Tag Archives: Stan Drayton

02.23.24
by

Could Mike Locksley be big mad at Temple?

If this is true, it wouldn’t be the first time Maryland head football coach Mike Locksley was mad at Temple.

Way back when the Owls were a winning team in the last decade, Locksley opened his Maryland career with a 79-0 win over Howard.

He followed that up with 63-20 win over No. 21 Syracuse, then lost to Temple, 20-17. The post-game handshake with then Temple coach Rod Carey was particularly unenthusiastic.

That was in 2019, though, and this is now.

Locksley was recently quoted as saying his third-string running back demanded $100,000 to not enter the portal and that third-string running back appears to be at Temple right now.

Could Antwain Littleton II have been paid $100,000 by Temple to play for the Owls?

Certainly looks that way because there were two running backs who could be considered “third-string” and only one of them was taken by another team and that’s Littleton. The other “third-string” running back, Ramon Brown, is one of the still remaining 1,000 players in the transfer portal who have not found a team and probably won’t.

So it does not appear to be that Brown ever had the leverage (or even the stats) to make such a demand but Littleton, the more accomplished Big 10 running back of the two, did.

If Temple is paying Littleton $100,000, color me shocked but there are a couple of other possibilities at play here.

One, Brown could be the guy who demanded $100K. Two, Littleton demanded $100K and didn’t get it but bet on his NFL future by taking what would almost be a sure starting job at Temple.

Three, Temple head coach Stan Drayton could have found the $100K for Littleton.

Any of the scenarios work for me because Temple now has a starting tailback battle between an accomplished Big 10 back–more like a second-teamer than a third-teamer–and a JUCO back who was named first-team All-American in Torrez Worthy.

Significant upgrades over Darvon Hubbard and Edward Saydee, the Owls best two backs of the last two years.

That’s how you get better and that’s how you win more than three games.

Even with that good news for Temple, this singular situation highlights the Mike Francesa rant at the top of this post. When everyone in college football is free to move to the next team, college football is over as we know it.

Someone not named the NCAA (hint: Congress) has to rein this in and that probably won’t happen for another five or ten years.

Meanwhile, Temple has to remain above water and pay the piper.

Even if they upset a coach 100 miles down the road.

02.18.24
by

Spring Practice: Goals and Solutions

People of a certain age remember what Ricky Riccardo--the 50s TV star, not the late-night WIP radio sports talk show host--used to say to wife Lucy when she got herself in a bad situation.

People of a certain age remember what Ricky Riccardo–the 50s TV star, not the late-night WIP radio sports talk show host–used to say to wife Lucy when she got herself in a bad situation.

“You’ve got some ‘splaining to do” in that Cuban accent of his.

Both Ricky, played by Desi Arnez, and Lucy are gone but Stan Drayton is still here and, while the Temple football head coach hasn’t really adequately explained what happened last year, he needs to address the problems and outline the solutions.

Spare me the excuses and just fix the issues which have been easy to spot over the last 12 games and the fixing process should start soon or expect to see a repeat.

Spring Practice is less than a month away due to NCAA rules, the Owls are limited to the 15 sessions illustrated above.

download

The foundation can be set over the course of those practices by eliminating the sources that led to losses.

In my mind, it was pretty simple. Drayton’s pass-first, run-second approach stopped the clock far too much and allowed teams with far more team speed to have more possessions than the Owls and more opportunities to put points on the scoreboard.

This hasn’t been unique to Temple in the past and all Drayton has to do is look at game films from Matt Rhule and Al Golden specifically on how the Owls largely avoided those kinds of embarrassing losses, stay competitive into the fourth quarter and pull out wins. Simply, build an offense around a running game and a passing game built around play action.

It’s been a few months since quarterback E.J. Warner made a (at-best) lateral move to Rice University and, while Drayton has talked to the media a few times since, never addressed his feelings on the issue or offered hypotheses as to why Warner left. More surprisingly, none of the media outlets who covered Temple asked him about it. Clearing that air would be a good place to start. Also, addressing why the defense gave up nearly 40 points a game and outlining solutions might be cathartic.

