Tag Archives: Temple football

12.25.20
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Only coal under the Temple football stockings so far

That’s a fireplace, not the E-O burning down.

Hope every single Temple football fan has a healthy and happy Christmas.

So far, though, at least from a football perspective, the only thing head coach Rod Carey has found under the tree is coal.

Somebody keeps stealing his nice living room furniture mostly procured by a current NFL head coach (err, players) and the tree doesn’t look quite the same in an empty room.

An attempt at humor (we think).

The coaching staff rallying cry for the last month at the $17 million Edberg-Olson facility (it cost $7 million to build with a $10 million addition in 2010) is FEBU (f*ck everyone but us) but the only “but us” left seems to be nothing other than a glorified scout team so the boast appears to be an empty one. Let’s put it this way. Rudy was a great story for Notre Dame but a team full of Rudys would not have been.

Temple has Branden Mack, Jaden Blue, a transfer from Georgia and a team full of Rudys. Hmm. Who knows how long Mack and Blue stick around?

I haven’t checked the portal this morning. I probably won’t for awhile. Too depressing.

That’s why the job of winning in 2021 got harder. So far, by my count, at least seven starters (probably seven of the best nine PLAYERS on the team) have went out the back exit with only two potential good ones coming in the front door. It was imperative to stop the bleeding in order for the Owls to even get to the modest .500 record (which, theoretically over 60 FBS teams are able to do). Now, it looks like 2-10 is a distinct possibility unless the Owls score big with the remaining players in the portal and that’s assuming nobody else leaves, a huge assumption.

Did Temple pay $2 million per year for a 1-6 and 2-10 head coach? So far, it looks like it and it’s not a good look. The recruiting website 247.com reports that Temple is by far the school most hurt by the transfer portal.

Duh?

Carey needs to roll up his sleeves and sign the top available P5 players, not G5 players, not FCS players, to stop the bleeding and start the healing.

There are three four-star defensive linemen still in the portal (as of this writing) and it would be nice if Carey and company could get at least one:

DE-Charles Moore is a 6-4, 275-pound edge rusher from Oregon State. Defensive end did not seem like an area of need a couple of weeks ago, but it is now that Temple’s top edge rusher, Arnold Ebetitke, left the building on Wednesday.

DT-Ellison Jordan, Penn State. Jordan was a four-star signee but hasn’t worked his way into the rotation for the Nittany Lions. He would be an immediate starter here since both starting tackles passed up their final years at Temple.

DT-Brant Lawless-Sherrill, North Carolina. Lawless-Sherrill is a four-star 6-1, 290-pounder who, like just about all of his teammates, had a great game against Temple in the 2019 Military Bowl.

Linebackers

There are at least five three-star linebackers still left in the portal. The Owls need to get at least two of a group that includes Anthony McKee (Pitt), Griffin Grady (Wisconsin), Jon Smith (UNC), Xander Gagnon (Duke) and Evander Craft (Toledo). Craft had offers from three Power 5 schools in his final five.

The value of assigned stars is that independent Power 5 coaching staffs have already done talent evaluations on the above players before bringing them in and that’s less work for the Carey staff to do.

Less work, because cleaning that coal off the floor is going to be job one. It’s an industrial strength cleaning job and we don’t know if the spill accidents are even over yet.

Monday: Who’s Minding the Store?

12.20.20
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The Portal Pandora’s Box

Temple fans have seen the Georgia highlights, but this is what got Ohio State and Georgia’s attention.

The NCAA’s transfer portal always seemed to be a scheme cooked up by the Power 5 schools to further kneecap the Group of Five schools.

For Temple, at least, that’s what it turned out to be.

Owl fans are excited by the addition of Duece Mathis at quarterback but the reality is that they traded a guy with 44 regular-season touchdown passes and 31 interceptions in FBS real games for a guy who has more interceptions than touchdown passes in FBS real games. Interesting that Mathis originally committed to Michigan State, then flipped to Ohio State, then flipped to Georgia.

So in a roundabout way, Temple got Michigan State’s quarterback and Michigan State got Temple’s. One has lots of impressive FBS numbers. The other has impressive potential.

Temple’s major selling point for how long?

Potential, sure, but potential doesn’t win championships or bowl games.

Maybe being in a system that suits his style of play eventually makes Mathis one of the best three quarterbacks in Temple history in terms of numbers and winning percentage (like Anthony Russo was), but only time (three years) will tell.

