Tag Archives: Stan Drayton

12.05.22
by

At Temple, the grass is always greener inside the fence

For Boston Red Sox fans, the Cloud that hovers over them is the Curse of the Bambino.

For Temple football players who have left via the portal, it’s the Curse of Temple.

There are a few high-profile examples. Leaving Temple has not turned out well for any high-profile player. Take the case of Jadan Blue for instance.

Blue left Temple despite needing only four receptions to tie all-time leading receiver Ventell Bryant (173). At Temple, he held the single-season (95) receiving record.

At Virginia Tech, Blue could only get 10 receptions for the entire season. That’s three fewer receptions than he got in a 2020 game at Memphis. Bad move.

Somebody needs to tell

ABC they forgot a team

Sometimes staying home is the right thing to do.

At Temple, it’s almost always the right thing to do.

All over college football players are entering the portal with the notion the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. It seldom is because there are way more players than the scholarships available and you are leaving a guaranteed scholarship at your place with no guarantee of getting one elsewhere.

Plus, there is The Temple Curse.

The Temple curse isn’t as deep as the Bambino, but it’s just as evident. Boston’s baseball team hasn’t been to the World Series in consecutive years since 1915-16, winning both times (including beating the Phillies once). Babe Ruth, in the early stages of his career as MLB’s first great power hitter, won 41 games as a pitcher for those two clubs.

After that, he was traded to the Yankees and the Boston team fell into oblivion for most of the last century.

While that curse has mostly affected Boston fans, this one has affected mostly Temple players who have left.

“You all stay in this thing, man.”

Quincy Roche was the AAC Defensive Player of the Year and was projected by NFL experts as a fourth-round pick if he left Temple for the NFL after his junior season. Instead, he wanted to raise his profile at Miami and it backfired as he finished 2020 as a backup for Manny Diaz and was drafted in the sixth round which cost him some money. In fact, the best move for Roche might have been to remain at Temple, repeat as league MVP, and then move up a tick or two in the draft. Leaving Temple hurt Roche, not helped him.

Quarterback Anthony Russo was virtually assured of setting all of the all-time passing marks at Temple had he remained for his senior season but left for Michigan State instead. The best he could do was ride the pine behind Payton Thorne and entered only one game for an extended period all season, against Youngstown State.

There were extenuating circumstances for the above guys and they could not be blamed for leaving because they hated Rod Carey.

However, the portal was meant for backups, not starters, and starters who have left Temple never had the production elsewhere they did while wearing Cherry and White.

There is no Carey to hate now and plenty of evidence that the grass is not greener on the other side of the Edberg-Olson fence.

Friday (12/9): Algorithms and Priorities

Monday: (12/12): Targets

Friday (12/16): Next man up?

12.02.22
by

Temple football: New Beginning, Part II

Watching Temple coach Stan Drayton interact with former Owls has been an educational experience and the best lessons have been off the field.

Go to events like Cherry and White Day, some road trips, and season-ticket holder day and it’s evident that Drayton has an appreciation for past Temple players that many of the recent Temple coaches haven’t had.

“I went to a practice and he just came up to me and introduced himself and said how you doing,” said Matt McArdle, a starting safety for the 1978 team. “He asked me who I was. I’m a nobody and he makes you feel like the most important guy there. It really makes you feel good.”

If he makes those players feel good, you can imagine how he interacts with his current players. It seems to be working because Drayton has stopped the transfer portal bleeding. Under the past guy, the portal players leaving were starters. So far, only backups have left under Drayton and we’re crossing our fingers and toes and hoping that pattern continues.

Watch this video. What a terrific job narrated by the one and only John Facenda. Great comments from Arians and former Temple President and Chancellor Pete Liacouras (RIP). Also a good look at the greatest uniforms any college team ever wore.

Drayton has a special connection to the Bruce Arians’ players, who came a little after McArdle. At the Cherry and White tailgate, Drayton took the microphone from disc jockey Kevin Jones (a great offensive tackle for Arians) and said, “We’re going to get this thing back to the way you guys are used to seeing it.”

You could tell Drayton meant it.

Then he gave the mic back to Jones and Drayton watched his wife line-dancing to the tunes and had a big smile.

As one of the three white guys in that spot on that day, I stood back and watched in awe and took in the general positive vibe with my friends from many years.

