Tag Archives: Rod Carey

05.03.21
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Portal: Improvise and Adjust

Probably the best recruiting video Temple has in the archives ….

The new reality in college football is that the transfer portal is here to stay.

The other reality is that, in the Group of Five especially, the coaching staff that assigns a guy who is on top of it and constantly remains in touch with the best available players, will probably be poised to succeed.

Whether or not Rod Carey is the right CEO for such a system remains to be seen but a Temple player personnel guy on the order of an NFL general manager is a necessity now and the sharper the mind the better. The guy who identifies his teams needs and plugs those holes with players will be invaluable.

The goal is to get college gameday back to Philly.

The portal is not designed to pick the “best available player” but the best available who plugs an area of need.

To me, the Owls are set at WR, OL and QB and, to a lesser extent, the cornerbacks and safeties.

Winning in football, though, boils down to putting the other quarterback on his ass and protecting your own.

The Owls need more guys who can put quarterbacks on there ass and the good news is that these five guys fill a need in that area that the Owls do not have right now.

As of Sunday, the following five are still in the portal and running out of time to find a landing spot:

EMMIT GOODEN, DT, Tennessee _ The four-star recruit is 6-3, 290.

LAMONTE MCDOUGLE, DT, Washington State _ The Owls got Will Rodgers III from Washington State and he might be a bridge to McDougle, a 6-1, 240-pound DT who can also get after the passer. He was originally a West Virginia four-star recruit so he also mig5ht know Temple DB Kwentel Raines.

CURTIS FANN, DE, Florida State _ He’s 6-2, 251 and a four-star who had eight sacks at a high P5 level.

DAVID ADAMS, LB, Notre Dame _ He’s 6-0, 234 and is from Pittsburgh Central Catholic, an area where Temple’s Adam DiMichele was a WPIAL legend at Sto-Rox.

TRENEL TROUTMAN, S, Louisville _ The four-star prospect from Miami chose Louisville over Baylor, Michigan State and Pitt.

Showing these guys some consistent love in terms of text messages and old-time phone calls could pay dividends for the Owls in the coming months. Mailing them the above game day tape also probably could not hurt.

Friday: Five Guys Who Can Make Some Noise

04.30.21
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Virtual Reality vs. Reality

On the first night of the NFL draft, the Temple football Owls hosted a “virtual reality” event to ostensibly talk about the state of the program via Youtube.

On the most-watched channel in the city of the Owls, the NFL draft was about to start.

Not the best platform planning we’ve ever seen. Maybe another night (err, Wednesday?) might have been a better choice.

Virtual reality vs. reality.

I will take less band and cheerleaders if I can see more of this for at least eight of the 12 Saturdays.

In that hour, we heard “Hey Jude” played by the Temple band and saw a performance by the Temple cheerleaders. We also learned about pulled hamstrings and such from a Temple doctor.

Insight into the football team?

Not so much.

We don’t talk politics here (sorry, John) but the politics we do talk about is political correctness when it comes to the Temple program. Listen, I like the band, cheerleaders and Temple doctors well enough but in an era where we don’t get enough real news about Temple football itself, would have preferred the entire hour stick to the state of the team.

On the other channel, Mel Kiper and Todd McShay were not talking to team doctors, listening to Beatles songs or being wowed by a sis-boom-bah cheer.

Kinda reminds me when I was sports editor of a Calkins Newspaper daily and the managing editor yelled across the room: “Mike, this is a parent of a band member. Can you talk to her?”

“Sure.”

More of this kind of cowbell, please.

“Why do you guys give more coverage to the CB West football team than the band? Those kids work just as hard as the football players.”

“I’m sure they do, ma’am. I have a hypothetical question, though. Do you think 10,000 fans would attend Friday night’s CB West-Souderton game if it was just the band and the football team went through drills at halftime of the band performance?”

“I guess you’ve got a point there.”

“Have a good night.”

The Temple publicity people haven’t grasped that simple concept probably because a lot of Title IX and similar rules dictate that other areas of the uni get “equal” coverage.

There’s simply not the interest there.

