Tag Archives: nfl

08.16.26
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The opener will be on us before we know it

Saboor Karriem goes for the tackle against Eagles’ No. 1 pick Makai Lemon. Both will be calling the same stadium home.
Hey, guess who follows Temple Football Forever? The father of Penn State starting quarterback, Rocco Becht. Anthony Becht was a great tight end at Monsignor Bonner and the New York Jets. Thanks for the follow.

One of the things about getting older is having pains in places where you’ve never had them before.

Because I had a pain in my leg I couldn’t identify other than it being nerve-related, I mentioned that to my physician and he referred me to a neurologist. That was way back in April.

Made the appointment the next day and the “earliest” he could see me was Aug. 13.

“Geez, that seems like years away,” I told the person who answered the phone.

“That’s the earliest we have.”

That’s the U.S. Healthcare system in a nutshell.

Long story short, that time between April and August lasted what seemed like five minutes simply because the late spring and summer is my favorite time of the year.

So it goes with Temple’s football opener against visiting Rhode Island on Sept. 5.

If the time between April and August seemed like five minutes, the time between now and kickoff will be like a minute.

Or shorter.

Nobody knows that better than Temple head football coach K.C. Keeler, whose Owls conducted their first preseason scrimmage on Saturday.

One of the strongest areas of the team is the safeties and defensive coordinator Brian L. Smith calls it the deepest part of the defense.

Among the starters is expected to be Illinois transfer Saboor Karriem, who comes to Philadelphia with CVS type receipts. He started and had the most tackles in a 34-32 Big 10 win over USC last year, notching seven solo tackles and three assists. While there are concerns about the bright lights in big games at both the quarterback and cornerback positions at Temple, there are no such concerns about the safeties and linebackers, who played well for the Owls and other teams last year.

Recently, Karriem was “mic’d” up by the Temple video staff and his best quote was, “I miss my brothers, but I have 115 (other) brothers (here).”

Because of the uncertainty at quarterback, it looks like the Owls will have to lean on the defense for most of their success this year.

Fortunately. the defense is showing signs of being up to the task in summer ball so far but the proof will come on Sept. 5.

“Rhode Island Sept. 5 at 2 p.m., that’s it,” Karriem said.

It might seem a long way off now but it’ll be upon us in a minute. That’s the way these things work, both in life and in football.

08.06.26
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Bruce Arians in HOF: Temple righting a wrong

Bruce Arians leaving his South Jersey home with photos of Bear Bryant and his Temple kids.

In an interview in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2009, Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz threw in this casual remark about Bruce Arians:

“Firing Bruce Arians was the biggest mistake Temple football ever made.”

Ball recognizes ball and Ferentz is ball. Not a friend of Arians specifically but a member of the same coaching fraternity, Ferentz was able to spot a school that overstepped the bounds when it came to firing a head coach. The story was about colleges too quick to pull the trigger on firing head coaches and the first person to come into Ferentz’s mind was Arians.

That was 23 years after the offense was committed.

Temple University righted a wrong today by including Bruce Arians into its Hall of Fame 2027 Hall of Fame class.

Ferentz will be entering his 28th season as head coach at Iowa and, if Ferentz was right, Arians might–and we use that word “might” loosely–be entering his 43d year as head coach at Temple.

In my mind, most of them would have been pretty damn glorious. I know because I covered Temple football all five of the Arians years. I am still friends with most of his players in those days, including the GOAT (Paul Palmer) and super nice guys like Joe Greenwood, Sheldon Morris, Mike Hinnant, and Eddie Parker.

Arians was loyal to Temple and Temple should have been loyal to him. In 1986, Arians turned down an offer to be head coach of his alma mater, Virginia Tech, to remain at Temple, saying, “I can’t leave my guys at Temple.”

Frank Beamer took that job instead and stayed at Virginia Tech pretty much the exact same length Arians should have remained with the Owls.

Look at his five years at Temple.

He had two winning (6-5) seasons with the Owls against a Top 10 schedule. Compare that to the revered Matt Rhule, who had two winning seasons against schedules ranked No. 84 and No. 91, respectively.

Me, with Arians players (from left) Kevin Jones, Pat Powell and Mike Hinnant

Love the championship Matt gave Temple, but there is no comparison.

After a 17-10 loss at Delaware, Arians called a mandatory full-contact scrimmage at 5 a.m. on the Sunday after that Saturday on Geasy Field. “We didn’t lose a game after that,” Bruce said. (Partially right. Temple won five out of six after that scrimmage.)