The basketball version of what Temple football should do was John Chaney’s inside-out offensive philosophy. Pump the ball inside to the big men, have the defense collapse around them and move the ball around to shooters.

The football version of this is run first, pass second. Drayton brought with him an outside/inside offensive philosophy of spreading the field with the passing game and then attempting to run off of it. What might have worked at Texas has not worked here and won’t work with a strong-armed, weak-legged, quarterback. Hopefully, Drayton is a professional enough coach to come to that conclusion on his own watching Temple film for the last three months. 

The good news is that he has a relatively solid offensive line, a couple of JUCO All-American running backs (along with a Big 10 one) to at least try to establish a running game. The quarterback will probably have strong legs to go with a strong arm and that’s something different.

He has 15 practices to do that in the spring and take it into the summer. Whether he has the will to do it will determine how much “splaining” he will have to do to Temple fans who were forced to watch their team take unexpected poundings in 2023.

Friday: Big Mad

02.16.24
by

Carrier, Beckwith bolster Temple football staff

As someone who was assigned to cover the best college football head coach who ever lived and the best high school head coach ever lived, one truth became apparent.

There is no sport in history where head coaching matters more than football.

When I was in college, the head coach I covered as sports editor at The Temple News was Wayne Hardin. Even before I went to Temple, I felt Hardin was the best head coach in America.

My earliest memories included watching the Army-Navy games with my dad, who was a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy.

Tyron Carrier coached on the offensive side at WVU when it scored 56 points in a single game against Oklahoma.

“Mike, this guy (Hardin) is a great coach,” my dad would say. “Anybody who can get Navy ranked No. 2 in the country with a five-year service commitment, is a a great coach.” (Back then, five-year service commitments meant the Vietnam War and no pro football until the age of 26.)

Later, I would become a Philadelphia Bulldog fan and Hardin would win a CFL pro championship with the Bulldogs at Temple stadium.

Three years later, Hardin was the head coach at Temple and I was sold on both Hardin and Temple.

While at Temple, I got to know Wayne very well.

My proudest moment was in the press box at Penn State during the 1979 Temple game when the Owls took a 7-6 halftime lead over a much more talented Nittany Lions squad.

The entire Beaver Stadium press box got real quiet and the then dean of Penn State beat writers, John Kunda, of the Allentown Morning Call, blurted out: “Hardin is outcoaching Joe again.”

(That wasn’t the first game a less-talented Temple team took a more talented PSU team to the wire, a 26-25 loss in 1976, a 31-30 loss in 1977 and a 10-7 loss in 1978 were Exhibits A through C.)

Everyone, and I mean everyone, nodded in agreement.

Never prouder. First, I was in college and my college guy was outsmarting their college guy. That meant I was in the right school.

A few years later, I met the greatest high school coach in history (at least in my mind), Mike Pettine, Sr. He took a Central Bucks West school of 1,500 students (800 boys) and dominated the state of Pennsylvania by brilliant gameday coaching and better fundamentals. Nobody got more out of teams of 5-10, 170-pound suburban kids more than Pettine, who was 364-46-2 with five state titles. Pettine said, “Mike, you know football because you are a Temple guy and Wayne gave you a crash course.” That didn’t mean I couldn’t learn more watching Pettine’s teams, who were never offside and never false started.

At Temple, lesser coaches followed but will have to give a nod to Bruce Arians (6-5 against two Top 10 schedules), Al Golden for applying CPR to a dead Temple football program and his lieutenant Matt Rhule for building on that legacy.

Stan Drayton?

Haven’t been impressed as much because of his inexperience but his heart is in the right place.

When I heard Drayton say everything would be re-evaluated at the end of a third-straight 3-9 season at Temple, including the coaches, I thought maybe the worst DC in the history of the school would be released.

That hasn’t happened.

Yet Drayton did release a couple of coaches and add a couple more and the new guys have credentials.

One of them is wide receivers’ coach Tyron Carrier, who has coached in five bowl games. In 2018, Carrier was named Football Scoop’s receiver coach of the year at West Virginia.

The other coach in defensive line guy Kevon Beckwith, who led Incarnate Word to a nation-high 43 sacks in a 12-2 2022 season.

Nobody heard of Incarnate Word before Beckwith and his fellow coaches took over there.