The host, Kevin Copp, seems like a nice enough guy. In fact, I don’t think there are too many Temple employees of the last few years (Morgan Siegfried excluded) who works as hard and is as affable as Copp. Yet there were no tough questions (“when are we going to stop fair catching?” is just one I can think of). I don’t blame Kevin at all because, as a uni employee, he is not going to rock the boat because he is “in” the boat and might not be able to swim should it tip over.

Winning trumps effort every time.

That also applies to the owner and operator of one Temple sports site.

It doesn’t appear that we are going to get answers to tough questions but Rod Carey did say he wanted to have a team that “plays hard, gives maximum effort and makes our fans proud.”

Paul Palmer had the best comment of the night when he mentioned how important it was for the Owls to win early to grab the attention of the fans. I would have liked to have heard the same from Carey.

Nowhere in that entire hour did Carey mention the most important word: WINNING. Maybe it’s just me, but I’d rather see a team that plays hard, gives maximum effort and kicks our opponents’ asses every Saturday. Everyone can try to have positive results. It takes special people to deliver those results.

The winning part appeals to me more than the effort part. Winning is not everything. It’s the only thing.

That’s the reality. I’m not interested in the virtual.

Monday: Five guys portal guys Temple should woo

Friday: Temple Guys

04.18.21
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The New Guy Seems Nice

Hat tip to OwlsDaily’s Shawn Pastor for finding this interview with Jake Landry last year.

When I heard a guy named Landry replaced a guy named Harmon as Temple’s quarterback coach, a couple of Landry’s raced through my mind.

One was former Detroit Lions’ quarterback Greg Landry.

“Nice choice,” I thought. “Pro quarterback gets guys ready for a pro game.”

No such luck.

Jake Landry is the new quarterback’s coach and, like so many of Rod Carey’s recent hires/promotions, there is a NIU connection.

Hard to believe but former Eagles’ and Owls’ quarterback was passed over for the QB job.

Would I have preferred Adam DiMichele?

Sure.

DiMichele, like presumed starter Duece Mathis, was a Power 5 recruit who transferred to Temple. Like Mathis, he had a lot of mobility and probably could have helped Mathis navigate the transition like he did.

No use complaining about it, though.

From the interview above, Landry seems like a nice enough guy and he was also a quarterback in college so he probably brings a lot to the table. Probably the No. 1 thing is that he’s been at the table with his fellow coaches for a long time. That’s part of the problem. They all bring that midwestern nice to the feast when there is a hard edge to Philly that previous other coaching staffs had.

Carey is going to either go down with the ship or steer away from that iceberg that looks straight ahead with his guys.

Can’t blame him.

If he pulls a 2-10 (he won’t be favored in more than two games he beats Rutgers in the opener), he will probably get fired with a couple of years left on his contract and, looking back, probably would want to have no regrets in his coaching hiring.

Leo Durocher once said nice guys finish last. The Owls are picked to finish last.

Iceberg straight ahead.

Friday: Ode to Cherry and White

04.16.21
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We’re No. 1 (and No. 119)

Duece Mathis stares down a receiver in practice. (Photo courtesy of Zamani Feelings)

A couple of recently released numbers illustrates the current state of Temple football these days.

Temple is No. 1 both in the AAC and all of G5 football in terms of transfers out via the portal (15) and No. 119 in terms of ESPN’s 2021 Power College Football Index. The network has the Owls finishing dead last in the AAC.

If you’ve been following this space since the end of a depressing 1-6 season, you shouldn’t be surprised.

Our contention all along is that too many good players have gone out the front door and not enough have come in the back door for the Owls to realistically be favored in more than two games of the upcoming 12-game season.

Not all our friends have agreed with us.

We’re hearing a lot of “now that Rod Carey has his quarterback and can run his system” the Owls will be successful.

We shall see.

When everyone on the outside says you stink and you don’t smell it, it’s probably you, not them.

When ESPN says you are back in the dreaded Bottom 10 (there are only 127 FBS teams, so do the math) and nobody in your league lost as much talent as you did, you tend to listen.

Not since Al Golden did CPR on the Temple program did I ever think we would return to those days.