He made a commitment to them and he intends to keep it. He made a commitment to all of Temple.

If it sounded familiar to those guys–in their 50s now–it should. At one time, a charismatic new Temple coach named Bruce Arians made the same kind of commitment to those guys when they were teens and a lot of folks think that Arians worked miracles here.

Although he had “only” two winning seasons, both were against top-10 schedules and, given that background, an argument can be made that Arians did just as good a job as Wayne Hardin. Neither coach has the facilities Drayton does now. In all fairness, Temple doesn’t have to play that murderous schedule now that it did then. In the last five years, the Temple schedules were ranked 97th, 73d, 86th, 91st and 99th in that order.

With Temple’s recruiting base–46 percent of the nation’s population within a six-hour drive of the stadium–it’s reasonable to set occasional G5 league championships and bowl games every season as a baseline goal.

It’s still a tough job but the expectations aren’t out of whack. Nobody is asking to get Temple back into the Sugar Bowl, which is what Pete Liacouras asked of Arians. Winning the new AAC is a much more reasonable goal to achieve than consistently winning seasons against top-10 schedules.

They always say you show the most improvement every year from Game One to Game Two. That goes for seasons as well. This past season was about changing the culture.

Mission Accomplished.

It’s all about the wins from now on and the number on the left has to be higher than the number on the right.

Monday: Greener and Bluer

11.26.22
by

An unnecessary heartbreaking loss

Walking through the concourse on my way to my Lincoln Financial Field season seats (yeah, I bought two even though I need only one), I peeked through the opening and saw that the Temple football Owls were wearing black.

Again.

Not a good sign.

The first person I see was a Dallas Cowboys’ and Temple football friend of mine named Jay and I shook my head.

“Not a good sign, they are wearing black,” I said.

We both know what that usually means.

Then I walked down and saw the Victory Engineer Family, long-time friends from Central Bucks East, and said the same.

Black wasn’t the reason Temple lost, 49-46, to East Carolina on Saturday but it certainly didn’t help. When God gives your school the best color combination in college football (Cherry with White), you don’t piss him off by wearing anything else.

A black cloud hovered over Temple all day in the form of a matador defense and a ridiculous play call at the most crucial point of the game.

Facing a third-and-1 with three minutes left, the Owls passed instead of running. They were up, 46-42. Had they plowed ahead for the first down there, they could have run out the clock and taken the momentum of a huge win into the offseason.

Instead, if they are really good at self-evaluation, they are kicking themselves right now.

After throwing an incomplete pass on that third-down situation, they came out with the intent to go for it on fourth-down. That was the correct call. The key call was the third-down pass, not the fourth-down punt. That third down should have been a run but Temple had a chance for a course correction on the next play and blew it.

Then East Carolina called a timeout and during the timeout, Temple head coach Stan Drayton changed his mind and punted.

Not good when your defense had a hard time stopping ECU all day.

Mike Houston’s timeout forced the rookie coach into a mistake.

Overthinking in my mind.

Stan should have trusted his instincts. If you can’t get a yard in two tries at midfield, you don’t deserve to win. The saddest thing is that Temple has just the personnel package for those kinds of situations and never used it.

To me, the sequence was a no-brainer.

You bring your 6-4, 252-pound backup quarterback, Quincy Patterson, into the game and you tell him to plow ahead for the yard. Then you give the ball back to brilliant starter E.J. Warner and tell him to run the clock out, win the game and get his teammates together to sing “T For Temple U.”

Kurt loves the fact that E.J is playing in the “Eagles’ Stadium.”

If Patterson gets two feet instead of three, you give the ball back to him and give him another shot. Two Patterson runs would have at worst killed 60 seconds of precious clock and, at best, given the Owls the ball to take a knee three times in the last minute.

You don’t punt it back to a team you haven’t stopped all day (except for one fourth-quarter sack).

Sad, because E.J. Warner has become a force to be reckoned with over the next three years at Temple with another 500-yard, 5TD performance. His dad indicated that E.J. will be here for a long time in a tweet Saturday night.

It’s a shame because winning really is everything and the Owls could have had everything on Saturday. Hard to settle for second place after Warner posted a day like this.

Maybe the Warners have enough clout with the powers who pick the colors.

We can only hope.