There’s a flip side of the transfer portal and that’s the Pandora’s Box side of it. As Yahoo sports’ Pete Thamel points out in this excellent story, that side provides a cautionary tale for current players. Thamel quotes current South Florida head coach Jeff Scott saying that there could be as many as 1,000 players in this portal by this week alone who will not find scholarships at any school because those scholarships are almost gone.

The modern definition of Pandora’s Box is a process that generates many complicated problems as the result of unwise interference in something.

To me, that describes the transfer portal to an, err, Temple ‘][‘.

The NCAA had a good system going where players had to sit out a year before transferring to another school and it worked well for several decades. Then someone got the idea, hey, if coaches don’t have to sit out a year then players shouldn’t either.

How about coaches sitting out a year? (Yeah, I know schools could be sued for restraint of trade but, in a perfect world, coaches and players would have to sit out a year and fans of the schools could have some sense of continuity.) That would have allowed Matt Rhule and Geoff Collins to go out coaching bowl games for Temple.

This ended under Rod Carey in 2019

That would have been fairer to Temple and all the other G5 schools who lose their head coaches to the P5. Now the P5 has essentially stolen more from the G5 in creating a farm system to they can steal the best G5 players as well. It’s not fair. It’s not a perfect world and this is far from a perfect system.

While it’s still here, and I don’t think it will be for long, Temple should take advantage of it. The Owls have as many as seven scholarships for this class open and they should be able to get two of the best defensive tackles available and at least a couple of great linebackers. With 1,000 players left scrambling for the few scholarships left, Temple would seem to be in a good place to benefit, say, like Sonny Dykes did a couple of years ago when he brought in 15 Power 5 transfers as starters and went 10-2. Either way, this hurts the players who jump thinking getting a landing spot will be easy.

It won’t.

Maybe 1,000 or more players left holding the bag will cause college football to rethink this poorly conceived idea.

Friday: What players are under the Christmas tree?

12.17.20
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Recruiting: All That Matters is Winning

What Bobby Wallace used to call “the fill-em” (or the film).

In a vacuum, what happened on the recruiting part of the 2021 Class first signing day would have to be listed as one of the best signing days in Temple football history.

Maybe the best.

Unfortunately, these days, the vacuum works both ways because what you are sucking in the door has to be weighed out for what is going out the other end of that Hoover wind tunnel. That was never part of the equation in the Golden Rhule Era.

Freddy Booth-Lloyd has expressed concerns felt by many current Temple fans.

In that sense, what in other years would be viewed as an unmitigated success is extremely mitigated by the departures of tackles Dan Archibong (NFL draft), Ifeanyi Meijeh and Vince Picozzi, linebacker Isaiah Graham-Mobley (other FBS teams) and starting quarterback Anthony Russo (Michigan State), among others.

These are mostly guys I’ve met, interacted with and liked very much at post-game tailgates in the past. They are good young men, character guys, not malcontents. More than that, though, from a pure bottom-line perspective, Temple is losing proven players who were developed over years in the system for (largely) unproven FBS level players–many of whom have some development left to do. For guys the character of Dan, Ifeanyi, Vince and IGM to leave indicates something smells inside the halls of Edberg-Olson and a vacuum cleaner isn’t going to remove the stench.

FBL=good man, fortunately did not major in English at Temple.

That’s going to affect the only bottom line I care about in 2021: Winning.

To me, Temple has to have a major rebound year for the school’s administration to even think about keeping Rod Carey after a 1-6 year with, say, 5-2 talent. Temple has come too far and the road has been too hard and bumpy to be satisfied with 6-6 seasons going forward. Two double-digit win seasons were followed by another winning season and two eight-win seasons before this year’s disaster. Blame COVID if you want but a standard had been set for this program and 2020 fell way below it, COVID or not.

FBL said one of his goals was to come back as a Temperor. If Temple had all 105 scholarship players with that kind of loyalty, it would win a chip every year.

The Owls got immediate starting help in edge rusher Will Rodgers and the quarterback from Georgia, D’Wan Mathis, but where are the immediate upgrades from Picozzi, IGM and the two interior defensive tackles? Hell, where are the guys who can replace those skill sets, let alone upgrades. I didn’t see them. Unless they magically arrive by February, the Owls will have trouble getting to .500 next season.