We are here.

This brings us to another number.

Eighteen.

No one in my recent memory–with the possible exception of Montel Harris in 2012–has been expected to make as much of an impact as No. 18, quarterback Duece Mathis. The difference between then and now is that some publications had Harris as the preseason No. 1 player in the ACC (not AAC) before he transferred from Boston College to Temple.

The player Temple is counting on now had more interceptions than touchdown passes in his only duty as an FBS quarterback.

“Well, he’s a big-time SEC guy and Anthony Russo was not,” the contrarions say.

Remember the last big-time Big 12 quarterback Temple brought in, Re-al Mitchell? He was supposed to give Russo a run for his money and he did not look like a starting-level AAC quarterback, let alone a replacement for a top five Temple all-timer. Just because you are the No. 2 quarterback at Iowa State one year doesn’t mean you are going to light it up at Temple the next. My initial feelings after seeing Mitchell quarterback Temple was that we were fucked (excuse the language) without Russo.

That turned out to be true, at least in 2020.

Who’s to say the No. 3 quarterback at Georgia (after things shook out) is better than the No. 2 quarterback at Iowa State?

Now maybe Mathis proves to be a lot better than Mitchell.

He better, but that’s an unfair amount of pressure to put on one young guy and involves probably unrealistic expectations and that’s why the numbers don’t look good for Temple right now.

Whatever the dwindling number of Rod Carey apologists say.

Monday: The New Guy

04.12.21
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Keeping it between the boards

Gavin Dionisio should compete for the kicking job.

As a young man, I was charged with taking a final look at the sports pages before they hit the hard-scrabble streets of Doylestown.

One guy who needed heavy editing was a NASCAR “writer” named Eddie Blain.

He always ended with a signature closing line: “Keep it between the boards.”

Except one time.

We’ll say it was a typo.

“Keep it between the broads.”

Funny line and the people in the composing room loved it, but I couldn’t let it go. I had to send another version of the story out with the correct closing line.

The keep it between the boards line referred to keeping the cars on the track and out of danger.

That story reminded me a little of the Temple kicking game last year.

It should be a little easier to keep kickoffs inbounds than it was to keep cars inside the track but each kickoff was a painful exercise in covering the eyes and listening to the play-by-play to see if it wasn’t a disaster.

The Owls had five kickoffs go out of bounds last year, two in just one game.

How does that happen?

Who allows this slop to hit the streets?

Oh.

Rod Carey.

When guys like Don Bitterlich, Nick Mike-Mayer, Brandon McManus, Austin Jones and Aaron Boumerhi were here, the Owls went four years at a time without a single kickoff going out of bonds. That’s a total of about 20 years. Even Jerry Berndt had good kickers in Cardinal Dougherty’s Bill and Bob Wright and Bobby Wallace had a solid kicker in Cap Poklemba.

Temple fans have gotten into the habit of assuming that part of the game was on auto pilot. Really, even though Will Mobley was an OK short-distance kicker, the Owls haven’t had a home run hitting kicker since Carey didn’t guarantee Boumerhi’s scholarship,, forcing him to transfer to Boston College.

They still might not, but at least they understand they have a problem and that’s a change in the right direction.

Fortunately, the Owls brought in Archbishop Ryan all-state kicker Gavin Dionisio to challenge Rory Bell for the job this year. We checked with some Ryan guys we know (it’s our other alma mater) and Dionisio did not have a single kick go out of bounds in his three years as Ryan’s main kicker. Hopefully, the competition on kickoffs makes Bell better in that area, too.

Gavin isn’t perfect–his longest field goal in high school was only 38 yards–but it’s nice to know that it should be OK to assume the kickoffs will be kept between football’s version of the boards for a change.

Friday: A Big Target

04.08.21
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Shock: Apologies to coach Rod Carey

Thanks to Zamani Feelings for this great and rare footage of Paul Palmer against Bama.

The newest headline on Youtube by some content creators is the word shock followed by the topic of choice.

Algorithms dictate that using the word shock creates an uptick in page views but, in this case, it’s appropriate because Temple head coach Rod Carey has received (I believe) a lot of fair criticism during and after a 1-6 season.