Monday: Season Recap

Friday: A New Beginning

11.19.22
by

Temple-Cincy: Turnovers Don’t Add Up

Even Carl Friedrich Gauss, the 16th-century mathematician considered by many the greatest ever in his field, might be crossed up by some of the numbers in AAC football this season.

Particularly when it comes to Temple.

The Owls, a team that took Navy to overtime, lost 70-13 to UCF. Navy beat UCF on Saturday, 17-14, on the road. The Owls, who had gone two weeks without punting in putting up a 45-point average, punted the first two times of the game in a 23-3 loss to Cincinnati.

They should have been the first sign it wasn’t going to be their day.

Want more?

East Carolina, which visits Temple next week, beat UCF, 34-13, but lost, 42-3 on Saturday to a Houston team the Owls had beaten until 1:22 remained in the game a week ago. In hindsight, the Owls probably needed to run off a couple of more plays before E.J. Warner hit Zae Baines for the go-ahead score at Houston.

That was last’s week’s problem, though.

Gauss might have had the answer to this week’s one, though, because he was famous for citing variables to solve mathematical equations.

For Temple, what didn’t add up on Saturday was the turnover margin.

The Owls were able to avoid turnovers at Houston.

They were unable to against Cincinnati.

Temple lost two fumbles and had two interceptions.

Game, set and match.

When a team recruits as well as Cincinnati has (four-straight top AAC classes as ranked by either Scout.com or Rivals.com), the only way to beat a more talented team by the less talented one is to win the turnover battle.

When the more talented team forces turnovers–really, from Temple’s perspective they were unforced errors–the less talented team has no chance.

That pretty much sums up what happened to the Owls on Saturday. The Owls had two reviewed fumbles (initially called down) overturned, a run by Edward Saydee and a reception by Zae Baines. One of the interceptions was a perfectly threaded pass from E.J. Warner to D’Wan Mathis but the ball went off Mathis’ hands and into the Bearcats in the end zone. Mathis wouldn’t have even been in there had not Amad Anderson been suspended for a game and he was missed. The fact that it was only a one-game suspension probably means it wasn’t anything too serious.

Still, along with the turnovers, losing players like Anderson and top pass-rusher Darian Varner (injury) really hurt. Temple can’t afford to lose good players like that.

Cincinnati wasn’t able to beat any league foe by more than 10 until it arrived in Philadelphia simply because it was not able to go plus four in the turnover margin in its prior 10 games.

It was on Saturday. That was not because of their talent but because Temple couldn’t protect the rock. Tugging on Superman’s Cherry Cape didn’t help. With the loss, dating back to the 2012 debut of Matt Rhule, Temple is 2-17 wearing black uniforms against FBS opponents (wins over only Tulsa in the Geoff Collins Era and this year’s win over UMass).

The unis were the tugging on Karma. The turnovers were spitting into the wind.

Now an ECU team that has beaten up Temple the last two years knows the way to beat the Owls is to win the turnover margin.

That shouldn’t be a secret because that’s a tried and true football axiom.

On its end, Temple knows it has to protect the football like it’s the Hope Diamond in order to go into the offseason with some momentum.

The Owls should have known that before the Cincy game but this embarrassing loss illustrates that the focus this week should be on protecting the football. Even Stan Drayton pleaded with his team earlier this week to “eliminate the things that are slowing us down.”

Against Cincy, they didn’t listen.

Maybe in seven days they will.

Logically, the Owls should be able to beat a team that lost, 42-3, at home to a team the Owls lost to 43-36 a week ago. Lose the turnover battle, though, and all logic goes out the window.

Even the brightest minds in history know that.

Monday: Some Other Numbers

11.18.22
by

Cincy: Temple’s Super Bowl

Everyone please give this video a thumbs up and subscribe. These are three good dudes.

One of the nation’s best prognosticators, Kyle Hunter, of Kyle Hunter’s picks, had this reaction when I told him Temple hasn’t punted in the last two weeks.

“That’s a fantastic stat, Mike, love it,” Hunter said. “E.J. Warner. You can’t stop him. You can only hope to contain him, apparently.”

Temple had gone 134 years punting at least once in every game. The only exception was the 110-0 win over Blue Ridge in 1927. A lot of the credit for this little bit of significant Temple football history goes to a true freshman quarterback, E.J. Warner.