Temple has been pretty silent since guys like Hardin, Golden and Rhule left.

If Carrier and Beckwith make a difference, maybe the worst DC in the country’s influence can be mitigated.

It won’t mean 12-0 but it could mean 6-6 and after a steady diet of 3-9, that could taste pretty good.

Monday: Spring Practice Priorities

Friday: Big Mad

02.11.24
by

Temple football: The rest of the recruiting story

Terrez Worthy is going from a field with (sometimes) no yard lines to the best stadium in the NFL.

Watching the Super Bowl on Sunday night was a study in contrasts, the old versus the new.

At least at the quarterback position.

Patrick Mahomes’ 25-22 overtime win for the Kansas City Chiefs over Brock Purdy and the San Francisco 49ers represents a win for new school football, where the quarterback who is mobile and can complete any pass beats the immobile one who can do the same.

That’s already happened in college football. The championship quarterbacks in each conference can move and throw. The middling teams don’t have that guy.

Temple will be making that same transition in the 2024 season with Clifton McDowell, a mobile quarterback who can make any pass, replacing E.J. Warner, an immobile quarterback who can do the same.

Forget what Pravda is telling you about Evan Simon winning the Temple quarterback position. That ain’t happening. Just remember you read it here first. McDowell is a poor man’s Patrick Mahomes. Simon is a homeless man’s Brock Purdy.

What about the rest of the story, though?

Temple’s cloudy kicking situation just became sunny and bright with the addition of Maddox Trujillo.

Football is a 22-man game, not a one-or-two-man one.

The small picture is that Temple improved the passing game by moving the pocket and the running game by replacing Edward Saydee and Darvon Hubbard with a pair of JUCO All-Americans and a Big 10 running back.

The rest of the story is the bigger picture.

The only known photo of a current Temple recruit blocking an extra point.

Temple bulked up both lines and increased its depth while doing so.

For a deeper dive, this is a pretty good place to start but there are a couple of players who stick out.

A high school player from New Jersey, a defensive lineman named Giakoby Hills, is 6-5, 270 with four blocked kicks. The athletic ability to block that many kicks is impressive and Temple has not blocked an important kick since a 6-5 wide receiver named Deion Miller blocked a field goal that would have given UConn a win over Temple a dozen years ago. The best kicker in the country then, Brandon McManus, then made one to give the Owls a 17-14 win.

Speaking of kickers, the days of kicking the ball out of bounds–which have been four dark years–are seemingly over with the addition of Austin Peay kicker Maddox Trujillo, who made 38 of 53 field goals and 96.2 percent of his extra points. If he does those percentages at Temple, he will be second only to Don Bitterlich in both categories and better than the best kicker in the nation in 2012, McManus.

There are plenty more “worthy” of mention but we will end this with a guy named Worthy. Terrez Worthy was the most valuable player for Maryland in the 2022 Big 33 game against Pennsylvania, giving Temple its third MVP from a Big 33 game (Adrian Robinson and Jalen Fitzpatrick were the others). Both of those guys did great things at Temple and, if Worthy, who is 5-11, 190 with breakaway speed does the same, Temple will have its best running back since Ryquell Armstead.

All good things on paper.

Now let’s see them do it on the field.

Friday: New Coaches

02.09.24
by

Late Signing Day: Rolling the dice

The exacta in the eighth race at Gulfstream on Thursday paid a cool $898 for a $2 bet because a couple of 30-1 shots finished first and second.

Dot and Twirling Queen.

You have to be a pretty brave gambler to go against the chalk and pluck a $2 bill on that pair but it paid off.

The Daily Racing Form’s Youtube analysis of that race totally missed those two horses and went so chalky a bar of Coast soap might not be enough to remove all the white substance from the hands of analysts Dan Ullman and Mike Beer.

Stan Drayton and his Temple football staff rolled the dice in a similar fashion on the “real signing day” with mostly 30-1 shots while the bluebloods of the college football world were using chalk on to sign national letters-of-intent.

That was really out of necessity because Temple doesn’t have the money to compete with for 4* recruits, let alone 5* ones.

Still, they reached for the stars and got a couple and that was pretty impressive on its own.

