Tag Archives: nfl

10.11.26
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Reuniting with Bruce Arians and it felt so good

Had four coaches make a big impact at various portions of my life and felt all four were among the greats.

Ran into Archbishop Ryan legendary coach John Quinn (RIP) at a reunion some 30 years after I graduated and he picked up where we left off like no time had passed when he walked up to me and said, “Hi, Gibbs.” (Hadn’t seen him in 30 years but talked to him on the phone from time to time.)

He was the only person who ever called me Gibbs. Got a lot of Gibbys and Gibmeisters but he was the only one who called me Gibbs. We picked up the conversation where we left off. When I heard “Hey, Gibbs!” behind my back, I knew it was him.

He won Ryan’s first-ever Philadelphia Catholic League football championship.

My letter to Bruce Arians sparked by Mike Pettine Sr. led to Dick Beck getting the last available Temple scholarship. Beck became captain of Temple’s 1988 team.

Before that, Wayne Hardin (RIP) took a liking to me when I covered his teams at The Temple News. Hardin didn’t like many reporters but his wife, Jane, later told me that he had an affinity for me because I had red hair like he did.

Mike Pettine Sr. (RIP) was the greatest high school coach I’ve ever known and he always said “you’re a Temple guy” and respected me for that even though he was a Villanova guy. Told me to write nice things about his Central Bucks West kids (Jeff Stempel, Tom Duff and Pat Carey) because he sent them to Temple. He won 364 games, lost only 24 and won three state championships with mostly 150, 170-pound kids. Three straight Pennsylvania High “real” championships and many more “mythical” championships before playoffs.

Lastly, I ran into a young coach named Bruce Arians when I covered Temple football in the 1980s and I liked the way he coached the game and he liked the way I wrote the game.

When he was fired, he had one last press conference at Mitten Hall. I was standing in the back shocked by the whole thing and on his way out he made a beeline to me to shake my hand and thank me for covering the team.

Nobody ever did that.

Now Bruce Arians is in the Temple Hall of Fame and rightly so.

Thanks to all of our readers for boosting our stats this month.

To me, Arians’ biggest appeal was that he always attacked on both sides of the football and let the chips fall where they may. In a 35-30 win over a Rutgers team that beat Penn State, he ordered DC Nick Rapone to get out of a prevent defense and into three straight what he called “jailbreak” blitzes to end the game. “If I was going to go down, I was going to go down with my guns blazing,” Bruce told me at the time.

He didn’t go down. RU quarterback Scott Erney did, though, sacked three straight times to end the game.

As a Super Bowl champion, the chips fell where they should have more often than not.

Like coach Quinn, I picked up where I left off with Bruce Arians at the Saturday tailgate and it was like the conversation we had 40 years ago never stopped.

Told him he had the best two lines from Friday night’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

“What’s that?” Bruce asked.

I forgot to ask Bruce what he said that made K.C. Keeler smile. Maybe next time.

“One, you told your players, ‘How’d you guys get so old?’ The second was the best hire you ever made was Nadia Harvin (currently K.C. Keeler’s executive assistant).

“The first line was so good because it’s what happens to all of us. The second line was so good because Nadia is pretty much the reason your players have stayed so tight over the years.”

“I meant it,” Bruce said. “She’s the Queen of Temple.”

To me, Bruce is one of the Kings of Temple because people didn’t appreciate what he did in his five years as head coach at Temple. Against a backdrop of two Top 10 schedules, Bruce went 6-5 both years.

He beat Pitt three of five times. He beat his alma mater, Virginia Tech, 29-13, in the Oyster Bowl. That Virginia Tech team made the Peach Bowl. He beat a MAC championship team, Toledo, 35-6, and that team went to the California Bowl. He beat Syracuse and West Virginia. He beat a Rutgers team that beat Penn State.

All the while practicing either on the largest astroturf field in the world (Geasey Field) or, when that field was being used by an Olympic sports team, a rock-strewn field that later became the tennis pavilion.

Facilities?

Temple’s weight room was in the basement of McGonigle Hall next to the old bowling alley and only a few feet away from John Chaney’s office.

Temple football now has state of the art weight rooms and a $17 million training facility that dwarfs anything Arians had.

“Tell me about it,” Bruce said Saturday.

It was a rhetorical question that didn’t need an answer.