Arians beat Pitt in three of his five seasons. He came closer than anyone would expect against Alabama, Georgia and Florida State.

Bruce’s letter to me after I congratulated him on signing Dick Beck, who becamed captain of his 1988 team.

Give me one other head coach at Temple who beat a P4 team in three of five seasons.

You can’t because I can’t.

In his introductory press conference at Temple, one anti-Temple football journalist asked this question, “Why does Temple even play football?”

Arians shot back: “To beat Penn State.”

The Temple fans at Mitten Hall in 1983 went wild.

Nobody was happier when that really happened than Arians, who was the only ex-Temple head coach to have an extended phone conversation with Rhule.

Matt had already talked to Wayne Hardin in person after that game, kissed him on the cheek and handed him the game ball.

Ball recognizes ball and hopefully Kirk Ferentz will notice what Temple did on Thursday. No doubt Wayne Hardin will be smiling from above.

Monday: Back to the Future

07.16.26
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A Temple Football Championship: There are no words

Editor’s Note: Every once in a while, I get asked why I write this site and my answer is winning. We get barely (and I do mean barely) enough contributions to keep this website alive yet winning remains the goal. Winning games, yes, but winning championships more. This is the one time in my lifetime of being a Temple fan I was there in person to watch Temple football win a championship. Yet winning remains the goal. When it happens, I’m usually speechless but I’ll try to come up with something. There are no words but I summoned some and they are below.

The morning after arguably the greatest win in Temple football history, there are no words.

Literally no words are coming out of my mouth, at least in the sense of being able to talk this morning.

The throaty and hoarse condition is more than OK because it was the result of cheering for the Owls at beautiful Navy-Marine Corps Stadium as they captured what really is their first-ever major football championship. The 1967 MAC title was admirable, but that was a day when the school played to a level of football that was beneath their status even then as one of America’s great public universities.

So this was it.

ride
I sat in the same aisle across from this trophy on the way home (thanks to Matt Rhule for arranging my seat). I couldn’t stop staring at it.

Walking out of the stadium and into the concourse, I let out a very loud primal: “THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKIN’ ABOUT!!”

Fortunately, I got a few high fives and smiles from my fellow Temple fans and not fitted for a straightjacket. It also put the voice out for 24 hours, maybe more.

When it comes to Temple football today at least, you cannot think in terms of a national championship—the deck is stacked against G5 teams in an unfair system—so what happened yesterday was the pinnacle of Temple football success. Thousands of Temple fans, easily in excess of 10,000 Temple fans, made Navy’s 15-game home winning streak a moot point by turning that stadium into a Temple home field advantage and to get to that mountaintop and look down from it is incredibly satisfying.

Hey, it’s a pretty spectacular pinnacle. The only thing that would have made it better was a G5 slot in a New Year’s Six bowl against Penn State, but that’s not happening for a number of reasons that are not important today. (Objectively, would you take a team for the Cotton Bowl that has won seven straight against this schedule and beat a Navy team, 34-10, over a Western Michigan team that struggled to beat a four-loss Ohio team? I would but I don’t expect the bowl committee to be that objective. I can also grudingly see the WMU argument.)

What is important is that the Owls have gone from being a perennial Bottom 10 team and laughed at nationally to being ranked in the Top 25 for two straight years and going to a title game one year and winning it the next. When you think of the success P.J. Walker and Jahad Thomas have had here, there is a Twilight Zone quality to the parallel between this success and their success at Elizabeth (N.J.). In their freshman year at Elizabeth, they won one game; in their freshman year at Temple they won two games. In their sophomore year at both schools, they won six games. In their junior year at both schools, they reached the title game and lost and, in their senior year at both schools, they lifted the ultimate hardware together.

“Get a Dub?”

Truly amazing and I will miss both of those guys.

The Navy team Temple held to 10 points scored 75 on SMU, 28 on Notre Dame, 45 on an 11-2 USF team, 46 on Houston, 42 on Tulane and 66 on ECU.

Back on Cherry and White Day, I wrote that this team will be better than last year’s team while people on other websites—notably, Rutgers and Penn State fan boards—insisted that Temple would take a step back. I was consistent in my belief that this was the STEP FORWARD year, not the step back one, and that belief was rooted in knowledge that both the defense and offense were significantly upgraded despite graduation losses. Only a Temple fan who follows the team closely would know that, not the know-it-alls who make assumptions on subjects they have no idea what they are talking about.