You can talk about how “happy I am” with the signing day and “I’m through the roof” but I, as a Temple fan, won’t be happy or through any roof until that 1-6 gets turned around to 8-4 or better and, sorry, nothing I saw on this signing day indicates those days are coming back fast enough.

Talk is cheap. Proving it is expensive. Now comes time for Rod Carey to put his money where his mouth is.

Picks This Weekend: 8-5 against the spread on the season and going with all underdogs to stay above water for the season. San Jose State getting 6.5 in the Mountain West championship against Boise State, Tulsa getting 14.5 for the AAC title at Cincy, and UAB (with hopefully future Temple AD Mark Ingram) getting the 5.5 in the CUSA title game at Marshall. (Would have had Louisiana Lafayette getting 3.5 in revenge match with Coastal for the Sun Belt title, but that game was canceled due to COVID in the CC program. Probably the first championship cancellation of all time. Very sad.)

Update: Went 3-0 against the spread with both SJS and UAB winning outright and Tulsa easily covering the 14.5 in a 27-24 loss. Now at 11-5 against the spread this season.

12.13.20
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Russo’s Temple legacy: A winner

If anything, the succession of four quarterbacks who tried to replace Russo showed how much he will be missed.

That old adage about statistics being for losers doesn’t apply to Anthony Russo’s all-too-brief three-year career at Temple.

He exits the school not only as a winner, but only behind Steve Joachim and Brian Broomell in winning percentage as a Temple quarterback.

To me, that’s the most important statistic.

Arguably, Joachim and Broomell and even P.J. Walker played with better talent around them (at least compared to the level of competition Temple was playing at the time) so Russo’s numbers were even more impressive.

Further, Joachim, Broomell and P.J. Walker were playing a systems more suited to their respective talents.

Under Rod Carey and, to a lesser extent, Geoff Collins, Russo was not. I’d love to see what Russo would have done at Temple under just the system Matt Rhule ran his last two years at Temple: Fullback, (often) double tight ends, establishing the run behind a premier tailback and then making the safeties and linebackers inch up to the line of scrimmage so that Russo could fake to, say, Ray Davis, and throw over the top to wide open receivers like Branden Mack and Jadan Blue.

Les Miles with AR when Les was head coach at LSU.

Unfortunately, we never saw that.

Now we will never see it because, err, that’s the offense “we” ran at Northern Illinois. Great coaches structure their offense around the talents of their players and not try to force feed their own philosophy on a different skill set. If there’s one thing we’ve discovered in two years, Rod Carey is not a great coach.

Even in that ill-fitting system, Temple, under Russo this year, was able to put up 32 offensive points against USF and 29 each against Navy and Memphis.

The other quarterbacks combined put up 3 (Tulane and ECU), 13 (UCF), and 23 (SMU).

There are certain quarterbacks who should NEVER be asked to run the ball except on quarterback sneaks. At Temple, I would have put Tim Riordan, Lee Saltz, Marty Ginestra, Pat Carey, Doug Shobert and Matty Baker into that group. You can ask Joachim, Walker, Walter Washington and Broomell to run but the first four were also effective in exclusive passing systems.

In the NFL, Tom Brady, Matt Stafford or Joe Flacco should never be asked to do that.

Not saying AR is headed to Michigan State, but these are his most recent followers on twitter.

And, above all, Anthony Russo should never have been in that kind of system at Temple.

Even a blind man can see that.

That’s probably why Russo is taking his talents elsewhere. There’s a lot of speculation about where he will land, but I think he’s better than any of the quarterbacks at Penn State, Pitt or Kansas right now. It’s not the school that matters, though, but how the coaches at any school will utilize his unique talents. The next few weeks he’s going to have to sort all that out.

If he finds one without an RPO, even if it’s not a marquee school, that’s where he should go and that’s where he will finally be able to reach his full potential and have his name called on NFL draft day.

Unfortunately, the name Temple will not be called once he walks to the podium.

Thanks to Rod Carey.

Friday: Digesting The Wednesday Signings

12.11.20
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The Transfer Portal and Temple

“Why you leaving, Anthony?” “Coach, I came here because Rhule promised me a pro-set passing scheme, not an RPO one.”

Nothing has ruined my enjoyment of college football in general and Temple football in particular than the transfer portal.

When the people who rule college football (the Power 5, not the NCAA) got together and imposed this penalty-free system where a player could transfer anywhere he wanted, schools like Temple were hurt the most because the Owls built a respectable program (largely) by identifying top talent ignored by the P5 and coaching them up.

