Click on the photo to see five trick plays that could help get Temple a Halloween treat.
5 Owl Tricks That Could Lead to a Treat
Tag Archives: Temple football
James Gillory’s USA Today Sports Photo Essay
Five Saturday Games of Interest to Owl Fans
If you have a weak stomach, please fast forward through the first 1:25 of this video. Otherwise, watch for historical perspective.
This is a weekend for Temple football fans to put their feet up on the couch and keep the remote and popcorn at arm’s length. Even though the Owls are not on TV this Saturday, there is plenty of college football to take in today and a lot of them have at least small implications for the Owls. The beauty of watching these games is the knowledge that if Temple takes care of business, none o these games will have significant impact on the possible rewards coming down the road.
Hopefully, the Owls will wear the distinctive T or spelled out TEMPLE against ND. One being the school brand and two being the long-time program brand.
- Penn State at Maryland, 3:30, ESPN
As hard as it might be for some Temple fans to digest, a Penn State team that finishes with only two or three losses will benefit the Owls’ strength of schedule ranking greatly. In a system that is rigged to keep Group of Five teams out of the four-team playoff, a 27-10 Temple win over a 9-2 Big 10 team carries a lot more weight than a 6-6 Big 10 team so root for the Lions here.
- SMU at South Florida, 4 p.m., ESPN News
Only interesting in that South Florida is loaded with young players and seems to be playing its best ball of the season now and the Owls have to travel to South Florida later in the season. Both teams have bad losses, with USF being hammered by Maryland, 35-17, and SMU falling to James Madison, 48-45.
- Houston at Central Florida, Noon, ESPN News
Even though a strong argument can be made that keeping all three AAC teams unbeaten deep into the season will help Temple’s chances of a playoff later on, the immediate goal for the Owls would be to keep inching up in the Top 20 and a Houston loss, however unlikely, would help. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like UCF has the firepower to pull that off.
I usually do not like watching games online, but this Toledo at UMass game (3 p.m.) is an exception. Go Minutemen.
- Tulane at Navy, 1 p.m., CBS Sports Network
This could get ugly real fast, but I would root for Navy here. Love to see the Owls face Navy and not Houston or Memphis in the Dec. 5 title game for obvious reasons. One, they already play Memphis in the regular season. Two, they played Navy so poorly a year ago they probably want to get that bad tast out of their mouth in the title game. Three, Navy has an arguably bigger game (Army) the next week in the same stadium. Plus, Houston has recruited better talent across the board than Navy.
- Connecticut at Cincinnati, 4 p.m., CBS Sports Network,
UConn is another interesting opponent down the road. It beat UCF by a wider margin than Temple did, but followed that up by laying an egg (28-20) at home to USF the next week. Plus, the Owls know they have to go out and recruit a quarterback to compete with Cincy redshirt freshman Hayden Moore down the road after P.J. Walker leaves. Hopefully, they already have that kid in the fold with Montel Aaron.
Tomorrow: ECU-TU Photo Essay
Monday: Halloween Tricks
ESPN: Temple Has No Chance of Beating Notre Dame
Kickout blocks like Nick Sharga’s on Jahad Thomas’ first TD are something we’ve been talking about for two years on this site. Great to see the Owls adopt those principles on a regular basis this season.
Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, I have heard the names Danny Kanell and Joey Galloway before but they were always no more than background noise until last night.
Then they had to open their mouths after what might not have been the biggest win in Temple football history but the biggest one for a lot of us who have followed the program for the last 30 plus years. Temple 24, East Carolina 14.
One of the ESPN hosts asked Kanell what chance Temple had of beating Notre Dame next week.
“Zero chance,” Kanell said.
“Yeah, no chance,” Galloway said.
Another slow start, but a wonderful finish for the Owls and Jahad Thomas.
Then more background noise, blah, blah, blah.
Galloway and Kanell are just two people, but they were the immediate face of ESPN after the first time Temple went 7-0, so you can pretty much say ESPN says the Owls have no chance.
Temple has a chance to beat Notre Dame. I cannot put a number on it, but it’s certainly not zero and it is certainly not “no chance.” Let’s put it this way: If Memphis has a chance at beating Ole Miss, Temple has a chance of beating Notre Dame. Ole Miss is every bit as good as Notre Dame, maybe better. Temple is every bit as good as Memphis, maybe better. Oh what? Memphis did beat Ole Miss?
As Emily Latilla might say, “Never mind.”
