Tag Archives: Temple football

03.24.16
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Happy Birthday, Coach Hardin

 

Very classy tribute from Temple football video guys.

As an undergrad at Temple, Wayne Hardin was the only head football coach I ever knew at my school. As a result, winning was the only thing I ever knew. From the time I entered Temple to the time I graduated, Temple had four-straight winning seasons.
The Owls have not accomplished that feat since.

hardin

Joe Mesko (left), Hardin’s first TU captain, shakes hands with Roger Staubach, Hardin’s last Navy captain, last night  with coach and Steve Conjar in between.

Now that coach Hardin turned 90 yesterday, a group of his former players both at Temple and Navy honored him with a dinner last night in Florida, and it was a fitting tribute because they got to tell him again how much he meant to them and that was important.

I got to know coach Hardin as a reporter for the Temple News. Al Shrier, the then Sports Information Director, arranged for me an interview when I was a junior who was given the football beat.

To me, it was like getting to interview The Wizard of Oz.

One of the questions I asked him was about fun and football.

“The only fun in football is winning,” Hardin said.

That’s pretty much the way I felt then and my entire life and pretty much why I take losing so hard.

People talk about Bill Belichick’s coaching tree but, in reality, Belichick is one of the small branches on Hardin’s tree. Belichick’s dad, Steve Belichick, was a longtime scout and assistant for Hardin at Navy. When Hardin was head coach there, Belichick was just a kid. Yet Belichick tagged along at Navy practices and soaked up as much as he could.

Hardin was noted for outsmarting other coaches not only with everyday schemes but with trick plays and a keen eye on exploiting opponents’ weaknesses.

Patriots quick kicks, unique punt and field-goal rushes, certain trick plays — Belichick credits Hardin for many of them.

This from Comcast New England on Temple’s Garden State Bowl win:
“In 1979, when the Owls took on heavily-favored Cal in the Garden State Bowl at Giants Stadium, Belichick was in attendance. The Giants special-teams coach at the time, Belichick sat with then Giants assistant Ernie Adams, who now works alongside Belichick as the football research director for the Patriots. The pair of young and talented football minds were completely baffled as they watched Hardin toy with Cal’s linebackers, who were taught to read the guards in front of them.

“Ernie and I were sitting up there watching the game, and on the first series of plays, one guard pulled deep, the other guard pulled short,” Belichick said. “And they just folded around to get the linebacker, but they pulled. And the two inside linebackers ran into each other. I looked at Ernie, and he looked at me . . .”

Did Temple just screw that up, they wondered?

“Four or five plays later, same thing. The two linebackers,” Belichick clapped his hands together loudly, imitating the collision, “because they’re standing right next to each other. They went right into each other. [Temple ran] straight down to the safety for, like, 20 yards. They must’ve run that play six or seven times and it was 20 yards every time . . . At the time, I’d never seen that before.”

The result was the first bowl win in Temple history and a wide-eyed and impressed New York Giants’ assistant coach named Belichick.

Later, after graduating from Temple, I covered Hardin’s teams for Calkins Newspapers. While in the press box in State College, Hardin was driving Penn State head coach Joe Paterno crazy with similar schemes and play calls and Temple took a lead late into the third quarter against the heavily favored Nittany Lions. The Owls had several close calls before that game and it was only because Hardin was able to close the talent gap against the Nits with his brilliant mind. John Kunda, the long-time sports editor of the Allentown Morning Call, broke the silence in the press box.

tree

Bill Belichick is from the Hardin tree, but coach Hardin is from the Amos Alonzo Stagg tree. Must be a Redwood.

“Hardin’s outcoaching Joe again,” Kunda said.

The press box erupted into laughter, but it was a laugh of respect. I just sat there beaming with pride in the knowledge that the smartest guy on the field every Saturday was coaching my team and everybody in the room acknowledged something I already knew.

