Tag Archives: Temple football

02.07.25
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Feb. 4 signees: Reasons for optimism

Gut feeling that De’Carlos Young becomes Temple’s featured back in 2025 and that Jett White and Jayvant Brown make immediate all-AAC impacts.

You won’t find Temple football in the top 10 of recruiting classes.

You don’t have to.

All you need to do is compare Temple not necessarily against the best AAC recruiting classes (Memphis and Tulane’s were better) but against the G5 as a whole.

Nobody said Sam Houston’s recruiting class was No. 1 in the Group of Five a year ago. In fact, it was much closer to No. 64 than No. 1.

What Sam Houston had then and what Temple has now is a College Hall of Fame football coach in K.C. Keeler. It also had no NIL money. It also finished 9-3 in the regular season.

That means a lot.

A year ago Temple had neither a highly rated recruiting class nor a Hall of Fame college football coach.

One out of two ain’t bad.

The reality of college football today is that the schools with the alumni with the rolls of money will always have the top-ranked classes.

Temple will never have that.

The sooner we accept that reality the better.

So what’s the path forward?

With apologies to P4 big-time recruits Jett White and Jayvant Brown, DeCarlos Young is Temple Football Forever’s choice as the No. 1 recruit in this 2025 class.

Keeler and a very smart staff identifying diamonds in the rough is acceptable alternative.

Make a bowl game right away and challenge for the AAC title in a couple of years.

That appears to have happened on Wednesday with this recruiting class.

Put it this way: Does even a Temple team coming off consecutive 10-win seasons ever dream of recruiting a player like Jett White or Jaybrant Brown?

The answer clearly is no.

The transfer portal taketh away but it also giveth.

White and Brown were big-time P4 recruits and would not have given Temple a second look first time around.

Now, they can help Temple inch closer to the top of the AAC.

How close?

Maybe not to the Memphis or Tulane level but certainly to that level just after those two teams

Keeler as my coach over Stan Drayton as my coach makes me think 6-6 is much more attainable than the 3-9 we’ve been used to as fans.

Now this guy still has six scholarships in his pocket with about 2,000 players to chose from and they better be defensive linemen who can put the quarterback on his ass and offensive linemen who can protect a franchise quarterback like Evan Simon.

If he doesn’t deliver them by the summer, you will read your first criticism of Keeler here. Until then, trust a process demonstratively better than the last process.

02.03.25
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Some great players remain in the portal

Hard to believe the number of very good players left in the college football’s transfer portal and, the longer they stay there, the better the chances for a G5 school like Temple to come away with some.

There’s no secret who new Temple portal expert Kyle Pollock should be targeting because the Owls lost two of their better defensive lineman to both portal and graduation and their offensive line struggled in pass protection last season.

Both need to be resupplied.

The top offensive lineman remaining in the portal is Fa’Alili Fa’amore who is a 6-5, 314-pound junior from Wake Forest. He originally signed with Washington State but moved on to Washington.

C.J. James from UTSA was granted an additional year of eligibility due to the Diego Pavia lawsuit. He’s 6-3, 310 pounds and is familiar with Temple. The Owls lost their starting quarterback to a rival conference school from Texas two years ago so turnabout is fair play. K.C. Keeler has plenty of recruiting connections in Texas so maybe he could pull this off.

Hard to believe the number of very good players left in the college football's transfer portal and, the longer they stay there, the better the chances for a G5 school like Temple to come away with some.
Analysts like Bruce Feldman insist the biggest problem with the transfer portal is the belief among players that they will land somewhere. Nearly 50 percent who enter one year find themselves without a home the next.

Kai Greer (6-6, 285) redshirted this year at Georgia Tech and has offers from places like Liberty and Utah State so Temple should probably throw its hat into the ring for him. Temple beat Utah State, 45-29, last year and Keeler beat Liberty, 20-12, as head coach at Sam Houston State.

Those are just a few of the “types” of lineman Temple can and should go after.