For the better part of the last decade, Temple was the beneficiary of that system.

Something tells me the guy on the left would have been a much-better coach for Russo than Rod Carey turned out to be.

For the better part of the next decade, Temple won’t be. Oh, Temple will still identify the talent and–once a coaching change is made–coach them up, but other schools will benefit from the money Temple spends on coaching and the scholarships Temple gives out.

It’s what I call the Yankee syndrome. Years of listening to New York City sports talk has made me aware of this condition. It usually goes like this. Ryan Howard hits .313 with 58 homers and 138 RBI for the Phillies after the Phillies developed him. Caller to Mike and the Mad Dog in 2006:

“That Ryan Howard for the Phillies looks really good. The Yankees should sign him.”

Mike: “Great idea.”

Mad Dog: “What do you want, Mikey, every good player on every team to sign with the Yankees? How about leaving some of the good players for the other teams? This is getting ridiculous.”

That’s how ridiculous college football has become.

Too many good players are hemorrhaging from G5 schools, specifically Temple, to go to the, err, Yankees. While UCF, Cincinnati and Memphis are able to keep their best players, Temple is not. Guess what? Those are the schools Temple is supposed to compete with and that’s not a good sign. The Owls supposed “replacement” for the AAC Defensive Player of the Year (Quincy Roche), Manny Walker, did virtually nothing this season.

When I was diplomatic and posted on social media that Walker did virtually nothing, I was challenged by a Bruce Arians Era player.

“Mike, he did virtually nothing? He did nothing.”

Yeah, on second thought, you are right.

Now the Owls have signed another, err, replacement for Roche in Will Rodgers III from Washington State. In two years, he had as many sacks as Roche did in a single season for Temple.

Nice pickup but as good as Roche?

Err, no.

That’s where the departure of, in my mind, Temple’s best player on this year’s team, Anthony Russo, comes into play.

I don’t blame Anthony. He did what he had to do. He did what I would have done had I possessed his skill set. He was playing for a head coach who was so stubborn he tried to fit square pegs (RPO offense) into round holes (the unique talents of his players). It’s the same problem Geoff Collins has at Georgia Tech. He’s got triple-option players trying to run a more NFL passing scheme. What both coaches should have done is exactly what Hugh Freeze is doing at Liberty. Design a system around the player, not vice versa. Carey should have used a fullback his first two years and eased into the RPO he next two ones. Collins should have used a triple option his first two years and eased into whatever Dave Patenaude philosophy (if he has one) in his next two. Guaranteed under those circumstances Carey would have been better than 1-6 and Collins better than 3-5 this year.

Head coaches are stubborn and there are no two more stubborn than Collins and Carey.

Not surprising that players are leaving both programs.

To me, the portal was made for guys like Russo and Toddy Centeio. Russo was stuck in a system that didn’t showcase his NFL talent and Toddy left because he was stuck behind Russo.

The collection of players the Owls rolled out to replace an injured Russo proved only one thing: Russo was 10x better than them and that might be a conservative estimate. The only quarterback I see in the transfer portal better than Anthony Russo is McKenzie Milton. Do you think MM would come to Temple to play for Rod Carey? That’s laughable. Much more likely that a Matt Rhule or an Al Golden would be able to sweet talk him into that kind of move.

The bottom line about the transfer portal and Temple is that if you are the Temple head coach and somebody leaves, you are supposed to replace them with as good or a better player than the one who left.

Otherwise, as a head coach, you have not done your job.

On top of the horrible 1-6 bottom line, color me unimpressed with this aspect of the Rod Carey Regime.

He’s got to do much better in the player acquisition area in order to avoid an even worse numbers problem.

Monday: The Russo Legacy

Picks this week: I split two games last week against the spread, taking me from 7-4 to 8-5 against the spread for the season. I was leaning to Pitt laying the seven at poorly coached GT but failed to pull the trigger (kicking myself for that). Games we are pulling the trigger on (for amusement only): Taking North Carolina to cover the 3.5 against Miami and the Rice Owls to cover the 6.5 against former Temple Owl assistant AD Mark Ingram, who is the current UAB athletic director.

Update: Won both as North Carolina not only covered the 3.5 but blew it away in a 62-26 win and Rice covered the 6.5 in a 21-16 loss. Now at 10-5 against the spread for the season.