Fortunately, coach Hardin was there last year to see the Owls finally get that monkey off their back. Happy birthday, coach Hardin, and many more healthy and happy ones.

One thing I’m sure both the Navy and Temple guys agreed on last night were two words:

Beat Army.

Saturday: We’re Talkin’ Practice

03.22.16
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Promise Keepers

Matt Rhule talks assistants and Logan Marchi in this video among other topics.

Chances are former Colorado head football coach Bill McCartney will not be looking to recruit Matt Rhule to the religion he founded called Promise Keepers.

One of the tenants of that religion is the “three strikes and you are out” rule, meaning three promises broken, find another religion.

Rhule already is oh-for-two in the Temple football promise department but many think—this writer included—that he has a very good chance of making good on both promises this year.

Matt Rhule, Temple football,

Matt Rhule’s promise of giving Nick Sharga the ball may be no BS this season.

The first promise came a few days after he was hired as Temple head coach in December of 2012. Speaking to a “crowd” of about 4,500 at a basketball game, Rhule promised that he would “win league championships at Temple.” Close, but an AAC East trophy does not count.

The second promise came before a smaller group of people, those holding notepads and tape recorders before Temple’s game with UConn. Talking about fullback Nick Sharga, he went on and on praising the guy and then said, “we are going to give him the ball some time this year, I promise you that.”

UConn came and went and no Sharga carries, as did the Houston game and the bowl game.

No worries because one of the most interesting items coming out of an early spring practice was that Rhule stated that Sharga will be a full-time fullback this fall. That is great news for a couple of reasons. On several of Jahad Thomas’ 17 touchdown runs, there is clear evidence of Thomas following a terrific lead block by Sharga. Thomas will be the first to tell you that Sharga’s blocks helped make the running game go. So Thomas or Jager Gardner or Ryquell Armstead or David Hood following a road-grader like Sharga through the hole means the running game will be going in the right direction this season.

The second great news part of this is that the defensive coaches must have confidence in the returning linebackers, single-digit guys like Stephaun Marshall and Avery Williams and Jared Alwan and redshirt freshman Chap Russell are coming along quite nicely. Sharga played much of last spring at linebacker and Temple football alum will tell you he was the second-most impressive linebacker on the team, behind only Tyler Matakevich.

New run game coordinator George DeLeone has been around the block to know the effectiveness of the fullback kick-out block in a team’s overall run game, so maybe when Rhule forgets the promise to give Sharga the ball, DeLeone will remind him with a friendly nudge.

Who knows? Maybe keeping the second promise at least a couple of times will make  the first promise just a tad easier to attain.

Tomorrow: Thoughts On The One and Only Doc Chodoff

03.20.16
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Long-Term Expectations

The only sad coincidence on Saturday was that the day after one season ended at Temple, a new one begins. Last day of basketball came the day before Temple football players strapped on the pads and, if the next 10 years are as productive for the university in football as the last 10 were in basketball, this will be one happy football camper. I don’t buy the argument that there should be different standards for Temple football than basketball. Both should be competing for and winning league titles.

jetpackster

Temple fans will be putting  on jetpacks if the football team can win a regular-season AAC title this year like the hoopsters did.

Largely, basketball has done that. By the standards set by head coach Fran Dunphy, this is what should happen in football for the next 10 years:

Eight bowl games

Arguably, it’s harder to get into the NCAA Tournament because there are 346 eligible teams for the tournament and only 68 make it. However, I will take being one of the 80 being selected to a bowl despite the fact that there are only 126 bowl-eligible teams. That would be both a realistic and positive result, given the fact that the Owls only made three bowls in the last 37 years.

Two bowl wins

Dunphy gets a lot of criticism for this but, since this regime is already 0-1 in a bowl, two bowl wins in the next seven would be OK with me.

Three league titles earned in the postseason

This would be getting to the AAC title game and winning, something Dunphy did three years in a row in the A10. Three in 10 years is not an unreasonable expectation.

