Tag Archives: Temple football

02.11.21
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Sobering Mid-February look at schedule

A week ago, we mentioned in this space that you’d have to have a pretty strong pair of Cherry and White-colored glasses to think a 1-6 team transformed itself into a winning one this offseason.

Maybe we were wrong so we went to the mat and went over the 2021 schedule game by game.

If you think by adding a quarterback from Georgia (who is charged with replacing a top four all-time Temple quarterback) and a couple of Power 5 running backs are going to do the trick, those are pretty strong glasses.

There is hope, though.

Five impact players still to be added can move the needle from a two- or four-win 2021 season to a six-win one. What do we mean by impact players? Guys who’ve started and excelled on a Power 5 team. Defensive linemen who have multiple sacks and tackles for losses. Defensive backs with interceptions and multiple starts. Difficult to get those kinds of guys? Yes. Impossible? With over 1,600 and counting players in the portal still, hardly. Unless Temple gets five of those types, I don’t see a significant uptick in wins in 2021.

It’s that simple.

A 1-6 record has shaken the national belief in Temple football and it’s going to take a whole lot of winning to get it back.

In hopes of eating my words come December (and will only if the 2021 Owls post a WINNING season), here is a sobering look at what will probably happen with this current group of players:

Rutgers 31, Temple 14 _ Rutgers seems to have turned it around under former coach Greg Schiano who, like Al Golden at Temple, is a proven winner at his former place of employment. If Temple loses this one, it will go to show how far Temple has fallen from a team that beat Maryland (20-17) in 2019 to losing to a team that same Maryland team beat (48-7).

Temple 21, Akron 14 _ This could easily be a loss as the Zips closed out last season impressively, with a 31-3 win over Bowling Green, whose head coach in that game was former Temple offensive coordinator Scot Loeffler, but you’ve got to believe the Temple program is better than the Zips and I believe that there is enough holdover talent to get this done.

Boston College 34, Temple 23 _ If Isaiah Graham Mobley and Khris Banks make game-changing plays in this one, that will be a real kick in the nuts.

Temple 38, Wagner 7 _ The last time Wagner played an AAC team it lost “only” 21-14 but that was UConn so it didn’t count.

Cincinnati 38, Temple 0 _ Cincy has had four of the last five top AAC recruiting classes. In the same time frame, the best Temple can do is finishing in the middle of the recruiting pack. It’s not the X’s and O’s, it’s the Jimmy’s and the Joe’s.

ECU 28, Temple 3 _ Temple has only slightly improved from last year’s 28-3 loss but arguably ECU has also improved so it’s a potential wash.

Houston 31, Temple 10 _ The Cougars get revenge for a 59-49 loss to Temple when the Owls had a running back good enough to score six touchdowns in the game (and a commitment to the run that enabled him to do it).

Memphis 41, Temple 29 _ The Owls had Anthony Russo at quarterback when they were able to put up 29 points on Memphis last year. If Duece Mathis is as good as advertised, he will at least be able to match the output.

Navy 34, Temple 31 _ So far, the Temple coaching staff has only faced two triple option teams, Army in the early NIU days and Navy last year. They haven’t figured out a way to stop the triple option in over a decade. Maybe they should have the Air Force, Army and BYU staffs visit the E-O for a chalkboard session. Since Pride Goeth Before the Fall, I don’t anticipate that happening so Navy scores over 30 again.

UCF 38, Temple 17 _ Instead of trying for a touchdown on fourth and goal at the two for a 38-21 loss, Rod Carey goes for the field goal to cover the spread. The boos from the smattering of 4,345 fans at Lincoln Financial Field are palpable.

Tulsa 44, Temple 7 _ The Golden Hurricane prove that a school with 3,764 full-time students can beat a school with 40,000 full-time students if the right ratio of those students are big-time football players.

USF 39, Temple 31 _ USF lost at Temple last year, 39-37, when its quarterback inexplicably put the ball on the carpet at his own five. People usually learn by painful mistakes like that.

There you have it. Unless five impact players walk in the door between now and April, Temple is staring at a 2-10 season. Five impact players can help the Owls pick off the USF, Memphis, Navy and maybe Houston games but the Jimmy’s and Joe’s aren’t there now, nor are the X’s and O’s.