You can really say his two chalk bets probably will help the Owls more, but there are a lot of Dots and Twirling Queens to connect with the other signees.

To me, the two chalk guys will be starters and impact players for the Owls at positions of need.

As good as E.J. Warner was, and we think he will do very well at Rice, Cliffton McDowell–in our humble opinion–will be an upgrade over the son of a Super Bowl winner. He’s a proven championship-level quarterback. Warner, for all the good things he did here, was 6-15.

Could you imagine TU putting this guy at fullback as a lead blocker for Joquez Smith and playing a shell game with the defense by handing him the ball half the time? That’s the definition of Temple TUFF.

Put it this way: I will take McDowell’s 17 touchdown passes and four interceptions at Montana (a better team than Temple) from 2023 over Warner’s 23 and 14 in the same year at Temple (duh, a worse team than Montana). I will pluck a $2 exacta bet with McDowell and incoming Big 10 running back Antwain Littleton II over the Warner/Saydee combo.

I will bet Temple makes a lot more third-and-ones in 2024 than it did in 2023.

It looks like Stan Drayton and company are making the same bet.

The AAC college football return on that exacta might not be $898 but it certainly could push the needle toward six wins and that would be enough for Drayton to keep his cushy $2.5 million job at Temple. More importantly, it will keep the BOT bean counters away from Temple football in general.

Temple needs more than McDowell and Littleton and that’s where the 30-1 shots come into play.

The Owls did this year what they should have done last year and that was to shore up both lines.

Last year, because the Owls left three scholarships on the table, they were forced to start two true freshmen on the offensive line and one true freshman on the defensive line and that’s never a good sign. As a result, Warner ran for his life on most Saturdays and was knocked out on two of them and his parents thought his chances of getting killed on a football field far exceeded his chances of being harmed anywhere near Broad and Norris.

The pesky thing about recruiting is that those other teams are improving, too, according to Scout.com

What did Drayton do Wednesday?

Overbook both lines so much that the Owls now have 92 players under scholarship when they have only 85 to give. They are booking on turnover in the age of the transfer portal and might have to Grey shirt some players to make room.

That’s OK because the Owls will not have to rely on true freshmen to start. They averaged 6-2, 265 across the offensive line last season with those two true freshmen in the mix. Now they will average 6-4, 288 across the offensive front and 6-3, 268 over the defensive front and that’s considerably more bulk. Additionally, they will have at the minimum JUCO starter experience over high school starter experience and that should show on the field.

They won’t be competitive against Oklahoma on Aug. 31, that’s a given.

BUT … and this is a big but … they were competitive with all of their flaws against a USF team that beat Syracuse 45-0 and those are the games this kind of recruiting was built to turn around. Temple lost to USF only because a player who is no longer here hit a guy out of bounds. That same USF team blew out a bowl-bound ACC team, Syracuse.

With the right players, Temple is not all that far away.

Hitting the McDowell/Littleton exacta plus finding some gems underneath for tri and super bets could mean the Owls get the bowl game they should have had a year ago.

Cashing in at the AAC football window would be a lot sweeter than anything Gulfstream or Parx has to offer.

Monday: The Rest of The Story

Friday: Coaching Additions

Monday (2/19): Spring Practice Priorities

02.04.24
by

Deep Dive into an upgraded position

Nothing is certain in the world of college football recruiting these days, but the signs are there that one thing Temple football had trouble doing the last few years is in the rear-view mirror.

That thing is getting a yard on third-and-short.

Yes, the Owls dabbled in the Eagles’ “Brotherly Shove” but that was a hit-and-miss proposition and not the money in the bank the Eagles cashed every time they needed a first down.

All indicators are Antwain Littleton II could be that needed ATM.

As a 6-foot-1, 265-pound running back for St. John’s High School in D.C., Littleton was his own personal Brotherly Shove.

The website “Sharpe Sports” went into a deep dive on the talent of Littleton (see above video), who made an impact at Maryland over the last two seasons. The only thing he did not do there was nail down the running back position all by himself.

That figures to change at Temple where he could be “The Man.” Littleton is now down to 235 pounds with the same amount of power and a little more speed and with him and quarterback Cliffton McDowell in the backfield, the Owls have a running threat needed to set up a downfield passing game.