The Owls don’t have the same NIL resources many other schools have but they can offer an opportunity for good players who want to bet on themselves to succeed.

Maybe it’s enough. Maybe it’s not, but we will never know unless we try.

Friday: Signing Day Recap

01.27.25
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Temple needs to embrace the Eagles’ success

Temple students headed to the Eagles’ Super Bowl winning parade in Feb. of 2018.

Temple students love football.

Temple students love the Philadelphia Eagles.

Temple students probably don’t love their own football Owls as much but, if anyone understands the connection between the students, President of the university and the pro team in town it is new head coach K.C. Keeler

Owls share the same stadium with the NFC champion Eagles and that needs to be a selling point both for recruits and fans.

Maybe he can do something about it.

Already Keeler is pounding the pavement talking about his team and the Eagles.

Last week, at the annual Philadelphia sports writers dinner, Keeler told the story of scheduling a team meeting at the same time the Eagles were playing the Green Bay Packers.

“One of the players took me aside and said, ‘Coach, do you know that’s the same time the Eagles’ game starts?’ I said we can adjust.”

And that’s just what Keeler did.

Team meeting was scheduled for after the game and a team bonding session was scheduled around watching it.

Keeler also likes to tell the story of Temple president John Fry cheering for the Eagles as a selling point for him to take the Temple job.

Brainstorming ways to tie in recruiting to playing in the Eagles’ stadium in front of NFL scouts is one way to make up the difference between Temple’s NIL and, say, Memphis. Coming to Philadelphia to play in an NFL stadium was the major selling point for kicker Maddox Trijillo and, partially as a result, he will be kicking for an NFL team next year.

Keeler needs to sell that.

Temple as an institution needs to help out with creative ticket-selling ideals. While students are given free tickets to the games, getting them inside the stadium as been the rub in the past. Maybe an Eagles’ ticket giveway to a student who is actually seating somewhere in the stadium in the fourth quarter one idea to put fannies in the seats.

It could not hurt. Maybe it starts as 100 fannies. If word spreads through loudspeakers on campus during the week that a couple of students won Eagles tickets, maybe that 100 turns into 1,000 the next week and so on and so forth.

Beyond that, any paying Temple season ticket-holder who is also inside the stadium in the fourth quarter gets a shot at winning a raffle for Eagles’ tickets.

Buying those few Eagles season tickets is an investment that probably won’t pack the stadium but would certainly capitalize on the connection the city feels with their NFL football team.

Getting some of those fans into the stadium to see an exciting and well-coached Temple team might create a similar bond.

Friday: The No-So-Dirty Dozen

01.24.25
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Good portal news comes in threes for Owls

Owls getting the work done on Tuesday at The Edberg-Olson Football Complex.

For all of the exciting new additions in the transfer portal for Temple football since K.C. Keeler has arrived, maybe the best news is that some of the current Owls have reconsidered.

Maybe that’s the impression Keeler has fostered over his nearly two months here.

Three pretty good Temple players who entered the portal have done the Prodigal Son thing and returned to the Owls.

Khalil Poteat should be an important part of the defense in 2025.

Good news, as well as bad, comes in threes.

Joseph Auzenne, a defensive lineman who played in 10 games, was the latest to return and told OwlsDaily.com’s Shawn Pastor in a text message on Thursday he was “ready to kick ass for the Owls.”

I like the sound of that.

Countries who had citizens view Temple Football Forever in the last two days. Not shown is Saudi Arabia (one view). We need that guy to make a significant NIL contribution to Temple football.

Also, leading rusher Terrez Worthy dipped his toes in the transfer portal water and decided that it was ice cold and is back to compete for the No. 1 tailback job with Jay Ducker.

The third player who tried the portal and returned was opening day starter at left offensive tackle, Kevin Terry. When the guy the past staff trusts at the most important pass protection position on the team comes to that conclusion, it can only help.

Temple is set at quarterback with Evan Simon, a guy who can win an AAC title, and some pretty good receivers and tight ends. The linebacker room is solid and there is a pretty good group in the back end on defense.