Somehow, some way, Bruce figured out a way to be a winner despite that hard astroturf field and practicing on rocks and the bowling alley weight room and all the rest. That’s what puts him in my elite Final Four. It was great to tell him that while he’s still with us and I hope he will be for at least 30 more years.

Friday: Charlotte Weekend

Monday: How Good is Temple?

10.10.26
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UConn loss: Two steps back after a step forward

Ajani Sheppard is just as capable of throwing this pass while rolling out that he is as a sitting target.

Going into a game on Saturday at Lincoln Financial Field, Team A brought in a team of 87 mercenaries, returned one starter from a year ago and a new head coach in a first season of trying to implement a new culture.

Team B returned all of its eligible starters, had only a few mercenaries and was in the second year under the current most successful head coach in Division I football and the culture had already been established.

Given that outline, Team A, UConn, didn’t figure to win but it beat Team B, Temple, 34-20.

Sometimes logic spits out a winner and sometimes as Mr. Spock said on the old Star Trek series, logic does not compute.

Saturday was one of those days as Temple lost as a favorite for the first time since Sept. 21, 2019. That day in the last decade a Buffalo team that would finish 8-5 beat a Temple team that would also finish 8-5.

Marinate that for a second: Temple has not lost as a favorite this decade.

Until Saturday.

It would take a freaking miracle for this Temple team to finish 8-5 after starting 2-4.

Let’s not sugarcoat it.

After taking one step forward in a big win at South Florida a week ago, the loss to UConn represents a step back and an argument could be made it was two steps back.

There should have been something to be said for stability, continuity and culture and that statement should have been made by Temple, not UConn.

Instead, what we’ve learned if you bring in the right kind of mercenaries, talent can overcome both coaching and culture.

Maybe that’s just college football circa 2026.

This is the line waiting to get into the stadium yesterday. Unfortunately, due to the loss, we won’t see a crowd like this until next Homecoming

If so, that’s a sad reality Temple is going to have to accept going forward.

After the loss, Temple coach K.C. Keeler blamed it on turnovers and, on the surface, he was right. But it was shocking how the defense was so out of position in so many plays a week after being in position in so many plays.

That responsibility has to rest with DC Brian L. Smith and by extension Keeler himself. If this continues, Keeler will have to make the hard decision no head coach wants to make and jettison a coordinator. Hint: Chuck Heater is available. Temple is just not getting enough pressure on the quarterback. That is painfully obvious. The Owls still try to get to the quarterback with a four-man rush. That’s not working. If it doesn’t work going forward, they need to bring five. If that doesn’t work, they need to bring six. Where is this great defensive line we’ve been told about for six months?

I haven’t seen it yet.

Last week, 17 points was enough to win but this week 20 points wasn’t.

To be a winning team going forward with the players on this defense, 20 points should be enough to win on any given afternoon.

That said, the offense doesn’t get a pass here.

Offensive coordinator Tyler Walker called two trick plays that worked, the first play of the season against Rhode Island and Saturday’s pass from Colin Chase to Peter Clarke for a touchdown. Somebody has got to whisper in Walker’s ear that there is no NCAA rule that limits a team to one trick play a game, nor one that limits said team to two a season.

Personnel use, to me, is questionable as well.

As good as Keveun Mason is, he’s no Hunter Smith and Mason fumbled in a big spot and Hunter Smith did not and maybe that should cost Mason his backup job.

More Hunter Smith if Sam Brown V is not available and, at this point, you’ve got to wonder if Brown will ever play. They keep telling us he will be available for this game and that game and he only gets available for one game (Toledo). This is a little like having a Ferrari and keeping it in the garage because you are afraid of hitting a fire hydrant backing out of the driveway.

That’s got to change going forward. Temple has a quality Big 10 back and you’ve got to wonder if they are saving him for a bowl game that might never come. Rub some dirt on it and get him out there.

Also, stop trying to make Ajani Sheppard a pocket passer. He’s a rollout passer who will drive defenses crazy going forward by rolling out and presenting a running threat, bringing up the safeties and linebackers to stop that threat and dumping easy throws over them to receivers running free through the secondary.

Making him a pocket passer risks two things. Him getting hit in the pocket and him overthrowing a 6-6 tight end on two-point conversion to win a game.

Keeler says the Owls lost by not playing clean but playing clean and coaching clean go hand in hand.

