn State is in Trouble.”

Not because we are picking our beloved Owls (we aren’t) but because the recent college football landscape is littered with road signs that could indicate Temple has a chance in Saturday’s high noon showdown at Lincoln Financial Field.

Red (or maybe Cherry) flags for Penn State fans.

Here are three:

Western Michigan at Michigan: The Broncos came into the Big House bigger underdogs than Temple is in its own house (28.5 to 24.5) and basically won that game with a similar roster to Temple. It can be argued that the Michigan roster is similar to Penn State. In fact, Athlon Sports ranks the Michigan roster as No. 11 in talent level to Penn State’s No. 20. The same rankings had Temple’s roster No. 76 and Western Michigan’s roster No. 79. The Linc is not The Big House nor even Beaver Stadium and, while there will be Penn State fans there, Temple fans will make some noise as they have made here:

That’s a lot of Cherry in the stands in the 2015 game. There will be a lot of Cherry tomorrow as well.

Can’t imagine the Big 10 refs putting another second on the clock in front of this Cherry-clad crowd if the Owls play as well as Western Michigan did.

“Penn State fans will be at the Linc but it ain’t Beaver Stadium,” Colby Dant said. “It ain’t the same vibe.”

“I like this Temple team,” he said. “It could be a good team.”

Oklahoma State at Tulsa: Oklahoma State, fueled by oil billionaires, purchased both the North Texas head coach pretty much the entire 11-1 North Texas team. They went into Tulsa and lost, 24-10. Who did Tulsa lose to at home last year? Temple.

UMass at Rutgers: Ostensibly, Rutgers is in the Big 10 and has won quite a few Big 10 games in recent years. It hasn’t beaten Penn State in this century, like Temple has, but it lost, 37-21 to a UMass team Temple beat within the last calendar year (42-10).

Penn State seems to think Temple is Marshall.

Temple is no Marshall. The Owls, unlike Marshall, have the winningest active head coach in the FBS in K.C. Keeler and, unlike Marshall, have a recent win over UTSA, which not only won a bowl game last year but destroyed Tulane, 48-26, in a year where Tulane made the CFB playoff and Penn State did not. Temple was the only team in the country, P4 or G5/6, to keep all of its starters. There is something to be said for loyalty over paid mercenaries and Western Michigan made that statement a week ago and Temple is about to deliver the same message now.

If Penn State goes into the Linc and thinks Temple is Marshall, the Nittany Lions are in trouble and judging from the way the PSU media is portraying the game, that should be the case. Players read all that garbage and, if they take it to heart, they will think they are in for a cakewalk. In the other building, the Temple players know the challenge and have read all the disrespect directed their way. Keeler said the Owls’ defensive line will be the “story of the conference” and maybe the first chapter of that story will be written on Saturday.

If somebody is in trouble, it might not be Temple. You read it here first.

And only.

Saturday: Game Analysis

09.05.26
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An eye-opening opener against Rhode Island

Driving down Delaware Avenue, the all-news-all-the-time AM station gave its top Philadelphia stories on the hour.

“The top stories are Philadelphia reports four new West Nile Virus cases and the Temple Owls open their football season today.”

Odd juxtaposition of stories, but it was nice to see Temple football getting the same kind of billing as a health scare. Most times the local sports talk stations ignore the Owls, let alone the all-news station.

New season, new stories, so the task for the day was to judge whether the Owls would provide eye-popping results or eye-opening ones.

We’ll have to go with the latter in a workmanlike 38-14 win over visiting Rhode Island. Eye-popping would have been one of the quarterbacks throwing for six touchdowns, like the guy last year did in the opener. Eye-popping would have been for the defensive line to have a few sacks.

Neither happened.

Not great, not overly good, but just OK because, from the way K.C. Keeler talked over the last few months, he said that he has two quarterbacks who can win in this conference and maybe he’s correct but neither one knocked my socks off like Evan Simon did in the UMass game a year ago.

Don’t know if the Owls have one quarterback who can compete against this conference and certainly, on the results, did not see one who is capable of beating Penn State.

You would have hoped to see one of them take the job but neither did. John Madden’s old saying was “if you have two quarterbacks you have none” seemed to apply after the game because the Owls still have two quarterbacks.

The other concerning thing was the defensive line. Keeler said the line was so upgraded that it “could be the story of the year in this conference.”

Hell, it wasn’t even the story of the day because the Owls–although limiting Rhode Island to 97 yards on the ground–got no pressure on Rhode Island quarterback Tyler Budge, other than a single shoe-string sack by Kevin Hornbeak and one in the fourth quarter by Davier Bishop. Most of the time, URI rolled the pocket away from the rush and no doubt Penn State was taking notes.

The offensive line that helped the Owls put up 500+ yards of total offense against Navy last year could only muster 369 yards against a FCS team, albeit a very good one. On Jaxon Smolik’s touchdown pass, he was hit and this offensive line can’t let that happen after giving Simon a clean pocket for most of last year. He didn’t really have a clean pocket all day, nor did Ajani Sheppard.

Another head-scratcher was that tight end Peter Clarke was rewarded for his loyalty by being only targeted twice. Clarke was a matchup nightmare last year and why the Owls only threw two passes his way was baffling. Let’s hope they are saving him for Penn State.

That’s the hope. Doubtful because offensive coordinator Tyler Walker showed a nice wrinkle on the first play of the game, and if he’s saving Clarke for Penn State, he probably would have saved that play for the Nittany Lions, too.