Temple needs to replace the best placekicker in the country and that might be the toughest get.

There are still wants and needs because the offensive line should be upgraded and the defensive line has holes created by the portal, but with 11 scholarships left to dangle in the second portal window, Keeler has some currency for good players running out of options.

The portal has been, at least for the last two years, a buyer’s market with way more players in it than available scholarships. That means some really good players should shake free and fall to Temple.

Whoever does, they should be welcomed by a lot of the guys already here who have bought into this new culture.

01.20.25
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Keeler finally showing his recruiting hand

Jay Ducker appears to be the biggest addition so far for K.C. Keeler.
Ty Davis takes an INT to the house for Delaware.

A lot can change in 12 months.

This time in 2024, Temple football Chief of Staff Marcus Berry was talking about having a “good plan” to upgrade the roster.

We learned then that the plan was rooted in 1980s recruiting philosophy where immediate needs were filled by JUCO transfers. Not surprising because head coach Stan Drayton and DC Everett Withers were assistant and head coaches, respectively, back in the 80s and never changed with the times.

New Temple head coach K.C. Keeler was also coaching Rowan in the 1980s but the difference seems to be that Keeler has adjusted to the current reality of the transfer portal and finding talent at higher levels than JUCO.

New Temple LB Jayvant Brown talks about his offers coming out of high school.

As we’ve been preaching in this space for the last two years, the fastest way for Temple upgrade the roster is at levels higher than JUCO, with a special emphasis on disaffected but good P4 backups and FCS stars.

That appears to be the case with the latest additions.

The biggest addition is Jay Ducker, a proven 1,000-yard FBS back at Northern Illinois as a freshman who Keeler is familiar with because he was at Sam Houston State this year. Ducker, who is 5-10, 205, had 1,184 yards in just his freshman year for NIU.

Temple looks like it landed a pair of cornerback starters in Youngstown State’s Jaylen Castleberry and two-year Hampton starter Omar Ibrahim. Castleberry (6-0, 190) was an All-Missouri Conference performer where he had 50 tackles, including five tackles for losses.

On defense, the new 3-4 will be bolstered by a pair of speedy linebackers, Delaware transfer Ty Davis (6-3, 218) and Kentucky transfer Jayvant Brown (6-0, 225). Originally a Michigan State commit, Brown had offers from LSU and Alabama coming out of high school in Florida.

While Keeler also added a backup RB to an All-American at Stony Brook, and a starting quarterback at Robert Morris, those appear to be walk-ons for depth purposes.

The other guys are potential starters and there is not a JUCO in sight.

That’s a new plan better than the old one.

01.17.25
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A Temple nugget for the national title game

Tip of the hat to TFF reader and CBS Sports talk show host Zach Gelb for this idea.

High-profile TV games involve big-time announcers and a lot of research from highly-paid TV teams yet nobody hits 1.000 or even .400.

Some even strike out.

Case-in-point was Sunday’s NFL Wild Card game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Green Bay Packers.

For all of the millions of dollars Tom Brady, Kevin Burkhardt, Erin Andrews and Tom Rinaldi make none knew that the Packers’ kicker who missed his first field goal in that game (Brandon McManus) played his college ball in the same stadium.

Joe Jones (26) watches Ryan Day explain the “chop” technique. He caught at TD pass against Army that week.

Got to go with “knew” because that’s a nugget that should have been tossed out somewhere along the line. Certainly worthy enough to mention in the game-day broadcast.

Here’s a helpful hint for Monday’s announcers in the national championship game: There is a Temple angle more than worthy to be pursued.

Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit are those guys.

Huge news for the Owls. Way better than Tarleton State. Wake me up the next time the Tarleton State fans storm the court after beating the No. 18 team in the country.

Notre Dame defensive coordinator Al Golden is inarguably the one person who is responsible for turning the Temple program from a 19-season loser to a consistent winner and he is the Notre Dame defensive coordinator.