Antwain Littleton after scoring a touchdown in win over SMU (2022).

They tried to force a running game with a short passing game for the first two years and that didn’t work. This might.

There were few things more maddening in the first two years of the Stan Drayton Regime than the inability of the Owls to get a yard when they needed one. With 1 minute, 48 seconds left and a 46-42 lead over bowl-bound East Carolina two years ago, the Owls had so little confidence in their ability to run the ball on third-and-one, that they had E.J. Warner throw for it.

Incomplete, of course.

Drayton decided to kick the ball back to ECU on fourth down and the Owls never saw the ball again but they did see a 49-46 loss.

Aggravating.

There may be more aggravating situations ahead for the Owls but knowing they have a one-man Brotherly Shove kills two birds (hopefully not Owls) with one stone.

Keeping drives alive and keeping Everett Withers’ defense off the field.

Friday: Reaction to Late Signing Day

02.02.24
by

The solution to Temple’s defense is an old tune

The spell Everett Withers casts over Stan Drayton is the most puzzling one of his coaching regime.

The last great D.J. I saw at a Temple football game was a guy named Jerry Blavat, who connected with the boomers by spinning the hits of the 1950s and 60s.

RIP, Geator with The Heater.

The next D.J. was pretty good, a guy named D.J. Eliot, who turned chicken bleep into chicken salad by taking a questionably talented Temple defense in 2022 and doing some good things.

Would have rather had another Heater (Chuck) but Stan Drayton’s hire of Eliot turned out to be a solid one.

When Eliot left to be linebackers’ coach with the Philadelphia Eagles this time a year ago, Drayton rushed into getting his replacement before spring ball and hired Everett Withers on St. Patrick’s Day 2023. That day we wrote this about that.

D.J. Eliot

It probably wasn’t the worst decision made on St. Patty’s Day in Philadelphia history–thinking about bar-hopping in Center City and driving home to the suburbs might be worse (not me)–but Drayton at least made the second-worst SPD decision in Philly history.

His DC hire, old friend Everett Withers, came off a recent DC job (FIU, 2021), where he averaged giving up 40 points-per-game (OK, 39.7 but we’re rounding it off).

Withers piggybacked that with giving up almost the same amount of ppgs for Temple in 2023.

In the 140-year-old history of Temple football, there was only one worse defense (2005, Bobby Wallace).

Two historically bad defenses, one in Miami, one in Philadelphia. Presided over by the same guy, Everett Withers.

There’s a clue somewhere in there.

After the season was over, Drayton promised the assembled press that he would re-evaluate everything (“including the coaches”) and, for some unknown reason, he gave a pass to a DC who allowed an obscene 40 ppg but fired some lower-level staffers.

That was essentially telling Temple football fans, “yeah, we couldn’t stop anybody but we evaluated ourselves and we did nothing wrong.”

Now that the Eagles have hired another LB coach and Eliot is out of a job, the logical thing to do is for Drayton to offer Eliot is old job back. Drayton doesn’t even have to fire Withers to do it. He can shuffle the staff and move Withers to another spot.

This prediction predicated on Withers nailed the 2023 Temple football season.

Like everything Drayton and Withers’ related, though, all we have is radio silence from Temple out of the Edberg-Olson Complex.

Looks like Drayton is sticking with his buddy and, in essence, going down with the ship when he could have objectively thrown himself a life raft.

Not subjectively, objectively.

Comparing the Temple defense of 2022 and 2023, Eliot did a significantly better job in 2022 than Withers did in 2023.

If Drayton doesn’t rehire him, Arthur Johnson will have to ask why in his Stan Drayton Exit interview of 2024 because I can’t see this defense surviving another Everett Withers’ experience.

“Because we’re buddies” won’t be a good-enough answer.

Monday: A Deep Dive

01.29.24
by

NIL and Transfer Portal: A matter of right and wrong

Recently saw a back-and-forth on social media about Temple athletics and one guy answered another guy with something to the effect that if Temple doesn’t get a rich benefactor to contribute to the NIL nonsense that there won’t be sports at the school in five years.

There is a kernel of truth to that.