The Owls were pretty much who we thought they were last night—an incredibly resilient team that fights hard through slow starts and answers the bell at crunch time. They have a lot of interesting weapons and two players on offense, Robby Anderson and Jahad Thomas, who are as good at their positions as anyone in the country and that includes Notre Dame. P.J. Walker can be my quarterback any day of the week and most nights. They have a defense that will shut people down, and often out, for long stretches of any game.
They are now 7-0 for the first time in their history and the first thing ESPN did was not praise them, but bury them.
Temple will show up in eight days to play Notre Dame and to say the atmosphere will be electric is really understating the energy factor. It’ll be more nuclear than electric. Let what happens on the field determine who has a chance to do what, not a couple of clowns in a studio.
Game Day: Some Deep Galactic Thoughts
Some crazy stars and asteroids are aligning soon, and we’re not really sure what they mean, if anything, about the outcome to tonight’s Temple at ECU game.
What I have learned on the ABC Evening News with David Muir is that an Asteroid is coming within close proximity of the Earth on Halloween Night. Since I have purchased one of those $20 Millionaire lotto raffle tickets drawn that night, it would be my luck to win a million at 7 p.m. and have the earth smashed into by an Asteroid at, oh, about 11:30 p.m.
If, however, a 7-0 Temple team were to beat a 6-1 Notre Dame team five minutes earlier, I could not have picked a better way to go–so maybe that Asteroid means the Owls will beat the Pirates tonight. Omen quotient: Temple win.
Fans watching the game on ESPN2 tonight will be treated to live cuts to Temple fans cheering on the Owls at Shorty’s Flatiron Bar in NYC.
Some other galactic omens:
- Last year, East Carolina was unbeaten and ranked No. 21 coming into Philadelphia to play Temple and lost to the 4-3 Owls. Tonight, Temple is unbeaten, ranked No. 22 and playing a 4-3 team in Greenville. Hopefully, that doesn’t mean history repeats itself for the 4-3 and unbeaten squads. Not even Bill O’Reilly can spin this one positively. Omen quotient: Temple loss.
- Both teams have won a game they’d like to do over: Temple beating UMass, 25-23, and East Carolina beating Towson, 28-20. UMass is bad, but it’s 10x better than Towson. Omen quotient: Temple win.
- Last trip to North Carolina: Temple’s 37-3 win at Charlotte looks better in light of Charlotte extending Old Dominion to a 37-34 game last week. A lot of projections have Old Dominion in a bowl game. Omen quotient: Temple win.
- ESPN is going to send a film crew to New York City to shoot a group of Temple fans watching the game at Shorty’s Flatiron, 66 Madison Avenue, Manhattan. ESPN is owned by the same company that owns ABC, Disney. ABC is doing the Temple vs. Notre Dame game primetime in nine nights. There is nothing more this Mickey Mouse operation (and we say that positively) would like than to be shooting shots of screaming happy Owl fans after Temple touchdowns. Omen quotient: Temple win.
- Matt Rhule channeled his inner Joe Maddon before the game: “As Joe Maddon says, if the pleasure outweighs the pressure, you’re good. I don’t want the pressure to be too much.” The Cubs got swept, 4-0. Much more interested in what Terry Collins had to say. Omen quotient: Temple loss.
Joe Maddon
- Jahad Thomas mentioned two words that have never been uttered by a Temple player before: “National championship” in response to a question from Mike Kern about what would constitute notable accomplishments. “A conference championship, an undefeated season, a national championship—things of that nature,” Thomas said. Well, we were just hoping the Owls weren’t looking ahead to Notre Dame, let alone nine games down the road. Omen quotient: Temple loss.
Hopefully, just an innocent remark and not bad Karma but we won’t find that out until around 10:30. Meanwhile, keep an eye on the sky.
Tomorrow: Game Analysis
5 Keys That Could Unlock a Big Win at ECU
Matt Rhule has some good ideas on getting his team to relax.
The odds makers who reside in Las Vegas have made East Carolina University a favorite over the visiting Temple Owls (tomorrow night, 7 p.m., ESPN2) and the reasons are mostly because Temple (6-0) is coming off a short week with a big game coming up in Notre Dame and the Pirates are a very good home team. There are a couple of things wrong with that thinking, though. ECU (4-3) is also coming off a short week and, while it is a good home team, Temple showed enough grit to survive a similar road test at Cincinnati earlier this season. Also, the Owls are wise enough to know that Notre Dame, while big, is nowhere near as important as the ECU game is to them. The matchups also seem to be in Temple’s favor as ECU is weak against the run and Temple has proven to be a formidable rushing team. The game is played on the field, though, not in Las Vegas, and if the Owls do these five things, they should be just fine.