Two league regular-season titles

Something like the Owls did this year in basketball (and one year in the A10), post the best league regular-season record in years that they did not win in the playoffs, would also be acceptable and realistic.

Those 10 years would put Temple on the football map and, if the Owls accomplish all of the above goals, I will start a GoFundMe.com to fund both a Jetpack and a statue for Matt Rhule. Or maybe a statue of Matt Rhule wearing a Jetpack. Hold off those contributions until 2026, though, or about the opening day of the new stadium.

Tuesday: More Immediate Expectations

03.17.16
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If Only Football Could Have This Day

bracket

 

buster

Today is the best day of the sports calendar and it’s not because of St. Patrick’s Day, although it happens to fall on that day this year.

To me, while I’ve always been more of a fan of NCAA football than NCAA basketball, I have to admire what that sport has done to captivate the national sports public for a whole month. Today is the one day of the year when your favorite basketball team has a chance, no matter how small, of winning it all. In basketball, with runs by teams like Butler, George Mason and LaSalle in recent years, that kind of hope exists.

It would be nice if football had the same thing.

Football can never duplicate that because it does not want to but, just once, I’d like to see them try. It’s gotten far too complicated with far-flung conferences that make zero geographical sense, but this is how it can be done.

1) Have a 64-team field

Base the seeding on the regular-season outcome so, say, Alabama opens at home with Idaho. Before you say it would be a bloodbath, check out some of the teams Alabama played in its non-conference schedule over the last five years.

2) Play a Limited Regular Season Schedule

Determine how many weekends a regular-season would take, with byes, then base the post-season off of it. If it’s an eight-game season, the 2015 Temple Owls would have had a high seed based on a 7-1 record that included a four-point loss to the then No. 9 team.  Maintain current rivalries, like Ohio State-Michigan, Army-Navy, Alabama-Auburn, Texas-Oklahoma, but ditch the Stony Brook-Temple and Rutgers-Howard type games, which really clog up the college football season and nobody really wants to see.

3) Create November-Dec. Madness

Pair the field down to 32 after the first week of the playoffs, 16 the third, eight the fourth and four the fifth. Hold the Final Four in January. No byes.

4) Wake Up

It was a good dream while it lasted but face facts. We college football fans will never have what college basketball fans have this one day of the year—the audacity of hope, and that’s a powerful drug.

At least we will always have tailgating.

 

03.15.16
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Football Weather On First Practice Day

 

Since all of the Temple football practices are closed this spring, probably the best way to add an extra layer of secrecy to the whole deal is to hold the first day of spring practice during a time when the entire campus is distracted by March Madness.

It was a rainy day, but the long-term forecast is for a brighter few weeks ahead right until the spring game on April 16. Hopefully, that carries over to the field as well.

thomascatch

P.J. to Jahad: Explosive downfield plays in the passing game. 

Even though the football’s official slogan is “Unfinished Business” another key word for spring practice is progression. Is this the year P.J. Walker makes the natural progression from freshman sensation to sophomore slump to junior game manager to major impact player?

I think so.

P.J. had a very similar season to his freshman year (20 touchdowns, 8 interceptions, 9 games) to his junior year (19,8,14) and I look for him to drive those numbers up to 25 (or more) touchdowns. The more important number for P.J. though is to get to double-digits again as a winning quarterback and help the team lift those heavy post-season trophies, including a bowl one.

Hopefully, the Owls learned from a “fun” approach to the bowl game and will adjust that itinerary  when the time comes to go bowling. While the Owls played air hockey, beach volleyball and bowling (in an alley), the only bowling Toledo seemed concerned about was between the white lines on game night. Even though the Toledo staff was gutted by the departure of Matt Campbell to Iowa State, there were enough holdovers who learned by experience that was the quickest route to winning was detouring around the fun and focusing on a businesslike approach.

averee

Averee Robinson, a two-time Pennsylvania large school state champion heavyweight wrestler, would be a nightmare for opposing centers if he were allowed to play nose guard.