The shock is simply this: I have scheduled my apology column to coach Carey and it will appear in this space on Nov. 28, the day after the final against Navy. As I see it now, Carey will have to pull a Jesus and turn the very few impact players he has on defense (in terms of sacks, interceptions, and fumble recoveries) into Loaves and Fishes.

Don’t even get me started on special teams.

The best thing I can say about Rod Carey right now is he has a nice hoodie.

I don’t expect to have to write it, but I hope I do.

For it to appear, though, the requirements are simply this: An eight-win regular season, not even a championship or a bowl win.

Why eight?

That’s pretty much the standard we’ve been used to around here since Al Golden went 9-3 in the 2009 regular season. Since then, the Owls have had more eight-win (or more) seasons than not and that’s the standard Temple fans have both enjoyed and expected.

The shock was 1-6 precipitated in some part by a COVID outbreak, sure, but in larger part by poor preparation. In my mind, there is never an excuse to give up 31 points to a triple-option team when you have nine months to prepare for a triple-option team and especially since two prior opponents showed your defensive coaching room how to hold said team to 7 and 3 points, respectively.

To me, a win over Navy would have been the confidence-builder needed not to get to a 2-5 season but potentially a 4-3 season but we will never know that now. Early season wins are so important not just for the psyche of the team but the psyche of a fan base.

That’s water under the dam.

Damn.

Right now, a new dam is being build at Temple football spring practice and we will see if it holds water.

If it does, a 500-word apology will appear in this space on Nov. 28 and it’s something I fervently hope to write.

Shock.

Monday: Keeping it Between the Boards

04.05.21
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Today is one of the 5 most important days

A lot of us have been holding our breath until our faces turned blue but that process ends today.

At least for me.

College football has changed a lot in the past three years, let alone past 20, but it’s pretty safe to say that the start of spring football practice has always been one of the five most important days of the year.

The others being, in no particular order, spring game, recruiting signing day, opening day and bowl game. (The Cherry and White game hasn’t been relevant for a couple of years but there was a time when it was huge on the Temple football calendar.)

Despite the shaky state of the program, we can now all breathe a sigh of relief.

At least we can assume that the guys who practiced today are all in and will be Temple football players this fall and that’s significant achievement in this day and age of the dreaded transfer portal.

My biggest breath was reserved for one guy who has been my favorite Temple football player over the last two years: Jadan Blue. (Even though you see some spellings as Jaden, the school’s official website has him listed as Jadan and we will go with that.)

He’s a game-changing type player who caught three touchdown passes in a competitive game against Memphis and probably will leave Temple with a lot of receiving records. If he gets double digits in terms of touchdown receptions for the 2021, he could be the next Owl drafted in the first round (hell, Jalen Reagor had only nine TD catches his senior year at TCU and got drafted in the first round).

He is the only Owl in the history of the school to catch 95 passes or post 1,000 yards or more in a single season. When you think players with the talent of Van Johnson, Leslie Shepard, Steve Watson, Randy Grossman, Robby Anderson, Rich Drayton, Keith Gloster, Willie Marshall or Bruce Francis never put up those kind of numbers, that’s saying a lot. Hell, Jim Callahan caught six touchdowns in a single game (and Francis five) but neither of those guys caught 95 balls or got 1,000 yards in a single year like Blue did in 2019.

Truthfully, I thought he was a goner to the portal but I’m glad he stayed.

If Temple is going to be competitive this fall–and that’s a big if–Blue will be a big part of it because he is in a receiving room that is, without question, the most talented room in the AAC. Randle Jones, on the other side, is a flat-out stud and Purdue transfer Amad Anderson is an accomplished and proven Big 10 receiver.

If Duece Mathis can get those guys the ball, Temple can turn the scoreboard into an adding machine at Lincoln Financial Field.

The problem is the other side of the ball. I don’t see the Owls getting enough pressure on the opposing quarterback to disrupt things on the defensive end nor do I see them being able to stop the run consistently enough.