Don’t say the coaching staff hasn’t been warned.

Monday: Back to the Future

02.08.21
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Transfer Portal: Making a list

Congratulations to these folks with Temple connections for winning the Super Bowl on Sunday night.

Somewhere, someone is making a list and checking it twice.

Bruce Arians always roots for Temple and last night Temple rooted for Bruce Arians

All over college football staffs with intentions of winning and keeping their jobs have a list of 1,652 players still available in the transfer portal (up from 1,588 last week) and the buyer’s market bodes well for Temple football.

Should the Owls target the right positions and the right players, there is room for significant improvement. If they hold pat, they are looking at another very poor season. The key, it would seem to be, is jumping into that portal and showing the top guys some love now.

Looking over the roster now, these are the needs that jump out:

Owls need to show North Carolina portal guy Brant Lawless-Sherrill some love.

Linebacker (2):

The Owls really have only one standout returning and that’s 2017 Gasparilla Bowl MVP William Kwenkeu. They need to supplement him with at least two starting-level players. Available as of today are a pair of three star recruits looking for homes, Anthony McKee of Pitt and Jon Smith of North Carolina.

Defensive tackle (1)

The Owls got a couple from North Carolina in Lancine Turay and Xavier Gill and guess what? Another, Brant Lawless-Sherrill, a four-star 6-0, 270-pound run stopper, is still looking. It probably would not take much for Turay and Gill to put Temple in his ear. If Philadelphia is not the place for him, Ellison Jordan, another four-star, might want to go from Penn State to Temple.

Offensive line (1)

Claxton Bradley, a four-star (6-5, 296-pound) tackle from USC is still in the portal. USC, like Temple, is located in a big city so Bradley probably is not adverse to an urban campus experience. Another lineman available is Rutgers’ Jamaal Beaty (6-2, 299).

Corner (1)

Freddie Johnson and Ty Mason are the two top Temple holdovers but the recent departures of Linwood Crump Jr. and Christian Braswell decimated the depth behind them. UConn transfer Keyshawn Paul should be in the mix but getting a player like Jon Gipson, a three-star recruit still in the portal out of South Carolina, would not hurt.

Whatever, you’d have to have an extra-strong set of Cherry and White-colored glasses to think the talent on this team as currently constituted can significantly turn 1-6- into 6-1 or better. Adding five difference-makers might not do the trick either, but it could not hurt.

That’s the No. 1 job Rod Carey has between now and April and he has to hope for his sake he does better at it than he did as his No. 1 job in October and November. His career may depend on it.

Friday: A Mid-February Projection

Monday: Back to the Future

02.05.21
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Temple football’s sinkhole problem

With each and every passing snowstorm, thoughts of pulling up stakes in Philadelphia and downsizing to Florida seem more appealing every year.

At least to me. If I never see another snowflake, that would be just fine.

There are advantages and disadvantages to said solution. One is sinkholes. From my preliminary investigation, they are everywhere down there. There is no “sinkhole proof” area and, if your house is the unlucky one, you are out a huge deductable even with the best insurance.

Temple football has its own sinkhole problem and it has nothing to do with the ground underneath the E-O Complex.

Too much talent is eroding from the building and the talent brought in to replace it does nothing to address the depth problem underneath. Simply put, the Owls are in a situation where the starters have to stay healthy or the underpinnings of the program fall apart. Starters have replaced starters and even some top Temple reserves have joined the portal and nothing has been done to address that depth issue. Temple needed to address the starters leaving the building and, for the most part, it has. Depleted depth caused by key backups leaving? Not so much.

That’s true every year but moreso this one.

Two tackles came in to replace Dan Archibong and Ifeanyi Maijeh but Khris Banks, who provided depth at that position, is off to Boston College.

The Owls’ linebacker corps is largely untested in real games and, with the exit of Christian Braswell, better hope and pray that Ty Mason and Freddie Johnson make it healthy through what is hoped to be a 12-game season because there is not much experience behind them, at least experience playing for a winning Temple program.

In the above video, coach Rod Carey is excited for the season but presumably he was excited for last season as well. He can be “super excited” all he wants but the proof is winning more than losing. I’d rather have Carey dreading the offseason and finishing 6-1 than being “super excited” and finishing 1-6.