Hopefully, the Owls will show a similar a progression from bowl one to bowl two as well.

On defense, do the Owls  go to a 5-2 defense or do they have personnel better suited or a 3-4 (Averee Robinson playing the nose flanked by Sharif Finch and Praise Martin Oquike with four starting linebackers in Nick Sharga, Jared Alwan, Stephaun Marshall and Avery Williams)?

A couple of things to look for: Do the Owls make a bold move, switching Jahad Thomas from tailback to the slot and making room for Jager Gardner and Ryquell Armstead at the tailback position or do they stick with the status quo? An argument can be made for either move, but Thomas would definitely add an element of explosiveness to the downfield passing game that did not exist last year, even with Robby Anderson. It looked to me that Anderson lost a step in his return and the Owls could use a guy, like Jalen Fitzpatrick, who could run under a long bomb and stretch the field for a quick six from time to time.

Armstead and Gardner would be an interesting tailback battle. Numbers do not lie. In Gardner’s final high school season, he gained 2,776 yards on 266 carries with 36 touchdowns in just 11 games vs. Armstead’s 1,488 yards and 18 touchdowns in 12 games on 219 carries in his final high school year.

Giving P.J. those kind of weapons, in addition to tight ends Colin Thompson and Kip Patton, could finish the offensive progression this team started to make a year ago and take P.J. from game manager to game buster.

03.12.16
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Why The Names Ritrovato and Wilson Are Important

few

Nick Sharga had Jahad Thomas’ back all season.

Judging from Temple opponents’ websites—and one Rutgers’ one—the conventional wisdom acceptable as gospel elsewhere is that “Temple has lost everyone and will return to being bad” in the 2016 season.

The pack of so-and-so fans nods their collective heads as if the OP has some inside knowledge of Temple football.

Those of us who are a little closer to the program, purchase season tickets, watch every minute of every game know better. Part of that more plausible narrative is that, while the Owls lose a great linebacker like Tyler Matakevich, they have three potential very-good-to-next-level linebackers returning in single-digit players Avery Williams (2), Nick Sharga (4) and Stephaun Marshall (6).

Think about that for a minute. Temple handed out nine single-digit numbers as voted by  their teammates as the nine toughest guys in the 105-man program and three of those guys are not only returning, but also play the same position—linebacker. (We know Jahad Thomas and Sean Chandler also are among the returning single-digit players, too.)

Yes, Temple will miss Tyler but nowhere near as much as the Temple haters think.

That’s why it is important, although not absolutely vital, that the “Unsung Hero” of last year’s team, Sharga, gets to move to his primary position, which is linebacker. To do that, Temple will be looking closely at two names who can play fullback, Rob Ritrovato and Taiyir Wilson.

The interesting thing about Ritrovato was that the staff had confidence enough to play the 6-0, 228-pounder against Penn State. That’s when he suffered a season-ending injury. The other player listed as a fullback is Wilson, a mid-year enrollee from Fork Union (Va.), who is 6-2, 245.  He played fullback at Perkiomen Valley prior to that.

If either of them show they can lead block for tailbacks like Sharga did, the Owls will have the luxury of moving Sharga over to the other side of the ball where he obviously has a nose for it.

03.10.16
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Ash Saturday At Temple Clinic

clinic
If Temple football really has a rival, it is not Penn State, Villanova or UConn or Cincinnati but Rutgers.
A rivalry needs really three ingredients for the main course:

Geography
Hatred
Competitive History

chumpions

Congrats and good luck to the basketball team.

Only for Rutgers can you place an emphatic checkmark next to those categories. When Temple had good football coaches (Wayne Hardin and Bruce Arians) and a continuing series with the Scarlet Knights, those coaches usually took care of business. When Temple went through a Berndt and Dickerson Dark Age, Rutgers had the advantage. Heck, even Bobby Wallace won four in a row against the Scarlet Knights.