Golden was smart enough to hire a guy named Ryan Day as his wide receivers’ coach.

Now the two are on opposite sides of the field in Monday’s national title game.

While the fake Miami (Ohio) might have been previously earned the reputation of “Cradle of Coaches” that doesn’t apply to this year’s national title game.

Temple is the only school that earns that distinction on this night and in this game.

It deserves to be either mentioned or highlighted in a pre-game piece.

Hopefully, they won’t swing and miss like the NFL crew did on Sunday.

Monday: Five Most Impactful Guys

01.12.25
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Walker should turn the LFF scoreboard into an adding machine

This is the way Montana State plays offensive football and the way Temple will going forward.

After three years of watching Stan Drayton’s offensive coordinator Danny Langsdorf throw 3-yard swing passes on 3d and 5, Tyler Walker’s approach should be like a breath of fresh air.

Walker is Temple’s new OC and he will be joined by offensive line coach Al Johnson.

There are a couple of strong signals in those hires for Temple football fans.

One, there is no indication that either one of those coaches had a prior relationship with new Temple head coach K.C. Keeler. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing, as Drayton showed by his hires that he was more wedded to hiring friends than he was to the overall advancement of the Temple program.

He made one of those friends, Everett Withers, his Chief of Staff and then gave Withers carte blanche to hire a staff that included three of Withers’ assistants at Texas State University. Withers was fired there after a 2-10 season.

Losers beget losing and that’s exactly what happened at Temple.

Huge red flag.

Arthur Johnson and John Frey have to be pleased with K.C. Keeler’s staff additions.

Hire the best people, not the guys that you feel comfortable having a conversation with by the Edberg Olson coaches office water cooler.

Keeler has signaled he is willing to do the former, not the latter. Drayon never did.

Two, the frustrating offensive system that caused Temple fans to pull their hair out is no more. That means a unique RPO game based on establishing the run first and then throwing off fakes to the running backs that results in explosive downfield plays in the passing game.

Too often, especially with immobile quarterback E.J. Warner, Langsdorf tried to force a square peg into a round hole–hoping a short passing game would open up running lanes on draw plays.

That never worked because the Owls could never convince defenses their running game was a threat.

That’s where Johnson comes in because the Montana State offensive line coach and new Temple one, realizes that some beef is necessary to move the ball on the ground first.

Fortunately, he had a mobile quarterback who won the Walter Payton Award as FCS Player of the Year but still that mobile quarterback threw for 29 touchdowns against only two interceptions.

Contrast that to Warner’s best year at Temple–23 TDs, 13 interceptions.

In case you didn’t notice what happened in the NFL on Sunday, winning teams only win when they cut the number of mistakes to as close to zero as possible.

Temple QB Evan Simon may not be as mobile as the Montana State QB, but he has functional mobility and a knack to protect the football.

Even if the Owls don’t get a super mobile QB in the transfer portal, Simon can run this kind of offense and maybe even draw some NFL eyes with it.

Drayton proved that hiring losers begets losing and Keeler is determined to show hiring winners will do the exact opposite. Sounds like a plan.

Friday: High-Profile Reunion

Monday: Five Most Impactful Newcomers

Friday: Wants and Needs

01.10.25
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What Thursday’s semifinal said about the state of Temple football

Some TU fans say this guy can’t throw. This film indicates otherwise.

What a difference a decade makes …

That’s what we learned most from Thursday night’s 27-24 Notre Dame win over Penn State in a national football semifinal.

Temple’s Brandon Shippen, right, scores against Notre Dame’s Max Redfield, left, in the 2015 game.

Especially from the Temple football perspective.

One decade ago Temple routed Penn State, 27-10, in front of a strongly pro-Temple sellout crowd at Lincoln Financial Field.

About a month and 25 days later, No. 21-ranked Temple took No. 9-ranked Notre Dame down to the wire before safety Will Hayes jumped the wrong way allowing William Fuller with 1:07 left to catch the game-winning touchdown pass in a 24-20 ND win.