The offensive line should be pretty good but recent departures of top subs has loosened the soil undereath the starters. Iverson Clement and Ra’Von Bonner might find plenty of holes behind the No. 1 group but what happens should two or three go down? Those holes close up right away.

In the sinkhole industry, that might be a good thing. In football, where injuries are a part of the business, the whole house goes under.

Monday: Top 5 Portal Targets

02.01.21
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Arians will roll the dice in Super Bowl

Bruce with strength coach Link Gotshalk and John Chaney (Photo courtesy of Willard Cooper)

When he was the head coach at Temple, Bruce Arians had a saying:

“No risky, no bisky.”

That was shorthand for “No risk it, no biscuit” and, if there’s one thing consistent about his time at Temple was that Arians practiced what he preached on both sides of the ball.

Arians’ accomplishments at Temple were, in my view, extremely underrated. He was a terrific recruiter and a good enough head coach to post two winning seasons against what in both seasons was rated the No. 10 -toughest schedule in the country.

He produced a Heisman Trophy finalist in Paul Palmer and the “quarterback whisperer” had a trio of fine quarterbacks in Tim Riordan, Lee Saltz and Matty Baker in five years.

In a 35-30 win at Rutgers in 1988, defensive coordinator Nick Rapone followed the playbook of most DCs at that time and went to a prevent defense with 1 minute, 52 seconds left in the game and RU having no timeouts. A quarterback named Scott Erney carved up that prevent and the Scarlet Knights had the ball on the Temple 30.

This time, Arians used the timeout and got in the ear of Rapone and told him to rush eight and drop back three. Temple sacked Erney three times and the game ended with a defensive tackle named Swift Burch sitting on top of him. (That same Rutgers team won at Penn State, 21-16.)

“If I was going to lose, I was going down with my guns blazing,” Arians said afterward, holding the game ball. “We called jailbreak–which is an all-out blitz–on the final three plays and, fortunately, it worked. I’m a former quarterback. I know the best pass defense is putting the quarterback on his back side.”

No risky, no bisky.

In his final game, a 45-28 win over Boston College at the Vet, Arians called two flea-flickers that resulted in touchdown passes to Mike Palys that basically won that game. There seems to be an unwritten rule in college football that if you try one trick play in a game and it works you don’t try the same play in the same game again. Arians never believed in unwritten rules. He made defenses make quick decisions with lot of motion like on this play:

Meanwhile, we don’t see flea-flickers at Temple anymore even once in any game.

No risky, no bisky.

It is a philosophy Arians had at Temple and took with him throughout his NFL career.

Nobody really knows what will happen on Sunday night, but if it involves a risky decision, Arians knows what the call will be.

Here’s hoping when he gets home that biscuit will be the best tasting one of his life.

01.29.21
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Single digits should remain at the E-O

On the first day of spring classes, Christian Braswell took his single digit number and skipped town for what he hoped would be greener pastures.

No. 2 dumped all over a Temple football tradition, the single-digit number.

Braswell wasn’t the first single-digit Owl to leave but he should be the last.

The way to do that would simply be to tweak the rules and reward single digits only to seniors in the summer camp prior to their last seasons.

A year ago, Quincy Roche took his No. 9 to Miami.

Now Braswell is taking his No. 2 elsewhere, joining another single-digit, Isaiah Graham-Mobley, in playing somewhere else after being rewarded with Temple football’s highest honor.

He won’t be the last Owl to leave Edberg-Olson Hall, especially under Rod Carey, but this is one problem that does indeed have a solution.

To me, there’s a lot to be said for the single-digit tradition but loyalty should be valued as much as toughness. There’s something annoying about watching a Miami game and hearing several times (as I did this past season) that “Roche is so tough, he earned the Temple single digit as an underclassmen.”

Matt Ioannidis (left) and Tyler Matakevich were two of the most loyal single digits in Temple history

When you think about it, it’s a slap in the face to Temple that someone like that plays for someone else.

That should remain a Temple staple and the only way to do it under this present college football environment is to reserve it for seniors who have stuck with the program for their entire careers.