The schools should be playing every single year. Piscataway is a short drive or Temple fans and the Linc is a short drive for RU fans. It makes too much sense. Neither Rutgers nor Temple should be playing Howard or Stony Brook.
The recent controversy is inviting a hated rival, Rutgers, to the Temple coaches’ clinic on April 2. Plenty of Temple fans seem to be against the idea, but I think it is much ado about nothing because the representative of the hated rival, new head coach Chris Ash, knows nothing about the hate.

In fact, until 2020—the next Temple vs. Rutgers game—you could say he is a friend. These coaching clinics are nothing more than an exchange of ideas and, if Ash has a good idea that Temple can “borrow” then his presence will be worthwhile. The same can be said for Matt Rhule, George DeLeone or any of the other guest speakers.
Maybe someone will come up to an alternative to the “dog stare” offense and, if the Owls can adopt that, it will save their fans a lot of angst this fall.

No news will come out of this clinic, not matter how much TU fans might be hoping for a Howard-Stony Brook game that would make an early renewal of the TU-RU rivalry possible this season. The brainstorming should be beneficial to all parties.

Saturday: Fullback Options That Would Allow Sharga to play LB

03.08.16
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Six Months To Defend Triple Option

army

How ND blew up the Army triple option.

Stopping the triple option is all in the timing.

This year, unlike 2014, the Temple football team has all the time in the world to prepare for Army’s confounding—but not as confounding as Navy’s was—triple option. The Owls have six full months before the opener with Army, and they should probably be setting aside some practice time each day to get the reads down.

Before you say “it’s just Army” please note that the Cadets gave Penn State all it could handle a year ago before falling, 20-14. Temple should always take the approach that it is not too good to lose to anyone and not too bad to beat anyone.

breaking

Scheduling is breaking for the Owls to go 7-0 into the USF game, if they  can win at PSU.

Army is just one part of the schedule that sets up beautifully for the Owls because, if you are going to play a triple option team, opening day is the best week to play one.

The Owls failed miserably in a 31-24 loss to Navy in 2014 because of a number of reasons. It was the second game of the season and they had only one week to prepare for the triple option after the high of going down to Vanderbilt and coming away with a 37-7 win over an SEC team. (Ohio State “held” Navy to just 17 in the opener the week before, admittedly with far better talent than the Owls.)

The triple option is designed to take advantage of defenses by allowing the quarterback to make his reads during the play, not before. That means the defense is rarely in position to make the play and any pre-snap reads are useless.

The Owls should be mentally prepared to not get to down when Army gets its yards. The key is limiting big plays and forcing turnovers. That’s one of the reasons why quick penetration against this kind of offense (the kind a 5-2 might afford) could cause bad reads and turnovers. The Owls also have the kind of speed on the back end of their defense that will probably help them from giving up big plays.

Blitzing would be a bad idea because a 5-2 could provide plenty of penetration without giving up numbers. Blitzing teams usually run past their assignments in a triple option. Staying home and keeping contain is the way to stop the triple option.

The “A” and “B” gap is the key to stopping the triple option. The first read the QB makes is to the A gap fullback and if, say, nose guard Averee Robinson blows up the center, the “B” gap option is either the QB going outside or pitching to the trailing halfback. A Sharif Finch honing in on the QB means that stopping the pitchman falls to a DT like Michael Dogbe or the new guys, Karamo Dioubate or Greg Webb. There is always single-digit linebackers like Avery Williams (2) or Stephaun Marshall (6) coming up on support.

Obviously, a savvy coordinator like Phil Snow knows all of this so the extra time he has to work on it should make for a better outcome than the week he had to prepare for the 31-24 loss to Navy.

Thursday: Ash Wednesday at Matt Rhule Football Camp

03.06.16
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The Curious Saquon Barkley Narrative

barkley

If the Owls play a 5-2 defense, Averee Robinson will blow up the PSU center often enough to allow Praise Martin-Oquike, Greg Webb and Karamo Dioubate and company to get through and tackle the QB before he can even hand off to Saquon Barkley.