The Owls have a lot of talent but from where I sit, I don’t think the talent is being utilized optimally. That’s got to be at least half of the post-mortem coming out of this loss.

Monday: A Hall of Fame Night

10.05.26
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Looks like Sheppard had his Lou Gehrig moment

Sheer joy in the Owls’ locker room after a couple of bitter defeats. This feeling could get contagious.

(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.

CBS Sports Tom Fornelli and his 124,000 twitter followers have noticed Ajani Sheppard

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

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

09.20.26
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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

09.12.26
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TU-PSU: You play to win the game

Down three offensive linemen, their best running back, and one defensive lineman, Temple head coach K.C. Keeler was faced with a dilemma.

Play to win, or play to keep it close.

From this seat way up there in 215, it was pretty apparent what he did.

Play to keep it close.

I’m from the Herman Edwards School of Thought: You play to win the game.

I’d rather lose 37-10 playing to win than 27-9 playing to keep it close.

After the game, Keeler said “there are no moral victories” but this really seemed like it to me after losing 27-9 to Penn State on Saturday at Lincoln Financial Field.

Temple fans left the 2015 game happy partly because John Cristopher threw a “Philly Special” throwback pass to P.J. Walker and we didn’t see anything like that today.

What would playing to win look like? A double reverse here, a jet sweep to JoJo Bermudez there, the same kind of pass Ajani Sheppard threw on the first play of the game last week there. A few more blitzes on defense. There is value in creativity.

We never saw any of that on Saturday.

What we did see was the kids play hard enough to earn a victory but never got close enough to pull it off.

To me, that was a missed opportunity. For Temple, the opportunity was right there for not only a win over a ranked team, but that win fueling an attendance boost for the rest of the year.

Beat Penn State in front of 61,355 fans and that translates into 30,000 Temple fans for the rest of the season. Right now, we’ll be lucky to hit 20,000 in any of the remaining games.

I’m not from the school where I will ever be happy to lose by less than 20 points. Sorry.

It’s not like Temple doesn’t have talent to score more than nine points against anybody. The Owls have plenty of explosive players in space. They just have to devise ways to deliver them the ball.

This team–other than quarterback–has enough weapons to turn the scoreboard into an adding machine. Keveun Mason is a proven halfback and most Temple insiders say Sam Brown is better than him. Colin Chase is probably the best possession receiver in the league. JoJo Bermudez is not only the best punt returner in the country but a guy who can take any jet sweep to the house.

Other than Mason’s 76 yards, we saw none of that talent utilized against a team that many feel will be in the national championship picture.

What we did see was a defensive line that fought hard enough to win, but didn’t get it because there was no imagination on the offensive side of the ball.

Maybe Keeler was saving that for later but beating Penn State would have been a gamechanger for the program and the gamechanger was sacrificed for whatever is left in the season.

Did you see anything like this on Saturday? I certainly did not.

To me, the biggest problem ahead is that no one grabbed the quarterback position. Jaxon Smolik did some nice things in the first half but the bottom line is that Jaxon Smolik put only three points on the board. The other guy, Ajani Sheppard, is a bigger running threat and, in this era of college football, that’s the kind of a guy you win with.

Still, neither is Evan Simon and I think, with Evan Simon, Temple puts way more than nine points on the board. Simon had a knack, a sixth-sense if you will, to duct out of a rush and find a receiver downfield.

I don’t see that in either Temple quarterback after two games. Simon had an “it” factor. One of the two quarterbacks better show it or develop it and, after watching P.J. Walker, Steve Joachim, Marty Ginestra, Anthony Russo, E.J. Walker and Simon they all had it right away in the first game.

These guys either don’t have it or have not shown it. That’s a problem.

Temple won the rushing battle and time and possession battle.

What happened instead is a lot of Penn State fans left pissed off that they didn’t win 52-0. If that was Temple’s goal, congratulations.

My goal is to win.

Others are to cover.

I stopped by the concourse and saw a Penn State fan pleading for Matt Campbell to go for two after the Nittany Lions’ last touchdown and thought to myself it was nice he lost a lot of money on the game, but I wish Temple had rolled the dice just a little more. If having him win a bundle, meant my team was closer than a 27-9 score was a tradeoff I was willing to make.

It might not have been a moral victory to Keeler but it seemed like that way to me.

Monday: The Good

Friday: Toledo Preview

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

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.