If Carey is really out of scholarships, as he appears to be, there’s not much he can do now to upgrade the talent enough for a significant boost in the 2021 win total but he at least can implement a change that should outlast his time here.

Reserve the single digit for Temple seniors so that no Temple single-digit guy ever plays for anyone else.

It’s the least he can do.

Monday: The Bruce Arians’ Playbook

Friday: The Sinkhole Problem

01.25.21
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TU Football: Optimism seems misplaced

A discussion involving two ex-Temple coaches

Message boards are a good place to take the temperature of a fan base.

Sorting out the Wild Wild West part of it (the insults and incivility), though, you occasionally come across a gem of a post and I found a reasonable one written by long-time Temple fan MH55 recently on OwlsDaily.com:

“Meanwhile, shouldn’t everyone by now know our blueprint ? Regionally embedded staff intimately familiar with this area. The last three hires do not fit this mold and sadly, something is drastically wrong at EO. There seems to be a complete disconnect. The transfer portal and soliciting the MAC and FCS isn’t going to get it done. Reading the optimism is annoying and irritating. There is no reason for it.

“This team will start 2021 as 14 pt dogs to Rutgers. If we played them in 2019 we would have been 3 TD favorites. That’s where we are, realistically.”

_ Temple Fan MH55

It perfectly encapsulates where I am with the program right now.

A dose of realism

A lot was done between the December signing date and now to bring in some talent to refurbish the program but, in reality, a lot more needed to be done. This team needed a SMU-like 2019 infusion of talent (15 Power 5 starters) and got less than half of that.

There are now indications that Temple is done in more ways than one.

The Owls have new a linebacker from New Jersey who committed to Temple as a walk-on because he said he talked to a member of the staff who told him “they didn’t have any more scholarships left.”

If true, that’s not good.

Just when I thought the bleeding of talent leaving the E-O stopped, another single-digit guy, cornerback Christian Braswell, left on the first day of spring classes. There may be more to come. What was hemorrhaging in the fall has become a steady drip drip and who knows when it will be over? The addition of a Georgia transfer and a couple from North Carolina and one from Purdue, among others, seems to have sparked some optimism among the fanbase but, in reality, MH55’s post provided some needed pushback. Rod Carey’s recruiting, if it is indeed over, has fallen short of the mark and will probably fall well short of the talent level of Temple’s top rivals in the AAC.

At least this year.

The answer is going back to the blueprint that got the talent here and kept it here. MH55 is not the only Temple fan to realize what that blueprint is. We’ve been writing about it in this space for over 15 years now. Get great recruiters with a knowledge of and contacts with high school coaches up and down the East Coast and great coaches using a unique system. Navy wins because the Mids run the triple option and recruit nationally. Temple won in the Golden Rhule Era because it built great defenses, special teams and shortened the game by emphasizing the run and passed off play-action.

Al Golden and Matt Rhule realized that, even if it took Rhule two years of figuring it out once he came back to Temple.

That’s the blueprint. Rhule isn’t available but Golden might be. If Golden isn’t, surely there is someone who fits the blueprint of a great recruiter of THIS AREA and someone who realizes that the way to win here has been established and is willing to bring it back. Maybe Gabe Infante, who has the added experience of being a legendary head coach. Maybe Fran Brown, who doesn’t, but there certainly are people out there ready to follow the blueprint.

Peter J. Liacouras said that universities with FBS football must invest to succeed and sometimes that investment means eating the final couple of years of a guaranteed $10 million contract.

What happened between December and now on the recruiting front represented incremental change when wholesale change was needed and the university hierarchy must get ready for what, by all indications, will be some unpleasant results by the end of the fall.

That’s if they care about the Temple University national image anymore.

Friday: A New Single-Digit Concept

Monday: The Bruce Arians Playbook

01.22.21
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Temple’s near national title miss

Musing about how rigged college football has become in this space last week makes you appreciate how fair it once was.

One such year was 1979.

Only two teams finished unbeaten that season, eventual national champion Alabama (12-0) and runnerup USC (11-0-1). Pitt was 11-1.

Had Wayne won another wrestling match with Paterno at Beaver Stadium and found two more points in a 10-9 loss to Pitt, the Owls would have probably played Alabama in the Sugar Bowl and maybe won the national title.