Today at noon, the Owls will know where they will go for a bowl game. They can finish the season in the top 25 and set the record for most wins in Temple football history.

It won’t be the cake because we saw that yesterday, but it will be the Cherry on top of that white cake and it will be delicious even going down past what promises to be a future sore throat.

Postscript: For the comments to the original post click here:

Monday: Regular Programming

Friday: American Conference Media Day

07.05.26
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Temple’s Mount Rushmore of Coaches

There’s been a lot of talk about Mount Rushmore lately and, while not getting into the context of that discussion, that got me to thinking about Temple’s Mount Rushmore.

Coaches, specifically.

On my Facebook memory feed, I came across a preview of the 1977 College World Series (baseball, of course) that listed Temple as one of the two favorites.

Matt McArdle, a former Temple football safety for the 1979 Garden State Bowl team, responded by saying his brother (John) was the third baseman of that team and we both said that Skip Wilson was responsible for Temple being the most dominant baseball team in the “traditional” East for much of the 1970s.

“Definitely on Temple’s Coaching Mount Rushmore, for sure,” I responded.

With only four spots on that mountain, that caused me to think who would take the other three positions on that mountain.

I came to three men: John Chaney, Pop Warner and Wayne Hardin.

Bruce Arians deserves an honorable mention for both his loyalty and two winning seasons against Top 10 schedules.

Then I asked Chat GPT to make an image of that mountain and, while Chat GPT can do a lot of impressive things, it can’t draw. It had Wilson and Hardin looking like twins and Chaney really not looking like himself.

Warner came closest, probably because of the Stetson hat he wore in the 1930s.

The post got a lot more engagement than I thought it would have with hoop guru Mike Jensen saying I should replace Warner with Harry Litwack. My thought was that if there was a fifth spot on the mountain, he’d definitely be it but the Sugar Bowl appearance gave Warner the nod.

Then I got a lot of people saying Olympic sports coaches like Fred Turoff (gymnastics) and women’s coaches like Tina Sloan Green, Dawn Staley and Nikki Franke belong there.

That’s all well and good but this is a football blog and not a Temple sports blog and we gave both Wilson and Chaney exemptions due to Wilson’s 1,000 wins and Chaney having the most Elite 8 appearances until Michigan State’s coach broke that record.

Let someone start a Temple women’s sports blog–I have neither the expertise nor interest in doing so–and get their own mountain to play with.

As far as football, at least three guys deserve honorable mention–Al Golden, Matt Rhule and Bruce Arians–but didn’t make the final cut for a number of reasons. While Arians showed the requisite loyalty (he turned down an offer to be head coach at Virginia Tech to remain at Temple), he didn’t have enough wins. (Yet his two winning seasons against top 10 schedules was about as impressive as anything a Temple coach has done.) Golden, while deserving credit for bringing Temple football back from the dead, interviewed for the UCLA job after his second season and Rhule, despite two 10-win seasons, didn’t stay for the bowl game that would have set the Temple record.

Longevity has its virtue and that virtue is etched in stone.

Even if it’s only chiseled by Chat GPT and not Gutzon Borglum.

06.21.26
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Temple’s recruiting focus: Speed Kills

Tylik Mitchell is expected to make some kind of immediate impact for the 2026 Owls on offense and special teams.

Lose a Hollawayne, gain a Holloway.

Kajiya Hollawayne was a productive receiver for the Temple football Owls a year ago, starting all 12 games including a spectacular nine-catch, 149-yard game against Navy. He ran out of eligibility, leaving the Owls look for a speed receiver on the edge.

Pretty impressive offer list for Kamari Hollaway.

Temple gained a “Holloway” recently, grabbing highly thought of North Carolina running back Kamari Holloway from Southern Durham (N.C.) High School, right under the noses of East Carolina, which offered him a full scholarship last year.

Holloway has four years of eligibility left.

He was the second “athlete” recruit with speed from North Carolina that K.C. Keeler and his coaching staff have recruited and both have something in common.

Blinding speed.

Hollaway has clocked a 4.48 in the 40-yard dash, which, in terms of measurables compares favorably to former Owl superstar back Bernard Pierce, whose NFL combine time in the 40 was 4.55. So Hollaway is a full seven tenths of a second faster in the 40 than Pierce was the year after he scored 25 touchdowns for the Owls and became a third-round NFL draft choice.