“You can’t stop him. You can only hope to contain him.”

Yeah, I know it’s a line borrowed from Michael Jordan’s days with the Chicago Bulls, but it has applied for the last two weeks.

Suppose it does so again tomorrow (4 p.m. start, ESPN U) against Cincinnati. In that case, Temple will have officially returned to relevance on the national college football scene because it’s hard to envision a scenario where the Owls don’t punt and lose to the Bearcats.

That’s because the Bearcats don’t generate much offense on their end and, in six AAC games, haven’t been able to get the kind of separation from league foes that teams like Memphis (37-13 over Navy), ECU (34-13 over UCF), SMU (77-63 over Houston) and Houston (38-20 over Navy) have done.

Even though the Bearcats are still in contention for the AAC title, their largest margin of victory was by 10 against Tulsa and Navy. They toughed out a 28-24 win over a USF team that Temple hung a 54-burger on in a 54-28 win. To their credit, they were able to beat a Navy team, 20-10, at home after the Owls lost to the same team on the road in overtime.

Considering all that, a 17-point predicted spread seems a little high and most of the smart money agrees.

On a cold, blustery day that doesn’t figure to get out of the 30s, Temple has a puncher’s chance. Cincinnati quarterback Ben Bryant is no more than a game manager and his downfield passing is suspect. Last week, he was only 1 for 8 in passes over 15 yards. He doesn’t have the mobility of Houston’s Clayton Tune and he’s the kind of stationary pocket passer the Owls’ defense thrives against.

On offense, no one expects the Owls to go puntless but just by moving the ball, they can certainly stay in this one. They have to prove that after a month of producing only around 10 points a game their 54- and 36-point outbursts of the last two weeks represent the lightbulb going on over the offensive coaching staff’s heads and not consecutive outliers bulking a season-long trend.

Defensively, they will have to do a much better job against the running game than they did in their last home game, a 27-16 loss to Tulsa. They will have to get to Bryant, put him on his backside, strip him of the ball or force tipped interceptions. Relentless pressure is Job One.

Head coach Stan Drayton stood in front of the team earlier this week and told them they will be champions. Not this year, but soon. Temple can either let the close losses to Navy, Houston and Rutgers that kept it out of a bowl game fester or it can push forward to let the rest of the world know Drayton was right in his hunch.

That’s because, unlike Temple, Cincinnati will be in a bowl game this year and Temple has a chance to show by winning it can beat a bowl team now, not later. So this is the Owls’ Super Bowl.

Drayton asked the Owls to eliminate the things “that are slowing us down” earlier this week.

The team responded, “yes, sir.” Words are nice. Deeds are nicer. The Owls have a very good chance of turning those words into deeds by no later than 7 p.m. tomorrow.

If they do, they will send a clear message to the rest of the college football world that Temple football is back now instead of some sort of theoretical championship future their head coach envisions.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis

11.13.22
by

Temple’s football No. 1 Lesson: Prime-time guys need help

Over in Munich, Germany, the old saying “Temple Owls are Everywhere” was on display in a hotel room a couple of days ago.

We can now say that both Kurt and Brenda Warner are by association Temple Owls, along with their son, E.J. Both were probably the only people in that 600-room hotel that were watching the Temple game that kicked off at 3 p.m., Philadelphia time, 2 p.m. Houston time and 9 p.m. Munich time.

That’s prime time and E.J.’s numbers were worthy of the Munich hour, passing for 486 yards, three touchdowns, and zero interceptions.

Maybe we will see Kurt and Brenda at a Temple tailgate soon but until then we can only thank them from afar for sending their son our way.

When it comes to prime-time players, E.J. has proven to be one. On offense, both Adonicas Sanders and David Martin-Robinson qualify. Maybe you can throw in Edward Saydee off his last two weeks. Amad Anderson is trending that way and so is DMR’s tight-end buddy Jordan Smith. On the line, Adam Klein, Victor Stoffel, and Isaac Moore might not be prime time but certainly solid afternoon performers.

On defense, end Darian Varner is prime time. So are linebackers Layton Jordan, Jordan Magee and cornerback Jalen McMurray.

If Temple needs to do something to break through as an AAC title contender next season–and that should be the goal–those guys need help.