- Commit to the Run
ECU gives up 188 yards per game on the ground. The Owls have not seen that kind of porous run-stopping since UMass. Mark Whipple had a good game plan against the Owls, stacking the box with eight. Instead of check-mating that with two tight ends and a fullback, the Owls played into Whipple’s hands by throwing the ball 48 times. They got away from their identity and threw a couple of costly picks that allowed an inferior team to hang around for three hours. They must stay within themselves, throwing the ball 20-30 times. If they have to, they must put more helmets on ECU helmets and knock them back off the ball.
- Rush the Passer
The Pirates employ two quarterbacks, one a passer and one a runner. The Owls need to blitz the passer and contain their lanes on the runner. James Summers (No. 11) is the runner. Fellow junior Blake Kemp is the passer. Kemp has a problem with turnovers and, if the Owls treat him with the same respect they treated Christian Hackenberg with (none), they should be able to force a couple of turnovers. The old saying in football is that when you have two quarterbacks you have none and the Owls need to show why that saying is true.
- Block a Punt
This was Sam Benjamin’s specialty last season. No. 10 blocked two punts in the UCF game a year ago and one in the Charlotte game this season. Now, Adonis Jennings has joined the punt-blocking party, using his length and athleticism to block a punt against UCF last week. With Benjamin coming from the side and Jennings from the middle, blocking a punt would take pressure off a return game which has been shaky the last couple of weeks.
- Play-Action Passing
When P.J. Walker throws 20-30 passes (and not the 48 he threw against UMass), the Owls can have an explosive downfield passing game. They must rip the “out” pattern—the one that went for a Pick 6 against UCF—out of the playbook, though. Once they get Jahad Thomas going in the run game, faking it to Thomas should find receivers like Jennings, Robby Anderson, Ventell Bryant and John Christopher finding open seams over the middle.
- Protect the Ball
Easy to say, hard to do, but head coach Matt Rhule hit on it in his Tuesday press conference when he said the ball is going to come free on things like a bad snap or bad bounce but just fall on it and do not try to pick it up. Falling on it allows the offense—with its impressive arsenal of offensive weapons—to live another day. If the Owls protect the ball, they will likely live a day at 7-0—which would be their first-ever day with that record.
As Rhule says, just go play.
The Importance of Being 7-0
Matt Rhule on being 6-0 … 7-0 would be off the charts (literally).
If there was ever a book to be published about this Temple football season, I am pretty sure the title would be “Leave No Doubt” but, like most books, there has to be a subtitle and that would be “What’s Next?”
This season is so good, so far, that it needs two titles. I must admit, I haven’t seen the “what’s next?” part until recently, but here’s what’s next.
The last time TU tried to get to 7-0 was in 1974, the two previous years are below. Who knows when the next chance will come?
7-0.
The book is a work in progress, but the next task is to write Chapter 7. Temple has never been 7-0. That is something worth balling for, worth squeezing every extra ounce of energy and effort to achieve.
The Owls have been playing this game since 1898—the school has been in existence since 1894—and they have never started the season 7-0. For all of the talk about how important this game is from an AAC standpoint or getting ESPN Gameday here standpoint, doing something that no team has ever done in the history of the school should be the most important thing now.
The Owls’ last chance to go 7-0 was 41 years ago.
You play the game to win championships, but three hours of superb play can cement this team’s legacy into the Temple record books forever. That should mean something. It should mean everything.
Every guy who ever put on the Cherry and White uniform can root for that. It’s been a wall no one could break through and a wall that is there right in front of the team right now.
Forget the AAC. Forget about the implications surrounding a possible NY6 Bowl. Forget whatever bowl game the team might be selected for. Forget Notre Dame. Those things are really too far down the road to worry about now. Forget even ECU. Two nights from now should be all about Temple. Seven wins and zero losses is a goal that has never been achieved at Temple. This is a goal right in front of the Owls, three hard hours of football away, and, they should play like rabid Mad Dogs on every play. Capital M and Capital D. Protect the football, play great defense and special teams and make plays on offense.
If they do that, they can at least look in the mirror and say they gave it their best shot and accept whatever the outcome Thursday night.
Tomorrow: Game Plan Wednesday
Derik Hamilton’s USA Today Sports Photos
Short Week, Tall Order
Just about everyone who filed out of the stadium last night could be overheard saying the same thing, in one syntax or another: “If they play like this on Thursday, they’ll lose.”
The first “They”, meaning the special teams, which had been solid until recently but now appear to be out of sync. The second “they” meaning the team. The last couple of games, though, the first they have been handling the ball like a hand grenade and that is going to have to be cleaned up.
