After one of the worst losses in the last 20 years or so of Temple football, it’s very tempting to say that the Owls are a bad football team.

Head coach K.C. Keeler said as much after a 34-20 Homecoming Day loss vs. UConn.

Then the Owls went out and proved him right in a 38-31 loss to winless Charlotte. Maybe if he had said they are a great team Temple would have won, but I doubt it.

They probably aren’t as bad as a bad team and more like approaching mediocre now.

A “bad” football team doesn’t go to USF and beat a 4-0 team so we have to dispute that characterization. A bad football team doesn’t get a 42-28 lead at Toledo with 1:11 left on the clock. After that Toledo debacle, the Rockets beat a pretty good San Diego State team, 41-16. USF hung with current league favorite UTSA before blowing out Kent State, 29-2, on Saturday night. A bad football team doesn’t take Army to the wire, which Temple did.

That Temple team seems like a hundred years ago when it was only a couple of weeks ago.

Really, though, how good is Temple?

Way back on this site on March 5th we predicted mediocre simply because the Owls didn’t get out and get a big-time quarterback. The very definition of mediocre is 6-6 and, while it doesn’t look like the Owls will get there because they lost to teams we predicted they would beat (Toledo, UConn and Charlotte), and only beat one of the teams we’d thought they lose to (USF).

By “big-time quarterback” I didn’t mean some Big 10 starter. I meant “a starter” who had “a decent record as a starting quarterback” at either the FBS, FCS or Division II level.

A year ago, the Owls were able to get an FBS starter, Gevani McCoy (Oregon State) to back up a former Big 10 starter, Evan Simon (Rutgers) and that’s pretty much the adult minimum daily requirement of quarterback vitamins K.C. Keeler and his staff must swallow going forward.

Because both Jaxon Smolik and Ajani Sheppard were learning how to be QBs while on the job, the Owls didn’t get much out of the position until Sheppard’s breakout game at Toledo.

It would have been nice to have a starter who already knew how to be a starter from the jump.

Sam Brown V might be the best back in the American Conference, but he needs to play all five of the remaining games to prove it and nothing that has happened so far suggests that is in the cards.

The other problems–defense and special teams–we did not anticipate.

Because Keeler has developed a deserved reputation of a “stand-up guy” we accepted his claims that JoJo Bermudez was the “best punt returner in the country” and that his returning offensive line couldn’t block his defensive line.

Bermudez has not been the best punt returner in the country and what has turned out to be closer to the truth was that every other offensive line could do what his own OL couldn’t do in spring ball–block his defensive line. They’ve gotten nothing from kick returns with a straight-line sprinter. Maybe they should try a guy like Tylik Mitchell back there because Mitchell has a knack to find holes in addition to his 10.7 100-meter speed. Mitchell gained nearly 2,000 yards and scored 25 touchdowns as a big-time running back in North Carolina two years ago. The current guy taking back kickoffs has no such resume.

The Owls have done better than a couple of our preseason predictions–playing Penn State to a 27-9 loss (we said it would be 35-14) and beating USF (we said it would be a 55-24 loss). They have done worse against Toledo, UConn and Charlotte–which we all listed as close victories.

Therin lies the rub.

For the Owls to get to the mediocre spot we had them at, they are going to have to steal four out of the remaining five games. The good news is that there isn’t a world-beater left on the schedule, including Memphis. For example, Navy and ECU are nowhere near as good as we thought they would be and Army is better. Fortunately, Army is in the rear-view mirror and a lesser Navy team is a short road trip.

The bad news is that all five of those teams will probably be favored over the Owls right now.

The best hope is that a new defensive coordinator can re-energize the defense and that Sheppard has turned into that winning quarterback we hoped to get in the offseason.

Hope never got me to a bowl game but that’s all we have now.

Friday: Possible Upgrade

Monday: Game Week

From a football standpoint, Charlotte at Temple doesn’t figure to be a thriller.

One team is 2-4 and the other team is 0-6 and the 2-4 team won, 49-14, on the road last year against this year’s 0-6 team. The 2-4 team is Temple and supposedly a better version of the 49-14 winning team and the 0-6 team is supposedly a worse version of the Charlotte team a year ago.

That’s the physical part.

Not thrilling.

The psychological part is more interesting.

The team with the presumed better talent, Temple, has to be questioning itself after a 34-20 loss to a team, UConn, it was favored against. That came on the heels of losing a 42-28 lead at Toledo with less than two minutes left and losing, 49-48, in overtime. Then the Owls had to be thinking “how are we going to lose now?” after getting a 17-14 lead against Army.