Owls will certainly need to add a bookend pass rusher with Varner’s skills, somebody who can cover receivers on the other side with McMurray-level talent and interior line pieces to stop the run and get off the field. Next year, there can be no more teams who score 43 and 70 points on the Owls.

Make that 486, not 436 (typo no doubt).

Offensively, while Saydee is improving it would be nice if the Owls could add someone with the ability to bounce off that first tackler like Alcorn State running back Jarveon Howard, listed as a senior but still has a year of eligibility left after this as a grad player. The former Syracuse recruit has 1,174 yards, 11 touchdowns, and a 5.2 yards per carry average. Before you think Temple has no chance at him, just remember that head coach Stan Drayton is considered a running back guru, and NFL players like Ezekial Elliott can pick up the phone and recruit Howard for him. The pitch could be that Drayton’s tutelage is the best route to a high NFL draft pick.

The “Cherry Rhino” … I like that nickname

Saydee had one good game but could use the competition. He might become a prime-time player down the road, but Howard is that now. The Owls haven’t had a running back strike consistent fear in the opposition since Ryquell Armstead, Jahad Thomas, Bernard Pierce, and Montel Harris, just to name a few. Howard would certainly do that on Day One as a Prime Time Player.

So are Warner, Varner, and a few others named above. They could use a good kick returner, too. They haven’t had one since Matty Brown but current Harrisburg High recruit Kyle Williams could be that player.

To break through and hold that championship trophy next season, Temple needs to add a few of those types of players. It doesn’t have to be a whole team of transfers, just one plugging in some holes and areas of need. The good news is they won’t have to wait on high school players. There is immediate help in the portal and how well Temple uses it is probably the difference between a 6-6 year next season or a 9-3 one.

Or better.

Friday: Cincinnati Preview

11.12.22
by

TU-Houston Football: Tune and Fine Tune

Anyone who has watched Houston football the last couple of years knows Clayton Tune is an NFL quarterback biding his time in college football.

Nobody who throws 30 touchdown passes–as Tune did last year–escapes the notice of NFL scouts. Tune has the size (6-3), arm and escapability that the NFL is looking for but he was outplayed in a statistical sense by someone who is going to be a very good college quarterback and might never get a sniff from the NFL.

Yet Saturday’s 43-36 win by Houston over Temple showed the difference between a very good college quarterback and an NFL one. E.J. Warner, whose size will keep him out of the NFL, outdid Tune in every area but the most important one.

The scoreboard.

Tune almost single-handedly led his team to the win and hit on a clutch touchdown pass that won it with 42 seconds left in regulation.

That was the story from the Houston side.

From Temple one, this game showed that the Owls have a lot of “fine-tuning” to do before the Owls can get the signature win that has escaped them so far in the Stan Drayton Era.

I was confident Temple would cover the 20-point spread (see my exchange with “College Football Picks” above). I wasn’t as confident the Owls could take this across the finish line. I was right both times but would have gladly accepted being half-right if the Owls could have avoided the loss.

After taking a 36-35 lead with 1:22 left in the game, Job One for the defense is to keep everything in front of you. How the Owls let a guy beat their defense by 10 yards for the game-winning touchdown was a real head-scratcher.

Had that guy caught a pass over the middle, broken a couple of tackles, and made his way into the end zone would have been one thing. Letting him get behind the defense cannot happen.

Period, end of story. Can’t happen. Shouldn’t have been allowed to happen.

Drayton called it a “misfit” and we have not heard that word since the run-game defense was torched for 300 yards in the 27-16 loss to Tulsa, It’s not just the kids. It’s the coaches. Some terrible play-calling on a first-and-goal from the Navy 5 cost Temple a win two weeks ago.

Another “coaching misfit” came on Saturday when the Owls, up 7-0 and driving, decided to call a bomb on a 4th-and-2.

Why?

You need two lousy stinking yards to move the sticks. That’s a simple pass-and-catch from E.J. Warner to Adonicas Sanders. If the Owls call that, they might go up 14-0 and put themselves in a better position to win than going down 14-7.

Before this, there were a lot of “misfits.” There were at least a couple in other areas at Houston. You can’t fumble a kickoff, which the Owls did. You can’t miss an extra point, which the Owls did. You can’t go for two early in the game, which the Owls did. You can’t do it and expect a win that would send a message to the nation that Temple football is back.