That crowd was more evenly split but another LFF sellout.

That game was the highest-rated game ever in the Philadelphia TV market for college football.

We will see by Friday whether that game withstood the test of time and beat Thursday’s night’s game in Philly.

Either way, that was a magical year for Temple and, to be honest, something we probably will never see again through no fault of Temple.

That’s the perfect way to illustrate where we are with Temple football. The big boys with the big money will always get the players and the Temples of the world will get the discarded scraps.

Even though K.C. Keeler is a great coach, the best he can hope to do is recruit P4 castoffs and make some noise in the G5.

That’s OK because even in that environment Temple can win and compete for G5 championships.

It’s not 2015 but it certainly beats the alternative.

Winning in football at the level Temple currently plays at should be the goal and not competing for national championships.

There are still a lot of good things that can be accomplished at that level, including energizing the alumni and getting them out to more games than just Homecoming.

Look at it this way: A few months ago people were talking about dropping football being a viable option at Temple.

No more.

All the Temple administration had to do was hire a definite college football Hall of Fame head coach in K.C. Keeler and then start recruiting players like the Michigan backup quarterback (Alex Orji) who visited Temple this week. My personal feeling is that he reminds me of Quincy Patterson and Walter Washington, a run/first, pass/second quarterback. In a fair QB battle, my money is on Evan Simon. Temple can win with Evan Simon. Not so sure about Alex Orji but if these coaches trust him, I trust them.

Temple is bringing in championship-level coaches not only in Keeler (who won national titles at Delaware and Sam Houston) but the offensive coordinator at Montana State and his OL coach.

Certainly better than the coaches we’ve had the last three years with the possible exceptions of Chris Wiesehan (OL), Tyree Foreman (RB) and Adam Schierer (ST). Those were objectively good coaches who got overruled by incompetent ones.

Keeler is bringing in his own guys and that’s exciting.

It’s also exciting that he’s bringing in P4 guys who were recruited at a high level but stuck behind better talent. They have a chip on their shoulder that will be on display game days.

They might not be able to win there but they can certainly win here.

We’ll always have 2015 and 2016 but getting back there isn’t realistic in the current environment. Getting back to respectability certainly is and that’s something we haven’t seen since 2019.

After 1-6, 3-9, 3-9, 3-9 and 3-9 it’s about damn time.

Monday: A Deep Dive Into Temple’s New Offense

01.02.25
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K.C. Keeler: Trust, but verify

K.C. Keeler’s New Year’s Eve message to Temple fans.

If you had to create a perfect Temple football coach in a petri dish, you would be hard pressed getting the DNA to replicate a K.C. Keeler.

Born North of Philadelphia, had success both East and South of Philadelphia with other teams, intimately familiar with the team in the middle who gave him his only loss in the 1979 season.

Hell, he wanted to go to Temple but head coach Wayne Hardin ran out of scholarships.

Not hard to trust K.C. Keeler as my football coach for the next few years.

That said, as Ronald Reagan might say of the Soviet Union when it made a nuclear weapons sweetheart deal with the U.S., “trust but verify.”

K.C. Keeler said his goal was to be in a bowl game immediately. If so, he needs to upgrade the roster via the transfer portal with about 20 solid FBS/FCS players right now.

For a guy who got a new job in December, he’s been pretty slow to make major moves on the coaching offensive side of the football or the transfer portal.

There are a couple of clues about the verify part.

Keeler hasn’t announced a new offensive coordinator and that might be because one of the leading candidates, a running backs’ coach from Penn State, is currently otherwise occupied. If so, I’m more than willing to wait.

The transfer portal is another story.

Temple has been slow to pull the trigger. Maybe too slow.

Kinda hoping that Al Golden’s first national title was with Temple but, that being impossible, I am literally betting on him to take it all as ND’s DC and I made that bet 14 days ago.

Watching Notre Dame win its quarterfinal game on Thursday night against Georgia, 23-10, it was abundantly clear they did it on the backs of two transfer portal acquisitions: 1) Duke’s Riley Leonard and 2) Marshall’s Jayden Harrison.