Actually, with only a couple of exceptions, the Owls played pretty well all night in a 30-16 win over UCF. The exceptions, of course, will kill you—a pick six, a couple of fumbles on returns. Clean those things up, and the Owls have a chance to roll a 6-0 season into a 7-0 season.
Leave No Doubt, though, those things need to be cleaned up and nobody understands that more than head coach Matt Rhule. I now understand “Matt’s” big statement after the first summer scrimmage: “It was a little too sloppy for my taste. At Temple, the most important thing is that we do not beat ourselves.”
That’s true more this year than any other, especially because the Owls have a defense that is not going to be overwhelmed physically by anyone—including Notre Dame. The game that comes up this Thursday, at ECU, is even more important than Notre Dame because it is an a) AAC game; b) AAC East game.
It’s a short week, and a tall order.
Win on Thursday night and the path is clear to the AAC title game being played in Philadelphia. The Owls already hold the tie-breaker over Cincinnati. Win at ECU and that gives them tie-breakers over really the only two teams in the AAC East who can challenge the Owls.
Fixing it is the vexing problem. I’ve never liked the idea of having a team’s best offensive player taking back punts or kickoffs and, even though Jahad Thomas is the team’s best offensive player this season, Robby (then Robbie) Anderson was certainly the team’s best offensive player in the 2013 season. I don’t like giving up that down, either, with a possession receiver because Sean Chandler showed what a dynamic player can do with the ball.
Nate L. Smith was the greatest punt returner in the history of Pennsylvania high school football.
I’d like to see someone who has a history of returning punts and being reliable with the ball and, in Nate L. Smith, the Owls have the top punt returner in the history of Pennsylvania. He might be not as dynamic as Chandler, but he’s a little more reliable with the ball and a little more dynamic than having a possession receiver back there.
Either way, if the Owls clean that little messy part of their game up, they stand a good chance of turning a short week into a nice and tidy front porch. Got to get that cleaned up in order to be able to invite Gameday for a visit in two weeks.
Postscript: Somewhat surprised to hear an interview with Rhule talking about his on-field halftime speech to the team and referencing that they were “booed and deserved to be booed.” Sitting in the middle of the stands, I respectively disagree. The booing in the first half was without a doubt and unequivocally directed at the refs. At no time were any people in my relatively large section near the 50 booing the kids or the coaches.
Game Day: What, Me Worry?
On a worry scale of 1-10 with one being not worried and 10 being eight eaten fingernails, the UCF at Temple game has to rank at about as closest to one as any other Temple game in recent memory. The 5-0 Owls are on a serious roll and the 0-6 Knights are in free fall, playing in Philadelphia before a hostile crowd of 30,000 on a cold night.
You know all about how Florida teams do in cold weather. We don’t know the actual record, but it took the Tampa Bay Buccaneers about 40 years to win a game in under 50-degree weather. The temperature at kickoff tonight should be 47 degrees, which reminds me to remind you to wear gloves. It was only eight or so years ago a tailgater named Lazygoat saw me wearing gloves on the first cold day of the season and begged for them.
Like a lot of Owl fans at the first cold home game of every season, he did not come prepared. He forgot, which would have made him a great AP Top 25 voter. Since I did not have an extra pair, he spent the rest of the day blowing into his fingers. So let that be a warning.
A little nippy, but nothing Temple TUFF can’t handle.
Another warning that the Owls would be wise to heed is to put this game away early because, if there was a lesson to be learned at UMass, it was allowing a team back into a game after going up 14-0 just serves to embolden them and give them some hope to get that first win. I’m sure the 12-1 UCF team that came into Philadelphia in 2013 did not lose any sleep the night before beating Temple. Nor did the 1998 Virginia Tech team (that finished 8-2 but lost, 28-24, to then 0-6 Temple).
George O’Leary, being the smart coach he is, really has only one option and that is to rip a few pages out of UMass head coach Mark Whipple’s book and load up the box to stop the run. At that point, the Owls can do one of two things—abandon the run (not recommended) or go two tight ends and a fullback and put more helmets on their helmets and knock them back off the ball (recommended). Then pick spots for play-action passes to Robby Anderson and Co.
If P.J. Walker has to throw 48 passes again instead of a more manageable 20-30, it could be a long night. That’s not Temple football. Temple football is running the ball, hitting play-action passes, playing tough defense and great special teams.
So, like 1998, upsets can happen and that knowledge should be enough to keep it from happening. That, and adhering to the principles of #LeaveNoDoubt, which means to play every game like it is a championship one.
Tomorrow Afternoon: Complete Game Analysis
Monday: Photo Essay
Temple Football Forever 