All those things can’t happen going forward and it’s one of the things that Temple is going to have to fine-tune before it can register a signature win.

There are two opportunities left to achieve that goal.

The next one is Cincinnati.

Eliminate the turnovers and the coaching and player “misfits” and that’s just the kind of fine-tuning that will finally put Temple back on the national football map. Cincinnati is good but, like Houston, beatable.

Tune won the last game. Fine-tune and Temple could win the next one.

So close.

By Saturday, we should know how far away.

Monday: One Priority

11.06.22
by

The reaction: Admiration but not respect (yet)

 Regarding visual artistry, no one quite matches Temple University’s official team photographer, Zamani Feelings. The guy shoots from different angles and gets shots no one else does that are pretty breathtaking.

Telling a story, though, the champion is a fan in the stands and former Temple player Mike Edwards.

When the entire fan base was wondering if junior running back Bernard “The Franchise” Pierce would be coming back for his senior season (which would have been in 2012), a shot Edwards took captured the moment and removed all doubt.

The pre-game discussion about Pierce in the tailgates was split. Half of the guys thought had he come back for his senior year at Temple he would earn first-round money the next season. The other half said Pierce needed the third-round money now. Nobody thought he’d be higher than a third-round pick if he left after his junior year so we were looking at keys to his intentions and we got it later that day.

Pierce went over to then-head coach Steve Addazio and hugged him as if to say his Temple home career was over. Daz wasn’t happy and went out and convinced ACC Preseason Player of the Year Montel Harris to transfer to Temple in an attempt to replace the production of an NFL third-round choice.

Harris was the last Temple player to do what Edward Saydee did in a 54-28 win over USF: Gain almost a quarter of a mile on the ground. In 2012 at Army, Harris went for a school-record 351 yards and seven touchdowns in a 63-32 win.

Saydee didn’t reach that number, but getting 265 and three touchdowns was pretty darn good. On Saturday, Edwards captured the pretty neat photo at the top of this post.

So many stories in that one photo. 1) Saydee leaving both teams in the dust; 2) Adonicas Sanders way in the back with his finger in the air; 3) Isaac Moore celebrating a job well done with a block; 4) Stan Drayton reliving his All-American running back past by running for the touchdown, too; 5) A vertically challenged person holding what looks like a medical bag on the sideline (presumably oxygen for Saydee); 6) the smiles of the Temple players on the sideline.

That pretty much seems up the Temple reaction in one snapshot. As Henrik Ibsen first said, a picture is worth a thousand words.

The outside reaction, though, was somewhat less impressive. One UCF fan offered his congratulations and said he “admired” the Owls because they tried hard in a 70-13 loss.

Vegas, though, has not shown respect just yet.

If you thought the win over USF might bring down the point spread for Saturday’s game at Houston to low double digits (which I did before I checked), you’d be mistaken. Houston opened as a 20-point favorite despite having a defense that gave up 77 points on the same day Temple dropped a 54-burger on USF.

The message was loud and clear. The nation does not respect Temple quite yet and the Owls are going to have to go out and get it.

Just like Daz got Montel Harris.

Friday: Houston Preview

11.04.22
by

Temple will have to play for the die-hards Saturday

Photo in post below courtesy of Zamani Feelings

Perhaps the best thing to happen in Philadelphia sports this week was the worst thing to happen for Temple football.

The Phillies won that first game in Philadelphia on Tuesday which meant that a Saturday night World Series game would be played and have the attention of the entire city including the “casual” Temple fans who make up at least half of the fan base.

I had a chance to visit the campus yesterday and picked up a copy of The Temple News. The story on the front page wasn’t about being excited for the Temple football game against visiting USF on Saturday but about how much Temple students were into the recent success of the Phillies. The Temple football game wasn’t even mentioned, not even farther back in the sports section. They were interviewed about what they were going to do the rest of the week and their plans revolved around the rest of the World Series.

This city loves a winner and, even though the Phillies lost on Thursday night, they will still be playing for something meaningful on Nov. 5. Temple will be playing out the string on Nov. 5 and whatever games are left after that.

Those are the hard, cold facts.