12.05.20
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Five Guys who didn’t make COVID excuses

Found it curious that Temple head coach Rod Carey was quoted to the effect:

“We had to fight COVID and COVID won.”

Guess what, Rod?

Temple wasn’t the only program that had to fight COVID. Let’s eliminate all of the other schools in just Temple’s conference and find five guys in supposedly lesser conferences who faced the same challenges that Carey did but did not make excuses. Let’s also eliminate the Power 5, which has the advantage of better players. Doing Carey a favor, let’s even eliminate BYU.

We found at least five guys (trust me, there are more) who did a much better job under similar (or worse) circumstances than Carey:

Jamey Chadwell, Coastal Carolina

No. 18 Coastal, despite losing the same number of league games as Temple to COVID (one) is now 9-0, 7-0 with a win over Power 5 Kansas. Coastal beat league power Appalachian State by 11 last week in a showdown and does not back away from anyone, signing a contract to host BYU today. It is a 10.5-point underdog but would not be surprised to see the Chanticleers come away with a win. They have already clinched the Sun Belt regular-season title and will play Louisiana Lafayette in the league title game.

Doc Holliday, Marshall

Quietly, in the G5, no one consistently does a better job year after year than Holliday. He was the same guy who gave Temple DC Chuck Heater a shot after Matt Rhule picked Phil Snow for the same job. The Thundering Herd are now 7-0 overall, 4-0 in the league. With games left against Charlotte, Rice and FIU, they could run the table and be 10-0.

Lance Leipold, Buffalo

One of those prominently mention to replace Manny Diaz at Temple, Leipold–who beat Rod Carey’s 8-5 Owls last year–is now 4-0 after scoring 70 points on another unbeaten MAC team, Kent State, last week. Looks like the Owls picked the wrong MAC head coach. The Bulls started almost a full month later than Temple. Leipold has a Heisman Trophy candidate running back in Jaret Patterson, who is much more likely to leave Buffalo for the NFL than he is any P5 school. That’s an indication that Leipold’s bond with his players is stronger than Carey’s.

OwlsDaily.com editor Shawn Pastor feels the COVID issue has been exaggerated at Temple. I agree.

Brett Brennan, San Jose State

Brennan didn’t say “woe is me” after California canceled all home games in the San Francisco metro area. He just moved his game today to Hawaii. He has the Spartans, one of the toughest jobs in all of G5 football, at 4-0 overall, 4-0 league. SJS beat Air Force, 16-7, which beat Navy (40-7), which beat Temple, 31-29.

Willie Taggart, FAU

Taggart has the FAU Owls at 5-1 overall, 4-1 league despite having had three games postponed by COVID. Taggart, who was one of those G5 guys who failed at P5 programs (Oregon and FSU), is proving that he can do a great job at any G5 school this second time around after doing a great job at South Florida. His only loss was a 20-9 loss to Holliday.

While Carey is making excuses, these guys are doing their jobs at a high level with no high profile players leaving their programs. Hopefully, the Temple administration is taking names and preparing to kick some ass.

Honorable mention: Nevada (under Jay Norvell) is 5-1, No. 25 Louisiana Lafayette (under Bill Napier) is now 9-1, University of Texas (San Antonio, under Jeff Traylor) is 7-1, 5-2.

Picks today: We’re 7-4 against the spread for the season. Love that 10.5 points Coastal is getting against visiting BYU. Still think BYU wins this game on the order of 30-24 but those double digits are too hard to pass up. Also going with FAU getting the 2.5 at Georgia Southern.

Monday: Losing the Room

12.02.20
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Getting The Old Gang Back

In a perfect world, Temple would be able to correct a mistake hit the reset button.

Perfect worlds in the era of five-year guaranteed contracts are few and far between but they are worth dreaming about.

Al Golden and Matt Rhule back in the day

It has been the view here for the better part of this horrible season that, even though Temple needs to make a head coaching change, a guaranteed contract ties its hands and we’re stuck with the current regime for the full five years.

For better or worse and it’s looking more like worse.

That’s where the perfect world comes into play.

If I could wave a magic wand and change things and give Temple the money it needs to hit the reset button, I’d do one thing:

Ask Al (Owl) Golden if he’s tired of being a position coach in the NFL.