Temple, with any luck, could have played Alabama, maybe beat them, in the Sugar Bowl and hoisted that national title trophy instead of the Crimson Tide.

The Owls played a much-tougher schedule then, lost to Pitt only by one and led Penn State by a point at halftime before inexplicably going away from a run game that worked in the first half to a passing game that didn’t in the second half of an eventual 22-7 loss. The crowd at Beaver Stadium that day was the largest ever to watch a Penn State game to that point. (They would eventually expand the field from 82,986 to 100K plus shortly after that.)

Even to this day, a couple of the offensive linemen who played for Temple that day told them Penn State defenders came up to them and said, “Why did you guys stop running the ball?”

Water under the dam now but, if the Owls had scrounged up 17 more points they would have finished unbeaten and untied.

A couple of interesting scores that year indicate the Owls would have been more than competitive against the Tide had a game materialized.

Tennessee, a team that lost to Rutgers, 13-7, that year, gave Bama a relatively competitive game in a 27-17 loss. Temple smoked that same Rutgers team, 41-20, on the road.  Temple beat California, 28-17, by a greater score than that USC did (24-14).

You can take comparative scores with a grain of salt, but those scores indicate Temple’s 1979 team had nothing to fear from anyone.

Only the 1934 squad could put up an argument that it was better than the 1979 team but I will take the 1979 team all day long. First, the 1934 Sugar Bowl team lost. The 1979 bowl team won. Back then, everybody was Power 5 and Temple was in the elite of that group.

finalpoll

The 1979 Owls captained by Mark Bright and Steve Conjar not only beat every team they were favored to beat but pulled a couple of upsets in a big way. They were not favored to beat Syracuse–with future NFLers’ Art Monk, Joe Morris, and Bill Hurley–but they destroyed the Orange, 49-17. They were not favored to win the Garden State Bowl but beat California, 28-17.

Consider that: TEMPLE winning a National Championship in football. It was thisclose …

Those were the days in college football when there were no participation trophies. You had to be really good and not just one of the best 80 teams to earn a bowl bid. Only 30 teams were extended bowl invitations.

There are now 40 bowl games. In 1979, there were only 15. Temple won one of them. The Owls finished ranked No. 17 in both polls (then, UPI and AP).

Screenshot 2019-10-11 at 1.20.42 PM
That’s it. The entire list of bowl games in 1979

On a cold January afternoon in 2021, the mere thought of that 1979 team is a warm one. It might be as close as Temple ever gets to playing on an even field in this sport again.

01.18.21
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The Temple 22 guessing game

Temple football needs to be fun again and the only fun comes from winning and singing the fight song afterward.

Any shot at picking a starting Temple “22” for football on Jan. 18th is a guessing game.

Mix in COVID and a fluid roster situation caused by the transfer portal and it’s really throwing darts but here we are on Jan. 18 and the first game is September and, just from the roster currently posted on Owlsports.com this morning and the transfers coming in, we’re going to be taking a shot.

Lancine Turay

OFFENSE (11)

WIDE RECEIVER _ Jadan Blue, Randle Jones and Amad Anderson. The fact that both Blue and Jones are still listed on the roster is really gratifying from my perspective. Jones is the fastest wide receiver we’ve seen at Temple since Travis Sheldon and Blue is on pace to break all of the Temple career records. Anderson is an accomplished Power 5 transfer who can play the slot. This should be the strength of the team.

QUARTERBACK _ D’Wan “Deuce” Mathis. Temple’s never had a quarterback transfer in who started a game for a Power 5 team, like alone the first game for a powerhouse SEC team so this is a no-brainer. Mathis has big shoes to fill, replacing a guy who tossed 44 touchdowns vs. 32 interceptions. Mathis will have to cut down on the INTS since he threw 3 to just a couple of touchdown passes. Whatever, Rod Carey’s read/option is more suited to Mathis’ skills than Anthony Russo’s.

TU needs more help at LB for William Kwenkeu (35)

RUNNING BACK _ Iverson Clement, the first four-star Temple running back since Juan Gaddy (at least coming in although you can say anyone who was a Heisman Trophy finalist, like Paul Palmer was, played like a five-star). He will undoubtedly be pushed by R’Von Bonner, who did more at Illinois than Clement did at Florida.