They could lose a few games 39-38, 41-29 and 45-40. Or maybe win them that way.

That’s a problem, though for defensive coordinator Jeff Knowles and line coach Walter Stewart to solve. No amount of X’s and O’s can make up for the J and J’s (Jimmie and Joes).

In the meantime, we’ve gotten this far and enough of the “good guys” have stayed to at least make things interesting on one side of the ball.

The best of the good ones just might be Blue, which best describes the color of my face while holding my breath and hoping he would stay.

Friday: Loaves and Fishes

Monday: Keeping it Between the Boards

04.02.21
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Fools Day Plus 1: Hope springs eternal

An example of a well-done AF joke is here about frequent poster and friend of Temple Football Forever Rob Vaughn.

At about this time every year on this site we’ve done our usual April Fool’s post.

Not this year.

Sometimes we crack ourselves up and, based on a lot of the comments attached below the past posts, some of those cracked a lot of you up.

Big 10 explores idea of adding Temple – Temple Football Forever (wordpress.com)

Addazio’s first 5-star recruit: Urban Meyer – Temple Football Forever (wordpress.com)

Robby Anderson: The Prodigal Son Returns – Temple Football Forever (wordpress.com)

Sky’s the limit for 6-11 walk-on freshman – Temple Football Forever (wordpress.com)

We’re glad it did.

Nothing funny (humorous) about the program this year but a lot of funny (odd) things about it.

Still, we have at least one “RutgersAl” on the Owlsdaily.com message board who really feels the Owls are going to win the AAC championship every year. (Rutgers Al would always go on the RU board and predict unbeaten seasons that usually ended up closer to 0-12 than 12-0.) A good 40 percent of the respondents agreed with our “Al” to some degree that the Owls do not face impeding gloom. Hope springs eternal, it would seem. To that, MH55–one of the more sane posters over there–replied with this:

“At the time of my post, 40% of those polled believe TU will be .500 or better. I have no idea how these folks think Temple has improved their roster to the tune of 5+ more wins. This team lost quite a bit of talent from its 1 win season and the depth is paper thin at many critical positions…”

Paper thin indeed.

Other than wide receiver and arguably offensive line, the 2021 Owls are paper thin at every other position group.

In a sport like football where guys go down all of the time, that is a recipe for disaster.

That begs a question.

Does the well-paid professional football staff at Temple even realize this or are they shuffling the papers knowing that their demise is inevitable?

Or are they kidding themselves?

On April’s Fools plus one, that is the funniest (odd, not humorous) joke of all.

Monday: Spring Practice Begins

03.29.21
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Selling Like Hot Cakes

Occasionally, you have to tip your hat to an entrepreneur like Joe Greenwood.

The former Temple great defensive back under Bruce Arians sometimes sells Temple-related stuff but he really hit the jackpot thanks to his old coach winning the Super Bowl.

He sold out a first mailing and a second mailing of the above T-shirts and sweatshirts (I got the black hoodie) highlighting the Temple/Tampa Bay connection: “Temple Bay Buccaneers.”

(Nice play on words.)

I don’t know the exact number of sales but it’s in the hundreds and will be seen all over Lot K this fall if fans are indeed allowed. I think Joe got so overwhelmed he’s done with the selling for now but I’m glad he provided them when he did. I would say they are selling like hot cakes but I don’t think even Perkins Pancake House had this much success with their product as Joe did with his.

The Temple schedule was a whole lot tougher under Arians than Carey.

It’s definitely a conversation-starter.

On one of my bike rides through the Pennypack on Saturday while proudly wearing my swag, I ran into an old Temple football player and we got to talking about the Bruce Arians legacy.

“Hey, Mike, you think Bruce Arians winning the Super Bowl will help Temple football?”

Good question.

No, probably because the current regime doesn’t keep or even celebrate past (or even present) Temple connections.

Hell, I definitely think Matt Rhule and Al Golden would have been able to exploit the Super Bowl success had they been here now instead of Rod Carey. A few days after Matt Rhule got the Temple job he asked me for Bruce Arians’ cell number and I had to ask former player Sheldon Morris for permission to give it to him (because that’s the only reason I had it). Sheldon said yes and Rhule and Arians struck up a cordial relationship that exists to this day.