While his staff would be totally up to him, Golden would probably be inclined to get the old gang back together, hire Ed Foley away from the Carolina Panthers to fix the Temple special teams (throw in the carrot of an assistant head coach title), make, say, Adam DiMichele the offensive coordinator and Gabe Infante the defensive coordinator, pluck current Georgia State strength coach Alex Derenthal away from that program and fill the staff in around the edges.

All the core members of Golden’s would-be staff love Temple football and know the Temple brand. The current carpetbaggers from the Midwest do not.

To me, he would be interested because being the head coach at Temple because it is “more prestigious” than being an NFL position coach, especially since position coaches are nomads. Matt Patricia, who was let go by the Lions last week, fired Golden a year ago. He latched onto the job of linebackers coach at Cincinnati, but who knows how long that will last? When Golden left Temple, that job paid $500,000. Thanks largely to him, it now pays $2 million.

In college, second acts sometimes do work out, look at Bill Snyder at Kansas State and (so far) Greg Schiano at Rutgers. Snyder finished 90-35 his first time around at KSU (including a 40-0 win over Temple in 1999), took a few years off and then came back after Ron Prince proved to be an utter failure. His second time around he was 69-49. Pretty good.

Golden is a competitive guy, a great recruiter and someone who might see his second act as a chance to prove he was a better coach for Temple than his prodigy, Matt Rhule.

Gruden: “The Temple Owls play as hard as anybody in the country.”

Also, it would restore the Temple “brand” that has left the building the last couple of years. Great special teams, great defense, emphasis on a punishing running game and explosive downfield passing plays off play-action fakes.

Right now, Temple has lost its way and it has a lot more to do with the heart of the program being removed and the only sickness that has affected the program appears to be more of a malaise than any recent pandemic.

The reset button needs to be hit and three years from now could be three years too late. Temple needs to spend money to make it and getting Al Golden back would restore a lot of shaken confidence and sell a lot of tickets in what promises to be a hard-sell offseason.

Saturday: Five Guys

11.26.20
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TU season: That was quick

This is how last season ended in Annapolis. It got much worse this season.

Well, that was quick.

A season that we thought would never start was over in a flash when the American Conference announced that the finale with visiting Cincinnati would be canceled and considered a “no contest.”

That’s curious because all week even the most ardent Temple supporters considered the upcoming game as a no contest. The season is gone, hopefully forgotten, but we doubt it.

“Why don’t these guys like me, Anthony?” “Coach, get Foley back, start blocking punts and returning kicks for touchdowns, give me a fullback and ditch the RPO and you’d be surprised how much the guys would love you.”

Temple football which, as late as the Memphis game, was the winningest AAC program in the history of championship league play, finished with a 1-6 record and now has lost eight of its last 10 games.

How did we get here?

To answer that question, another question has to be proposed.

Why did we hire Rod Carey?

Ostensibly, Carey was a rebound hire for then AD Dr. Pat Kraft. Spurned by Manny Diaz after 18 days, Kraft and Temple Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Kevin Clark reached to the most familiar place they could find and they plucked fellow Indiana grad Carey for the job. No national search, no finding the best guy, just satisfying the comfort level.

He was hired to basically hold serve. Not advance the program further, but at least not demolish it.

On the surface, it appeared to be a good hire because Carey came here with a 52-30 record as a FBS head coach and by hiring a head coach, and not an assistant, Temple just wanted to continue the success of the last guy, Geoff Collins.

If Temple took just one backward step under Carey, that disproved the entire theory of the hire.

Instead, Temple took one side step and one gigantic backward step.

COVID is being used as an excuse, but it’s really not. Had the Owls been handcuffed by the City of Philadelphia under, say, Al Golden, it probably would have taken him no more than two seconds to move the entire practice operation to Ambler, a place where he had two Cherry and White games. Instead, Carey basically said woe is me.

It was not unreasonable for the Owls to post eight wins a year and maybe get a championship every four or five years. Carey was able to do that his first season, but there were major red flags. One, 2018’s AAC Special Teams Player of the Year, Isaiah Wright, was effectively muzzled in 2019 and the entire special teams have been a disaster for two seasons.

Only two years ago before this staff came to town.

There seems to be no sense of urgency to improve that.