Mitchell, who should compete for a wide receiver job for the Owls this season, also was a former running back out of North Carolina’s Southern Nash High School. His measurable comparison to Pierce was that he ran a 10.7 100-meter dash in high school. Pierce’s 10.8 in the same event was enough to win the PIAA state indoor title as a senior at Glen Mills.

Both Hollaway and Mitchell both put up good football numbers as well. Hollaway had 122 carries for 1,420 yards and 13 touchdowns in 2025. Mitchell, also playing running back, had 1,866 and 21 touchdowns during his senior season in 2034.

Kamari Hollaway.

So the Owls plucked not only two great athletes out of North Carolina, but two of the fastest guys in that state.

The Owls looked a little slow against some of the better teams in the league last year. Going forward, it appears they are determined to win their share of foot races, which usually means getting to the goal line faster than the bad guys.

Friday: How Others See Temple

06.07.26
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Matakevich deserves a spot in the College Football HOF

Tyler Matakevich leads the fans in “T for Temple U” after a big Temple win in 2015.

We expect a lot of good news in the area of recruiting by the end of this month.

As far as Temple football goes, though, the month got off to a good start when it was announced that Tyler Matakevich was one of the newest candidates for the College Football Hall of Fame.

About time.

Matakevich represents the last kind of player Temple will have under these new rules.

He was not only the national defensive player of the year, but won both the Bronco Nagurski and Chuck Bednarik Awards.

Guess what?

If Temple now gets a sniff of a player like that, he’s off to the next school.

That’s one of the many things that stinks about college football now.

College football then, though, was special and if Matakevich gets in–that’s a big if because there are 80 players nominated–Temple gets to celebrate the way things used to be when loyalty mattered.

Matakevich’s 493 career tackles still stand as a Temple program record, and he became the seventh FBS player to log at least 100 tackles in all four of his college seasons. The Pittsburgh Steelers selected Matakevich in the seventh round of the 2016 NFL Draft, and the Steel City was Matakevich’s home for the first four seasons of his NFL career before he played four more with the Buffalo Bills from 2020 to 2023.

The tackles were a little misleading because Steve Conjar nearly had as many tackles from 1979-1981 and played only three seasons, not four as Matakevich did. Still, Matakevich and Conjar formed a bond and Matakevich was at several of Steve’s post-game tailgates.

Matakevich returned to Temple’s Edberg-Olson Hall back on March 19 to take in a spring practice and talk to several of the program’s players and coaches.

Hopefully, he talked about how much loyalty means and the benefits of staying with a program from beginning to end.

Matakevich remained and had everything at Temple that he could have had anywhere else. That’s a message worth conveying to future players.

05.24.26
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College Football News checks in on Temple football

Every once in a while, you read something on the internet from a guy who thinks he knows everything about Temple football.

With Temple playing Penn State on Sept. 12, we are going to run into a lot of those guys.

Like this guy:

Pretty good tweet followed by an ignorant one about Temple not fielding a football team.

My only answer to him is something a very wise man once said on the cross more than 2,000 years ago: “Father forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing.”

In that case, saying it’s a shame Temple stopped fielding a football team. A guy from “Sinking Spring, PA” who should have known better.

I shamed him in the following four posts below his name, including receipts.

Others with some knowledge–like College Football News–are doing a deeper dive into Temple football and coming up with a more fair and balanced assessment.

The one guy who answered the 2stripesCPD post would be wise to read that assessment of this fall’s Temple football team.

Like us in February, College Football News and Temple Football Forever are in agreement that the Owls will finish 6-6.

Unlike CFN, we hope we are wrong and can see a pathway to a few more wins. First, we know Jaxon Smolik is inexperienced. On the other hand, not even in the Al Golden and Matt Rhule Eras–no doubt the best of the last 20 years–was Temple able to recruit a 4* quarterback. (P.J. Walker, for example, was a 3*.) Now, weirdly in this transfer portal era, 4* guys stuck behind other 4* guys are dropping down to Temple.

The Owls might benefit from that.

In fact, our post last week was us putting our money where our months were and plucking down $10 on Temple to win the American Conference football championship, repeating a feat it was able to accomplish a decade ago. That $10 investment could return us $460. (I wish I had $100 for a $4,600 return but we preach only bet what you can afford to lose.)

The twitter account @gnestro probably doesn’t even know Temple football won the AAC title in 2016 nor appeared in the championship game in 2015.