Still, if the NIL and transfer portal are right for college sports in general and Temple specifically, I want to be wrong.

It’ll be OK with me for Temple to pack up the balls and the goal posts and get out of the sports business because the essence of sports is everyone starting at the same spot.

What you have now in men’s college football and basketball is the Power 5 starting at the 40-yard-line, while the Group of Five is way back at the goal line and that’s not fair.

The guy holding the starter’s pistol doesn’t seem to notice or looks the other way. What used to be a major infraction in the NCAA (see SMU football death penalty, 1987) is now accepted practice.

We won’t see it change unless the Power 5 itself notices and there are certain indicators that might be happening.

Less than a year ago, Nick Saban expressed the problem with the NIL and the transfer portal together in the above two-minute answer and it gave an insight into why he might not be coaching anymore.

Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh left for the pros and any coach who has an option between the NFL and college football going forward probably will pick the former.

Others, like Saban and New Mexico State’s Jerry Kill, have said they no longer want to be a college head coach in this era where the first question a recruit asks them is “how much money do you have?”

Can’t blame him or them.

The schools with the most oil millionaires will always beat the schools with the people who had to work two jobs just to get through four years of college.

The schools with the large number of students living on campus will always beat the schools who were built on commuting, like Temple.

On a level playing field, Temple offers plenty to a recruit. It’s the sixth-largest educator of professionals in the country, located in a vibrant city with ample employment opportunities and networking after graduation. It has a great academic reputation and its degree is worth something.

That used to matter.

Stan Drayton had the best week of his Temple career a week ago, but the overall picture is grim because how many Big 10 players or FCS All-Americans can he recruit under this current system?

Not many.

How many JUCO-dominated Temple teams will be able to compete with million-dollar transfer portal guys?

None.

So if Temple is caught in a downward spiral of perpetual 3-9 seasons, count me out.

Maybe the best hope for Temple is to get with a similar G5 group and get out of the business of trying to compete with the P5 for things like playoff spots.

When the first question a recruit asks is how big is that bag of cash, that’s not quite why college sports was created in the first place so there should be no tears shed if they come to an end eventually at a lot of schools.

I won’t hold my breath waiting for a rich Temple benefactor to save the Owls nor should I be expected to.

Friday: An Old Spin on a New Problem

Monday: A Deep Dive

01.19.24
by

Temple and The Eagles

My favorite media question of the week resulted in a reverse jam dunk by a Temple University product, Todd Bowles, that illustrated a couple of things:

One, the class act of a guy I knew and loved while covering the Temple football Owls for the Calkins Newspaper group back in the 1980s remained the class act of an NFL coach in the 2020s;

Two, the way he let her down gently;

Three, the current state of sports media where they let anyone without a football background ask a question;

I’m sure this person got up in the morning and jotted down her question for the presser thinking beforehand it was a brilliant question nobody else would ask the Tampa Bay head coach prior to a divisional round game at Detroit.

She was half right.

Yes, it was a question no one else would ask.

Former New York Jets’ head coach Todd Bowles rocks the Temple swag on a Jets’ pre-game show.

No, not a brilliant question. Actually, the opposite.

How the bleep would anyone who knew anything about football ask a weather question about the Detroit Lions without knowing as a base the Lions don’t play outside?

Ugh.

The question got me pondering the deeper meaning of Tampa Bay eliminating the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday night.

The Eagles were eliminated by a defensive guru who applied for the Temple head coaching job who learned his football at the feet of a former Temple coach, Bruce Arians.

What was Arians’ major defensive philosophy?

“The best pass defense is to put the other guy’s quarterback on his backside,” was Arians’ favorite quote.

What did Todd do against the Eagles?

Every time Jalen Hurts checked into an empty backfield Bowles checked into a blitz.

It’s Football 101.

With no blockers back there to protect the quarterback, the QB has to do one of two things: 1) throw the ball out of bounds or 2) take a sack.

Hurts did a lot of both and, as a result, the Eagles lost, 32-9.

(The adjustment to defeat that would have been for Hurts to check into max protect and get the ball out on swing routes but that never happened and you’ve got to wonder what Sirianni and Brian Johnson and Hurts were thinking.)