TIGHT END _ David Martin-Robinson. The redshirt junior-to-be is steady as they come and had five catches for 72 yards in the 2020 opener at Navy.

OL_ Michael Niese and Isaac Moore (G) and Vic Stoffel and Adam Klein (T) with C.J. Perez at center. That’s a big, experienced, group.

(For those counting, that’s 11.)

DEFENSE (11)

ENDS–Will Rodgers III and Manny Walker. Rodgers is a sackmeister from Washington State, who recently posted on twitter that he “loves Philadelphia.” If he puts quarterbacks on the ground at the same rate he did in Pullman, Philadelphia will no doubt love him back.

TACKLES–Xach Gill and Lancine Turay, two transfers from North Carolina. Kevin Robertson will push both players for time.

LINEBACKERS _ William Kwenkeu, Audrey Isaacs and Jordan McGee. Kwenkeu was the defensive MVP in the 2017 Gasparilla Bowl.

SAFETIES _ Amir Tyler and Trey Blair. Tyler is the senior leader and Blair will be a future playmaker and leader.

CORNERS _ Ty Mason and Freddie Johnson_ Two solid players. Mason took the year off from COVID (he didn’t have it but was just afraid of catching it) and should be well-rested, albeit rusty.

Rodgers, Walker, Gill, Turay=4; Kwenkeu, Isaacs, McGee 4+3=7; Tyler, Blair, Mason, Johnson=4-7=11.

Is this lineup good enough right now to beat Rutgers on opening day?

I would say no because we need two “Kwenkeu-level” linebackers to join William and more depth along the defensive and offensive lines.

Still, there’s no doubt that Temple has improved from the Temple we last saw in November and adding a couple of linebackers should go a long way to turn what is projected to be a losing season into a winning one.

Friday: A dream matchup that never happened

01.15.21
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You want rigged? Try college football

Hooter lifting the National Championship trophy, which was much more likely in 1979 than it is now.

For the first time in a long while, I checked out after halftime of college football’s national championship game on Monday.

I saw what I needed to see.

Some people have talked about rigged elections over the last month or so, but really–if you want rigged–looked no further than the state of college football today.

Alabama, as most of us figured out prior to the season, won the national championship. The Tide’s receiver is all world. Nick Saban is a great coach and, oh yes, Alabama is one of the few teams that uses a fullback (really a linebacker brought in for goal-line situations).

Seeing the same teams in the title game pretty much every year is just another in a long line of reasons why college football has become boring.

The national recruiting rankings come out every signing day and they mirror what happens four years later. All five star recruits go to places like Clemson, Ohio State and Alabama and, almost every year, the same teams are in the four-team playoff.

So 2025’s National Title has already been decided and the winner is (envelope please), Alabama. What a shock because the Tide’s 2021 recruiting class has been ranked No. 1.

The rich get richer while the poor press their noses against Mansion windows.

Mark Bright accepting his MVP trophy for a helluva ballclub in 1979.

What happened? There used to be a whole lot of different teams under consideration for the national title. Syracuse won it as recently as 1959. Hell, if Temple found 16 more points in the 1979 season, it would have finished unbeaten and probably would have played Alabama in the Sugar Bowl for all the marbles.

Those days are over, sadly.

Cincinnati gave Georgia a helluva game and probably should have won it except for some Andy Reid-level poor clock management in the final 2:45 of the game.

To me, Cincy proved it belonged in a four-team playoff–certainly more than Notre Dame did.

The gears of college football, though, are controlled by the Power 5 and they will never let a Group of Five team into the party.

That’s why the party should be more inclusive.

Teams like UCF (2017), Temple (2016) and Cincy (2020) deserved to be invited to the dance but will never be under the current system. If this were a graduating class of 129 in a high school, say, the 64 most popular kids would do everything in their power to keep the other kids from enjoying the same graduation.

That’s got to change.

How will it?

Ostensibly, the “bottom” 65 universities should also have strong presidents representing them and arguing a case for fairness to the governing body, the NCAA,

If some of those 65 can get even a handful of the other 64 to agree with them, then the rules should be modified to include things like an eight-team playoff, a scholarship limit of 75 (not the current 85) to make this entire boring offseason a little more interesting.