Peter Clarke was MIA through no fault of his own. (Photo courtesy of Zamani Feelings)

To me, if Clarke is going to be a first-team All-American he needs a 10-touchdown, 1,000-yard season. The opening game did not help that cause.

The highlight of the day was sophomore running back Keveun Mason rushing for 158 yards on 20 carries and that’s impressive because he lost the job to starter Sam Brown, who will be ready for Penn State. We were looking forward to seeing Brown play and, if he’s better than Mason, he must be very good. Also, the secondary had two pick 6s in a single game and that hasn’t happened at Temple since Chuck Heater was the defensive coordinator in 2011.

What we do know is for the Owls to have any chance against the better opponents ahead, they have to get some sacks on defense and someone is going to have emerge as a clear starting quarterback by winning the job outright.

That, and staying away from mosquito bites.

Monday: Cherry on Top

Friday: Penn State Preview

Saturday: Penn State game analysis

05.03.26
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A fluid situation: Temple’s home schedule

Up until a few days ago, the last weekend of September was already planned.

Tailgate on Saturday morning, a game on Saturday afternoon.

Then the schedule makers changed things up by moving the Saturday afternoon home game against Army to a Friday night game.

There are good and bad things about that Friday night (9/25) date.

First the good.

Temple gets a chance to open some eyes on national TV against a respected opponent.

Then the bad.

From Temple’s perspective, an extra practice day against Army is always a good thing especially considering that the Owls have to travel to Toledo on Sept. 19, which is exactly one week after the home Penn State game.

Not an ideal situation, so maybe head coach K.C. Keeler will set aside a practice day per week to install defensive principles against Army and Navy.

Whatever problems Temple had against Army were offensive-related, not defensive, in a 14-13 loss. You limit Army to 14 and you should be able to win the game. My feeling last year was Temple didn’t take advantage of its passing game and played into Army’s hands.

Maybe that approach changes this year. We’ll see.

Evan Simon threw for over 300 yards against Navy but didn’t get that same chance because Army capitalized on the time of possession. He uncharacteristically overthrew tight end Peter Clarke in the end zone and that would have given the Owls the win.

Also problematic in the Army game a year ago was a 45-yard field goal miss by Carl Hardin. You get so few scoring opportunities against Army, you have to cash it and Temple missed two big chances there.

The realization in this day and ago is that the schedule is so fluid fans will have to rearrange any plans they have given the time of games and day of games. That’s all due to TV controlling things.

It’s not ideal but it’s all part of the imperfect college football world we live in today.

Friday: A Second All-American

Monday: Legacy Pecking Order

03.19.26
by

Karma comes to Poteat, Kromah, and Badmas

K.C. Keeler trusted Sekou Kromah enough to take him to AAC Media Day with Evan Simon. Kromah stabbed Keeler in the back by entering the portal and now he is completely out of college football. Blame the white helmets. They are bad news both on and off the field. That’s the very definition of Karma.

Hard to believe three of Temple’s best defensive linemen in the 2025 season dipped their toes in the transfer portal.

One, Sultan Badmus, ended up in an objectively (not subjectively) worse place than Temple (Arkansas State).

The other two (Khalil Poteat and Kromah) are probably out of eligibility due to the courts clamping down on some previous lose eligibility requirements for JUCO players.

Hard to believe, Harry (Donahue) because the courts had been so inclined to give unlimited eligibility to a lot of players.

Had they remained at Temple, the fact that a staff led by the current winningest active Division I head coach (K.C. Keeler) going to bat for them might have convinced the court to grant their JUCO appeals and at least given Badmas a more high-profile landing spot than Arkansas State. Had Badmus landed at the real Arkansas (and not the State part) that would have been an upgrade from Temple.-

Even in a 5-7 rebuild, Temple would have probably beaten the 2025 version of Arkansas State (yeah, we know they made a bowl) but three touchdowns. They might beat the 2026 version by six touchdowns.

Pretty much oblivion for Badmus now when he could have gone out on a high note.

Sad, because a Badmus pressure in the UTSA game led to his tipped ball and a Temple interception deep in Owl territory of a 27-21 win. Sad, also because Poteat and Kromah generated the second-half pressures that made life miserable for UTSA quarterback Owen McCown.

Jadan Blue did all kinds of good things at Temple. He didn’t do anything at Virginia Tech.

Badmas was probably thinking Arkansas after he decided to go into the portal. Going from Temple to Arkansas State is a little like going from Syracuse to Buffalo.

Swing and a miss.

To drop down to a less prestigious G5 league than the American definitely was an impulsive move. He blew his chance to have a great game against Penn State at home before a split crowd of 70K fans and instead his NFL tape will rest on what he does at TCU, the same 70K fans all rooting for the bad (but not Badmus) guys. There is no way you can tell me Arkansas State is paying him more than Temple would have in the NIL. Say, for argument, that Temple was willing to pay $100,000 and Arky State $150,000. No way that should have been enough to move from the best G5 league to the third best.

So Karma is playing a part again for another player who left Temple.

We all know what happened to Jadan Blue. He went from being an NFL prospect at WR and the leading pass catcher in Temple history to transferring to Virginia Tech and catching only 10 passes the next season. He completely dropped off the NFL radar.

Karma again.

Stay at Temple, play for a great coach like Keeler, and put yourself on the NFL Draft radar.

Leave, seek riches elsewhere, and you could end up homeless.

It’s a cautionary tale for current Temple players and moreso for future ones.

Monday: The Replacements