How does this affect Temple?

Bowles wasn’t the only Temple connection to look good.

Ever since Sean Desai was replaced as DC, the Eagles went from a decent defense to the worst in the league. Desai, like Bowles, was a former Temple person (professor in the classroom and special teams coordinator at 10th and Diamond) who shined in North Philadelphia. Desai also once applied for the Temple head coaching job.

Maybe replacing a DC who shut out Kansas City in the second half of a 21-17 win wasn’t the best idea.

Maybe the Eagles fire Nick Sirianni. Maybe they don’t.

But, if they do, the names of Desai (future head coach) or current Eagles’ LB coach D.J. Eliot should be on both a long and a short list to help Temple football get out of its current funk.

Eliot objectively took pretty much the same Temple football players current DC Everett Withers had and performed as the 74th-best defense in the country in the 2022 season.

Withers replaced him and had the Owls rated 129th in the next season, which was tied for fourth-worst in Temple football history (with Bobby Wallace’s 2005 squad) from a ppg standpoint. Withers was two points per game away from being the DC with dubious record of leading the worst Temple defense in all of a history that dates back to 1889.

If Sirianni is let go, Eliot becomes available to slot back into his former role and make the Owls’ defense twice as good in 2024 as it was in 2023.

Does Drayton, probably Withers’ best friend, have the organizational skills to fire the guy or does he say “bleep it, me and Everett are going down with the ship?”

If the Eagles fire Nick, we will find out in day or two. If they don’t, expect Oklahoma to put a a 70-spot on the Owls because we will be stuck with Withers.

The saddest part is all of this could have been fixed a long time ago had Temple hired Temple.

Monday: Ships sailing and learning curve Friday:

Friday: Temple’s No. 1 foe

Monday: If this is wrong, I don’t want to be right

01.14.24
by

Some stat numbers for winners

Temple probably could get Reese Poffenbarger to flip from Miami to Temple without a NIL deal with Puffs.

Statistics are for losers, the old saying goes, but that depends upon your perspective.

The only numbers that really matter are wins and losses but often the numbers behind that bottom line have to be impressive.

Stan Drayton might not know who Reese Poffenbarger is but Reese Poffenbarger now knows who Stan Drayton is.

Temple has a situation right now that is best illustrated by numbers.

Quarterback A’s best college football season: 79 completions in 137 attempts for 777 yards, four touchdowns and six interceptions.

Quarterback B’s best college football season: 36 touchdowns, 14 interceptions, 3,614 yards out of 296 completions in 471 attempts.

Guess which one Temple has?

Quarterback A, Evan Simon, last year’s backup quarterback at Rutgers who put up his “best” year in 2022. The one where he had more interceptions than touchdown passes.

Until Saturday, Temple had no shot of getting Quarterback B but now at least has a realistic chance.

The question is does Temple even know it?

If the Owls do, we should know the answer in a few days.

If not, we might never know.

Reese Poffenbarger, the former Albany quarterback who put up those impressive stats, is Quarterback B.

Bernie Madoff, the King of Ponzi Schemes, had a rule for his subscribers: You are not allowed to ask questions. Just sit back and give him as much cash as you can gather, make a little money at the outset, and watch everything crash at the end.

If, in fact, Temple head coach Stan Drayton never even tries to go after Poffenbarger, the question that needs to be asked is why. Judging from the outlets who cover Temple football, that question will never be asked.

Malachi Nelson went from USC to Boise State last week. Tate Rodemaker went from Florida State to Southern Mississippi.

Poffenbarger, who suffered the indignity of being recruited over a day after he committed to Miami, now has options.

One of them should be Temple. Going from Albany to Temple–you can’t say Miami to Temple because Poffenbarger never enrolled in Coral Cables– would be a significant upgrade for Reese and something that would benefit both parties. Like Rodemaker and Nelson, Poffenbarger to Temple would be a wise decision because he can slot in as a starter without the threat of Drayton recruiting over him.

Add the numbers of both Quarterback A and B to the Temple quarterback room and there is a good chance the numbers that really matter (wins over losses) will add up for Poffenbarger, Drayton and Temple.

Friday: The Eagles and Temple

Monday: Learning from an AAC foe