Even though the Temple game is at 2 and the Phillies game is at 8, that has to affect the attendance from the perspective of people driving in from the suburbs or catching a weekend regional rail schedule where the trains to the suburbs are two hours apart (pre-pandemic, for example, they have spaced only an hour apart on Saturday). My guess is that a lot of people will say bleep it and stay at home to watch what might be the last baseball game of the season.

That means the Owls will be playing in front of roughly 10-12,000 die-hard fans at Lincoln Financial Field in search of their first league win.

The Owls made their bed by first not winning the Homecoming Game against Rutgers–their best chance to keep a large following–but also by sleepwalking through the subsequent games.

Some terrible offensive coaching last week (a pass targeting their second-best pass-catching tight end was dropped and zero thought in play calling with a first-and-goal at the 5 in regulation when Temple had to score to win) robbed them of their first real chance of a league win.

Now they have perhaps one more. Vegas had USF favored by 3.5 points going into the game and some money went Temple’s way as the Owls were bet down to three as of Thursday night.

That’s a tepid acknowledgment that USF is bad, too.

Who will win?

Who knows but for this Temple fan I’ve been hoping for the offense to show up for a month now and all hope has gotten me is three points against Memphis, 13 points against UCF, 9 offensive points against Tulsa, and 13 offensive points against Navy.

Those are the kinds of numbers that get an OC fired at a place like, say, Rutgers (which happened earlier this year). For some reason, first-year head coach Stan Drayton has not felt the same sense of urgency that coach Greg Schiano has at Rutgers.

At some point, the post-game analysis needs to shift from “they lost but played hard” to “they found a way to win.”

Saturday, in front of a sparse crowd at the Linc, would be a good time for that narrative to be born.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis

Picks this week: After an unbeaten Thursday night, going to sit this one out due to nothing jumping out at me as a mistake by Vegas. Record for the season: 22-17 ATS. (If I was going to bet, would take the under 39.5 in the AF at Army game because the under is 42-9 in the last 51 service academy games.)

10.30.22
by

Drayton probably is wondering what might have been

Temple was the only team in the AAC to have two four-star quarterbacks to start the season. Drayton probably didn’t figure on finishing it with a first-year freshman but this is where we are.

Physically, by all accounts, Temple head football coach Stan Drayton is on the mend from his recent viral illness and will be joining the team this week.

Mentally, though, he must have spent the last week wondering what might have been this year in a 2-6 season that looks like it’s most likely headed for 2-10.

If that didn’t make him sick, it certainly could not have made him feel well.

Going into the season, a lot of things had to go right for the Owls to win more than they have and right at the top of that list was quarterback Dwan Mathis.

Had Mathis played like the four-star quarterback he showed ONLY in the Memphis game last year–three touchdown passes and 349 passing yards in a Temple win–this Owls’ team might have had more success.

Instead, though, Mathis played like he had in all of his other five starts last season and was pulled for good in the 31-14 win over Lafayette. He needed to play well in one of those two games and he didn’t.

Other than catching a couple of passes, he hasn’t been back since.

What if, though?

Mathis at his best opens up the offense in a way E.J. Warner at his best doesn’t. He brings that element of running and throwing at a high level that Warner brings to only one side of the football.

Drayton has to take a peek at these other big-time teams and, almost to a man, the great ones have someone at quarterback who is a threat both running and passing the ball.

While Temple fans could have foreseen Mathis not playing well, fumbling the ball away once against Duke and twice against Lafayette had to be surprising. Maybe it’s the byproduct of wearing that green jersey and not getting hit for nine months leading up to the opener but it’s a move Drayton had to make.

When asked about it in the post-game, he said “putting the ball on the ground twice” was the reason he pulled him.

It’s kind of surprising, though, that Temple hasn’t seen much of Mathis or even Quincy Patterson since. Patterson especially being inserted into the game on Saturday with a first-and-goal at the 5 and THROWING a pass off a ball fake might have worked better than anything Everett Withers tried with Warner. That’s because Navy’s scouting report had to dictate selling out for a run when Patterson was in there because that’s pretty much all he did prior to that. The element of surprise was held by Temple and the Owls chose not to use that card.

It could have been their ace in the hole but Drayton wasn’t there to make that decision. He will be around for the last four and it should be interesting to see what decisions he makes or if it makes a difference at all.

Friday: USF Preview