Father forgive him, because he doesn’t know what he’s saying. Or talking about. With Temple football playing Penn State this year, it won’t be the first or last guy who claims Temple gave up on fielding a football team.

So we have to get ready for those kinds of comments.

College Football News supplied the most interesting stat in its lead paragraph and that was in 33 years of football, K.C. Keeler has never had two losing seasons in a row.

He doesn’t plan on having one now, no matter what that guy down the street who claims he knows something about football tries to tell you. Plan is the operative word and what Keeler has done both maintaining and adding to the roster is the result of over 30 years of planning and it should pay dividends once again.

Friday: The Most Surprising Room

05.11.26
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P.J. Walker: A legacy that will never be duplicated

Without this final drive, Temple doesn’t even get to the title game, let alone win it.

Just a small note in the transactions section in the back of the Philadelphia Daily News, but it jarred a lot of good memories:

“Quarterback P.J. Walker has announced his retirement from football.”

Here are the top 10 quarterbacks of all time from a statistical standpoint at Temple. Arguably, Walker had the best career and Evan Simon had the best single season.

After nine years in three pro leagues, mostly with the NFL, Walker has decided to move on with his life, and we wish him the best because he gave us his best.

For all the NFL success he had, he will be most famous for the legacy he left as a Temple Owl: Winning.

Steve Joachim was on this impressive list of Maxwell Award winners from the 60s and 70s.

You can have all the stats you want and Walker compiled some impressive stats with the Owls, but here is something that will probably never be duplicated under the current lawless college football landscape.

Consecutive double-digit win seasons.

Walker was the quarterback for a pair of back-to-back 10-win seasons in 2015 and 2016, and, in that period, Temple football went to one AAC championship game and won another.

What would happen now if Temple had a 10-win quarterback? He would probably be poached by a P4 school. That’s the sad reality we live in today.

Same can be said for career numbers. E.J. Warner had a chance to break all of Walker’s numbers after getting off to a good start but decided that the grass on the other side of the Edberg Olson fence was greener.

Lee Saltz (left) with Paul Palmer is No. 6 on the career list.

It wasn’t. He never had as good a year elsewhere as he did his first two years at Temple.

Is P.J. the greatest quarterback of all-time at Temple?

There’s a good argument to be made for him, but there is just as good an argument for Steve Joachim, who had a better winning percentage and was able to take home the College Football Player of the Year trophy (Maxwell Award) in 1974, finishing just ahead of Ohio State’s Archie Griffin, who won the Heisman that year.

Joachim also had the highest passing rating (141.7), while Adam DiMichele was second (134.3) and Simon third (133.1).

Passing ratings are a fine indicator but, as far as careers go, Joachim and Walker’s couldn’t be beat. In the current climate of musical chairs among players and coaches, though, it’s safe to say that those two legacies won’t ever be matched.

Friday: The Halcyon Days

05.08.26
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Don’t bet against a team with two All-Americans

Temple punter Dante Atton (laughing, No. 7) is a preseason first-team All-American. Peter Clarke may join him.

(Photo courtesy of Zamani Feelings)

On most betting markets, the Temple football “over/under” is 5.5.

That means, if Temple wins six or more, you win and “The Man” (the house) loses.

Fortunately, I jumped on future College Hall of Fame coach K.C. Keeler and the Temple Owls when the man gifted me a ridiculously low 3.5 last year.

Going to do the same this year at the 5.5 number.

The reasoning is simple.

It’s hard to beat a G5 team with one All-American. It’s even more difficult to beat one with two.

Yeah, I know the No. 1 concern is a quarterback position where the Owls don’t have a single guy who ever started a college football game, but anyone who watched the Cherry and White game (raising my hand here) was more than satisfied with the performance of Penn State transfer quarterback Jaxon Smolik.

He’s got a little bit of Joel Embiid in him in that his career is injury plagued but there’s a chance he’s past that.

He certainly will have two All-Americans to work with if things play out the way we expect.

When I watched the Cherry and White game on April 11 (and got a $100 ticket for “speeding” on Broad Steet going 41mph), I was aware the Owls already had one certified consensus pre-season All-American in punter Dante Atton.

This week, the realization hit home they have another: Tight End Peter Clarke.

Clarke was named one of the five “tight ends to watch” this week and Mel Kiper had Clarke as one of the top 10 tight ends on the entire board had he come out for the 2026 draft.