I don’t think Carey values the Temple football history as much as he does, say, NIU’s and that’s pretty sad.

What’s even sadder is longtime Temple loyalists like Fran Brown and Ed Foley have exited stage right and not necessarily on their own accord. Adam DiMichele, who really should be QB coach or offensive coordinator by now, doesn’t seem to have the same trust of this staff that he did with Rhule or even Geoff Collins.

What the Arians Super Bowl win does, though, is cement his legacy as a real good coach at Temple. I’ve been writing this blog for more than 15 years now and it’s well-documented here that Arians–by posting two winning seasons against a Top 10 schedule–performed a near-miracle at Temple considering he had nothing in terms of facilities.

Temple now plays schedules ranked in the high 80s. In the championship season of 2016, for instance, Temple played the 89th-ranked schedule in the country.

It’s a whole different ballgame.

Not only has Arians proven to be a great coach, he developed great coaches with a Temple pedigree and, in Nick Rapone, took a guy who was a great coach at Temple (twice) and made him a Super Bowl winner.

So the pride in Temple and Tampa Bay will be there for all to see in the fall. Greenwood and Arians left Temple on the same day, but they still bleed Cherry and White and that’s what the swag will best represent this fall.

Maybe the winning attitude will spread into Lincoln Financial Field where it is really needed after 1-6.

Friday: Hope Springs Eternal

03.22.21
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5 Questions and (possible) answers

Well, that was quick.

Weston Kramer, we hardly knew ye.

As soon as Kramer got to Philadelphia, he did a U-Turn. It was reminiscent of the time Matt Rhule hired Nick Rolovich to be his first offensive coordinator, only to see Rolovich accept the job one day and reconsider the next.

At least Kramer thought about it a little.

The All-MAC tackle decided on Feb. 18 to commit to Temple and then, a little over a month later, de-committed from that commitment, according to the twitter handle CFB Blitz.

Why?

Rod Carey’s got a lot of “splaining” to do.

Just another question that will remain unanswered for awhile–or at least until the Philadelphia press assembles at spring practice in April

Head coach Rod Carey has a lot of questions to answer, some that will be asked, some that might not.

We can only guess what his answers will be now so we’re projecting what Carey might say:

1), What happened with Weston Kramer?

Carey: “Philadelphia can be a huge culture shock for Midwest guys. The bus dropped Weston off at 10th and Diamond and Wes wasn’t all that comfortable with the surroundings. We told him to give it a month and that’s just what he did. He packed his bags, we shook his hand (with gloves on, off course, for COVID protocols) and gave him a bus ticket home.”

2) Do you think your special teams are a problem?

Carey: “No, I actually think we were quite good on special teams in 2020. That situation where we had an extra point blocked and returned for two against Cincy didn’t happen last year, so that’s progress. This year our goal is to clean up those darn kickoffs that keep going out of bounds and two years from now we’ll address returning some punts. We’re not going to fix special teams in one year. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

3) Why do all the coaching departures/demotions seem to guys with Temple and local connections?

Carey: “Pat (Kraft) wanted me to keep (Ed) Foley, Adam DiMichele, Fran (Brown) and Gabe (Infante), so I did that. He didn’t say that I had to keep Ed as the special teams coach, so I moved him to an off-the-field capacity and Ed balked at that. Fran and I didn’t get along. Pat isn’t here anymore and Fran (Dunphy) says he doesn’t care what I do, so I’m working on getting Gabe and Adam off the field and hiring a couple more NIU guys.”

4) What would you consider a successful 2021 season?

Carey: “Well, we won one game in 2020, so two wins would be doubling the win total but we’d like to win more than two. Let’s leave it at that.”

5) What will be your message to the fans at the August season-ticket party?

Carey: “I don’t think we’re having one, thank God. I can imagine some of them are pretty upset with me right now.”

We’ll try to match up our projections with the real answers in a couple of weeks, although I’m not hopeful more than one of them will ever be asked.

Friday: Trolling Temple