Anything less and you risk losing half of your fans and that’s not a business model even the most greedy among us should ever consider.

Until then, my interest in the so-called Final Four will continue to wane. I don’t think I’m the only one.

Monday: The projected Temple 22

01.11.21
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Temple football: The Known and Unknown

Whatever happens in the 2021 football season, we already know something about it.

The paradigm is about to shift for Temple football and that’s out of necessity: From the Known to the Unknown.

Lancine Turay

When John Chaney was the legendary Hall of Fame coach of the basketball, he liked to talk about the known and the unknown. He tailored his game plans to the known.

They were pretty simple. On defense, he shifted his famed 2-3 matchup zone to overplay the bad guy’s best one or two players and took his chances on lesser talented players to hurt him.

On offense, I sat behind him in a game where Temple’s three best players were Rick Brunson, Eddie Jones and Aaron McKie. He called time out and yelled at the other guys on the team when they were missing shots: “From now on, I only want Brunson, Eddie and McKie to shoot the ball. Everybody else pass.”

There were a few expletives deleted from that conversation, but you get the idea.

If Chaney lost, he lost knowing that he had what for him was a good plan.

Now, by necessity, Temple head coach Rod Carey will have to develop his own plan.

Getting four-star players in from Power 5 schools might work for Temple football now but, what is known, that approach has not worked so far. In fairness, it’s never been tried at 10th and Diamond before.

The Temple football paradigm pretty much for the last decade has been to recruit as many two- and three-star players and coach them up into five stars. Haason Reddick, Tyler Matakevich, Muhammed Wilkerson and Matt Hennessey pretty much fit that profile because by the time they left, were coached up into five stars. Matakevich was the consensus national defensive player of the year in 2015 and Wilkerson and Reddick were first-round NFL picks. Hennessey was a second-rounder but you rarely find centers drafted into the first round.

North Carolina sent Temple 2 players last week.

The formula worked. Prior to the Memphis game of the 2020 season, Temple had more regular-season AAC wins than any team of the league’s championship era. After that loss, Memphis caught up to Temple (31-11).

It’s been downhill ever since.

Portal departures necessitated the paradigm shift from the known to unknown.

The marquee get of 2021 so is Florida running back transfer Iverson Clement, who was a four-star out of Rancocas Valley. They already added Illinois transfer Ra’Von Bonner at that position in December to go along with quarterback Duece Mathis. If Clement and Mathis start, it will be the first time in Temple history that the Owls will start two four-stars in the offensive backfield. It’s worth noting that it will mean something only if they play like four stars. Let’s see. Penn State quarterback transfer Kevin Newsome was the last four-star to come to Temple. He never saw the field.

The tradeoff is simply this: Temple is bringing in more four-star talent than ever before with the recent additions of two defensive linemen from North Carolina (Xach Gill, a 6-5, 290-pound tackle and Lancine Turay, who is 6-6, 280). Turay is a little more versatile since he can play inside or outside and you’ve got to like a 6-6 pass rusher with a decent vertical leap.

In my gameday program of the Dec. 27, 2019 Military Bowl, Gill was listed as senior Jason Strowbridge’s backup in the 55-13 win over Temple. He had one solo tackle to Strowbridge’s three but both underperformed the best name on that team, Storm Duck, who had five tackles, four solos and two for losses.

It appears that the Owls have at least offset the losses on the line of tackles, Khris Banks, Ifeanyi Meijeh (portal) and Dan Archibong (NFL draft) and are hoping Will Rodgers and Manny Walker emerge as effective edge rushers now that Arnold Ebiketie has transferred to Penn State.

Still, there is more work to do.

The Owls need at least one starting-level offensive lineman to replace Vince Picozzi (Colorado State) and another top linebacker to replace Isaiah Graham-Mobley (Boston College). Two of each would be nice, but let’s not get greedy here.

Or maybe do get greedy.

The good news is that there are plenty still available in the portal who, at least on paper, are just as good as those two. Since it’s a buyer’s market this year (and won’t be next), the sooner Temple adds those type of players the better, because other teams with similar needs are scouring those same lists.