Temple fans are all too familiar with Leonard, who led Duke to a 30-0 win over Temple in Stan Drayton’s first game.

Notre Dame went out and got a big-time P4 quarterback in Leonard.

Temple can’t do that but certainly a big-time FCS quarterback is within reach. In my humble opinion, I can ride or die with Evan Simon who has shown he is Temple tough. I can’t depend on either Forrest Brock or Tyler Douglas to be a capable AAC backup. Keeler has to show me he can either convince the Sam Houston starting quarterback to come here to compete for the job with Simon or get me a star-level FCS quarterback to do the same.

I love Evan Simon as my quarterback and I’m sure once Keeler sees him throw a few balls in practice he will feel the same way. The film is the film. All K.C. has to do is to watch the entire Utah State game. If Simon played against UConn, the Owls win by at least two touchdowns. I will never change my mind about that. Simon has been quoted as saying he loves Temple.

(For the record, Simon wins the job in my mind.)

Harrison was the No. 1 kickoff returner in the country for Marshall last year and ended up at ND as a portal transfer. His return the house to open the second half was maybe the key play in a national quarterfinal game. Temple hasn’t had a good kickoff returner since Isaiah Wright was named AAC’s Special Teams’ Player of the Year in 2018.

Does Keeler have to get me the No. 1 FBS kickoff returner in the country?

Hell no.

I’ll take the top FCS kickoff returner. I’ll take the top Division II kickoff returner.

Just don’t give me another JUCO like Stan Drayton has done.

The trust the level with a guy who has done it at Rowan, Delaware and Sam Houston State is off the charts.

The verify level will come with what we see in the next couple of weeks.

Hoping it’s a nuclear-type jawn like Reagan had with Gorbachev but as always in this space we will be honest with what we see.

12.30.24
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What Temple can take from Navy’s win

If Temple can keep a lot of players like Khalil Poteat, it should be OK next season.

About a year and a month ago, Temple got a terrific game from a quarterback and a linebacker and earned a 32-18 win over Navy.

A couple of days ago Navy completed a 10-win season with a win over an Oklahoma team that opened this season by beating Temple, 51-3.

The AAC’s image improved this bowl season. Now it’s time for Temple to contribute to that profile.

If anything, the juxtaposition shows how much fortunes can change in one year.

That’s because the transfer portal system both giveth and taketh away. The schools who decide to build their rosters with high school players will be left behind by the other schools who judiciously scour the portal to upgrade their rosters with 20 or so new players who can compete for starting spots.

So far, Temple head coach K.C. Keeler has talked about building a team through high school players and, as the lady on the video said, “ain’t nobody got time for that.”

Me when I heard K.C. wants to build his roster with high school players.

For now, let’s hope that is all that it is–talk.

However, if Keeler adds a couple of key players from, say, Sam Houston, a few all-star type players from FCS ranks and as many disaffected really good players from P4 schools who can’t get on the field there that’s the formula to do what Navy did–go from three wins (and dominated by a three-win team)–to, if not 10, then eight or nine wins.

Ironically, Navy got better not from an influx of new players but from being able to retain its roster. Temple can do the same but still needs to keep the good players like quarterback Evan Simon and a few others.

On the flip side, the Owls need to upgrade their offensive line with solid players from the portal (be it FCS, Sam Houston or P4) so Simon doesn’t spend next year running for his life.

That’s one of the reasons why the old staff got fired. They relied too much on JUCOs on the offensive line. The one player who fit the profile of the kind of guy they should target, a South Carolina transfer starter, was their most valuable offensive lineman. Really, the only good one.

So Keeler knows what he has to do. Keep a solid chunk of the current roster and upgrade with the top end of the 6,000 or so players who won’t find a home. He already has shown the chops for being able to coach them up.

First, he has to get them to coach them and we’ll be keeping an eye on those developments over the next four or so weeks.