According a mental health website, the seven stages of grief can be paired down to three—disbelief, acceptance and rationalization.

When it comes to Penn State’s loss to Temple last September, we’ve already seen one and two but only now are we seeing number three. On several message boards, and in Philly.com under the name Ruben Amaro, Penn State fans have appeared and said “if Saquon Barkley played against Temple, we would have won.”

Huh?

That narrative is a reach, even for Penn State fans. The Nits lost by 17 and by 27-0 over the last three quarters. Barkley did play and got one yard on one carry. How does that extrapolate out to 100 yards on 25 more carries? The only numbers we have against Temple is that had Barkley got the 25 carries Penn State fans wanted him to get, he would have finished with 25 yards, and maybe Penn State would never have scored its only touchdown (a run by Akeel Lynch). Those are hard numbers, not the “gut” of some Penn State fans talking.

Let’s face it, Penn State losing to Temple was a bitter pill to swallow for these fans and they might have to hold their nose and down the same medicine in State College on Sept. 17.

The thought process there—not here—is that Temple is “losing everybody” and that Barkley and the returning Penn Staters will roll over the Owls. They do not know that Temple ran in two entire defensive units in the second half of the season, with many of the freshman, sophomore and junior backups playing roughly the same amount of time as the senior starters.

The thinking here is that Penn State is going to be surprised by Temple’s ability to stop the run and put the same clamps down on Christian Hackenberg’s successor that they did to Hackenberg himself. Offensively, P.J. Walker and Jahad Thomas—who had 134 more yards than Barkley in the Sept. 5 game—should put even more than 27 on the board this time.

No doubt Temple will be getting points on 9/17 and I’ll be flying to Vegas and putting my money down on the Owls, even if it is as little as two or three. Temple knows Barkley is good, but it also knows his one carry wasn’t the reason the Owls won. A large segment of the PSU fan base won’t admit that now, but they will find out in a few months that narrative is faulty, too.

Ignorance isn’t a stage of grief but, in this case, it should be.

Tuesday: Six months to practice against a triple option

03.04.16
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Tennessee Tech’s Season Could Provide Useful Clues

field

Normally, the only football team Temple fans follow in Tennessee is conference rival Memphis.

Now, there are at least a couple of good reasons to follow another one: Tennessee Tech and it is not strictly because at least two former high-profile Temple football assistants are on the staff, and one is head coach Marcus Satterfield.

There are a couple of interesting subplots involved here because Satterfield was a wide-open spread guy who wanted to put five wide receivers on the field every time he could. Head coach Matt Rhule reined him in with a more conventional approach this season, emphasizing the run game. I always had that feeling that Satterfield would send five wides out every time Rhule would turn his back to talk to the defense but, fortunately, that didn’t happen.

Much.

If Satterfield spreads the ball all over the place for TT, we will know that there was a basic difference in offensive philosophy between Rhule and his former coordinator. Since the TT games are not on TV, we will try to judge that by YouTube. Maybe the Golden Eagles will have the “Dog Stare” offense. Geez, I hope Temple streamlines that out of the playbook.

Another subplot is the appearance of Tyree Foreman as running backs coach for Satterfield. Foreman and Temple had a parting of the ways two years ago and the rumor was that Rhule fired him. Now he’s back with Satterfield, who obviously had a difference of opinion.

We will find out a lot about what happened at Temple the last couple of years by looking at the way TT runs things. Either way, good luck to Marcus in whatever he does. The feeling here is that, for Temple at least, the addition by subtraction will be noticeable.

Sunday: The Curious Saquon Barkley Narrative

Tuesday: The Triple Option

Thursday: Ash Wednesday at Matt Rhule Camp

Saturday: Possible Fullback Replacements for Nick Sharga