Instead of the defensive brain trust attacking on run blitzes to get Army off schedule with TFLs, it sat back passively and watched Army march downfield and win, 21-17.

If this gets close, the Owls have to have that question in the back of their minds.

The UConn loss and the impending bad weather means that the crowd of 21,112 last week will be closer to 11,112 this week. I saw a lot of Temple fans I see only once a year last week say “same old Temple” and “I won’t be back” due to that disappointing loss.

So the guy who complains about attendance every week on Owlsdaily.com should get that kind of bitching and moaning out of his system now. We’ve had super nice weather for every Temple home game and the bill has come due now because the high temperature will be in the low 50s with a wind of 20mph. It’s a two-glove and one coat game after being a season of shorts and T-shirts so far at Lincoln Financial Field.

That’s why it’s imperative for this Owls team do what last year’s Owls team did: Put it away early and get some of those “Prodigal Son” fans back for the rest of the season.

Easy?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

This is the same Charlotte team that lost to Ole Miss, 41-9, and lost to a then unbeaten Appalachian State team, 26-21. App State beat ECU and lost by 10 at North Carolina State.

Charlotte is capable of hanging around and Temple must take that capability away.

There is also a psychological element on the other side of the field, too.

In this day and age of the transfer portal and NIL, how many 49ers have checked out on the season and are looking to get out of there and are not totally committed to the cause? Got to think at least a few. Or, the other way to look at it, is that these guys have practiced together for nine months and are as committed to their brothers as the Temple guys are committed to their brothers.

Because there is no Evan Simon brother, doubt it will be the same 49-14 it was a year ago. One of the themes of this site has been it never replaced Simon with a Simon or Gevani McCoy with a Gevani McCoy so the expectations have to be recalibrated.

For now, I will take 30-14 and hope against hope for something like 56-7.

Saturday Night: Charlotte Game Analysis

Monday: How Good is Temple?

Friday: A Possible Upgrade

Monday: Game Week

(Photos Courtesy Temple football)

Back in 1925, a pretty decent first baseman named Wally Pipp took himself out of a New York Yankee baseball game and was replaced by a guy named Lou Gehrig.

That replacement went onto play 2,000-straight baseball games and Pipp found himself out of a job.

Temple quarterback Ajani Sheppard may have done exactly what Gehrig did as Jaxon Smolik played the role of Pipp and exited the Toledo game through no fault of his own (injury). At the time, it looked like the status quo that Temple had through the first three games would be maintained once Smolik returned and the two would alternate the starting quarterback job until one took charge.

Something happened after that first series in Toledo. Sheppard took charge of the huddle and the game and probably will be the only quarterback all year to put up 48 points on a decent Toledo team.

Unless Sheppard takes himself out of a game, it doesn’t look like Smolik is going to get that opportunity and that’s a good thing, not a bad thing, from Temple’s perspective.

The status quo–alternating quarterbacks who provided little production in the first couple of games–wasn’t working. Temple needed a guy at that position capable of throwing three touchdown passes in any single game and now appears to not only have that guy but someone who can add nearly 100 yards and a couple more touchdowns on the ground as well. The Owls have had some pretty good quarterbacks in the post-Matt Rhule era (Anthony Russo, Frank Nutile, E.J. Warner and Evan Simon) but nobody who could tuck it away and run like this guy.

Now the production has amped up and Gehrig, err, Sheppard looks like he’s on his way to becoming a star in the American Conference.

Sheppard might be no Gehrig, but he’s hit his share of home runs since taking over in the Toledo game and that bodes well for a lot of Temple winning going forward.

In many aspects, Sheppard has proven to be the playmaker Evan Simon never was because offensive coordinator Tyler Walker now has the tools needed to execute his vision of the Temple offense–which is to put pressure on defenses with a guy who throws well enough but runs even better.

Walker had to dial that back last year with a pocket passer like Simon and, while the results were OK, the ceiling was never this high. When linebackers and safeties have to inch up to the line of scrimmage to account for Sheppard’s athleticism, the Owls’ quarterback can take a step back and hit receivers running free through the secondary.

That could result in Sheppard, JoJo Bermudez, Colin Chase, Peter Clarke and a deep halfback room led by Sam Brown turning the Lincoln Financial Field scoreboard into an adding machine more often than not.

Sheppard won’t play 2,000-straight games for the Owls, but we’ll take 20 or so and sign for the results right now.

Friday: UConn Preview

Saturday Near Midnight: UConn Game Analysis

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.

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

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.

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.

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