Instead, Clarke made the gamble to return to Temple to move closer to the No. 1 tight end of the 2027 class and the gamble seems to be working because people have been watching his film in the offseason and noticed.

Add to that the fact that Clarke’s character is off the charts and that’s something every NFL team likes.

Clarke was the glue who kept an entire G5 roster together. Keeler gave him the credit for not only retaining the current roster (“we were the only G5 team not to lose a single starter”) and recruiting the No. 1 transfer portal group in the entire G5.

Catches in traffic mean a lot, YAC (yards after catch), too, but add on character and that’s an unbeatable combination.

To be a first-round NFL pick, Clarke won’t have to match Bruce Francis’ 2008 season with the Owls (15 TDs) but just reach 10 TDs and 1,000 yards.

That’s about the number for every past first- or second-round NFL draft choice in the past.

Winning will raise his profile even more so maybe that’s why Clarke worked so hard to build the roster.

Ironically, Clarke’s main goal is to lead an offense that keeps the other All-American (Atton) off the field.

My guess is Atton won’t mind if the Owls score touchdowns and kick field goals and never punt. (I know that sounds crazy but Temple went two straight games without punting in the 2023 season, led by quarterback E.J. Warner. Going 10 more may be a stretch, but it’s a goal worth striving for.)

If that happens, the Owls blow way past that 5.5 number and make a lot of their fans happy.

And maybe their wallets much thicker.

It still won’t pay my Cherry and White speeding ticket, which is due May 23, but the ROI on the Owls should pay dividends come December.

04.19.26
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Tyler Walker’s Best-Case QB room scenario: Be Best

We really don’t get into politics in this blog, but one recent “political” phrase sums up my assessment of the current quarterback room after spring practice.

Be Best.

Secretly, it also could be offensive coordinator Tyler Walker’s best-case scenario. Walker was brought into Temple to duplicate the dynamic offense he had at Montana State, which featured a quarterback who could do an equal amount of damage with his feet as he could with his arm.

Hard to believe Temple is going to get this kind of production from its next QB. However, if it’s a dual running and passing threat like Lamar Best, that opens up what Tyler Walker was brought here for and that’s a dynamic explosive offense with a dual-threat QB.

Nothing puts the fear of God into a defensive coordinator than that type of guy.

That’s where the “Be Best” motto comes into play.

Now I know that Lamar Best has an outside chance of winning the starting quarterback job, but here’s hoping he matures quickly between June 1-September 1 because that is Temple’s best chance of duplicating what Walker did at Montana State in 2024.

Winning that job would pretty much be up to Lamar once he gets here. That’s the hard part. The easier part is for Lamar to keep doing what he’s been doing all his life: Moving up to better competition and proving he belongs.

Right now, after Smolik’s spring, he’s a little behind.

If, as expected, Jaxon Smolik wins the job he will be a carbon copy of Evan Simon.

According to Chat GPT, Simon has a chance to get drafted in the middle rounds and that was because of his accuracy in throwing the football. Smolik seems to have the same accuracy but his history of being oft-injured raises questions.

Like, what if he goes down?

Probably the least surprised person if Lamar Best won the job would be Augie Hoffmann, the legendary HC at St. Joseph’s.

Does Temple have a guy who can win? It certainly purchased a $100,000 insurance policy in Oregon State starting quarterback Gevani McCoy and, had Simon gone down, chances were pretty good the Owls could win the same number of games (five) they did with Simon.

After watching the Cherry and White game, not so sure current backup Ajani Sheppard has the same kind of chops McCoy had. Maybe that was just a bad day.

The last true freshman QB starter TU had (E.J. Warner) put up these numbers in 2022.

Let’s hope so.

If, though, Walker can bring Best up to speed, it gives him the kind of quarterback who can open up the Walker playbook in a way that both Simon and Smolik couldn’t. Put it this way: Simon still ran Walker’s read/option offense last year and did the best he could with it when he saw an opening to run. Usually, an optimal outcome on those types of plays were 4–6-yard runs. A guy like Best can take a play like that to the house. Maybe several plays like that. Defending against that type of guy makes other areas more explosive as well.

There are examples all over college football of a true freshman coming in and not only starting right away, but leading his team to breakout seasons. Bear Bachmeier of BYU is the latest example.

If Best becomes the next one, Temple could be, err, the best team in the American Conference.

Friday: The Ultimate Survivor

Monday: The Most Crowded Room