On top of that, for the first time in Temple history, starters–good ones–have left the program for greener pastures. Last year, was Quincy Roche (Miami) and Kenny Yeboah (Ole Miss). Many more than that to come. The team’s best running back and only “home run hitter” (Ray Davis) left the team in mid-season. We’ve heard the top two receivers, Jadan Blue and Branden Mack, are considering leaving and Ifeanyi Maijeh, a first-team All-AAC defensive tackle, told OwlsDaily.com he was “exploring his options.”

You don’t explore options if you intend to stay.

Arguably, they are three of the top five players on the team. When three of the top five players on the team leave a year after two of the top three leave, you know something is seriously wrong.

It’s as clear as the nose on Jimmy Durante’s face that the players DO NOT LIKE THIS GUY for whatever reason.

Could you see P.J. Walker, Tyler Matakevich or Haason Reddick leaving Matt Rhule? How about Mo Wilkerson or Adam DiMichele leaving Al Golden? Or Paul Palmer leaving Bruce Arians, even with a transfer portal?

Err, no.

Those were popular “players coaches.” Keeping the players here in the era of the portal is half the battle.

Hopefully, KJ is privy to information most of us do not know.

The other half of the battle is gameday coaching and locking down key areas of the team like special teams. Temple used to be “Special Teams U” and now is a national laughingstock in that area. That third of the team has been that way for two seasons and there is no sense of urgency to improve that area by a) finding great athletes to return punts and kickoffs; b) even attempting to block punts like the Owls used to do on the regular.

On defense, the Owls could not generate a pass rush post-Roche and company and could not stop anyone.

On offense, it was painfully obvious that the Owls have no AAC-caliber starting quarterbacks behind Anthony Russo and, if he leaves, Temple won’t be able to generate any offense at all next year. In other words, if Russo leaves (and we pray to God he won’t), Temple is bleeped.

Russo not being around and the special teams being neglected and the players leaving and others getting hurt added up to 1-6 this season and, however you look at the math next season, it’s going to get worse.

Only a new head of the math department can change things now. Does the Temple administration have the gonads to spend money to make money or will it be satisfied with a return to the dark ages of 5,000 fans rattling around in a 70,000-seat stadium?

Over the next couple of months, we will find out if they can put two and two together.

Saturday’s Best Bets: Going with former Temple Owl Alex Derenthal and his Georgia State squad in laying the 1 against visiting Georgia Southern at the former Turner Field in downtown Atlanta and Duke as a pick in a game across town at Georgia Tech.

Update: Went 3-0 against the spread for last week as Coastal beat App State, 34-23, to lay the 6.5, Liberty “only” lost to NC State by 1 (15-14) to cover that 3.5 and Georgia State easily laid the 3 with a 31-14 win over South Alabama. Now 6-3 against the spread for the season.

Update 2: Split the 11/28 games in Atlanta, now 7-4 against the spread for the season. Won on Georgia State, lost on Georgia Tech.

Monday: Fizzy’s Corner

Wednesday: Getting The Old Gang Back

Saturday: Five Guys

11.23.20
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Fizzy: It’s bad, but it’s been worse

Editor’s Note: The following story from Fizzy is one of the many reasons why I miss our talks at tailgates prior to games. Maybe next year.

Fizzy

By Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub

Instead of critiquing the game, I will tell a treasured Temple football story.              

 It happened  in Delaware and no one could make this up.                                       

    Towards the end of the 1959 season, and amid a horrendous losing streak, we traveled down to play Delaware. Delaware was the top-ranked small college football team. 

    Our bus arrived around dinner time at a motel and went to our assigned rooms to drop off our bags, and immediately returned to the restaurant for a meal. As the guys finished, they drifted into a small lobby where a hotel guest was seated in front of a little black and television to watch the Friday Night Fights. The guest had a beer on a small table and some kind of scorecard. Some of us found seats, while the rest stood as we awaited the coaches.

Pete Stevens

     I can’t remember the fighters, but they were well-known. We were all quiet as we watched the introductions by the ring announcer. Just as he brought the fighters together in the middle of the ring, Head Coach Pete Stevens came thundering in. He looked around at us, and then the television. “What the hell is wrong with you guys,” he yelled. “We’re playing the number one team in the country tomorrow, and you idiots are watching boxing?” With that outburst, Pete stormed over to the television and turned it off. 

     The hotel guest stared at Pete like he was an alien from Mars. We, on the other hand, were trying our best not to laugh out loud. Many of us did not succeed, and Pete was getting irate. When he got that way, his face would turn a bright red, and now he could have taken over for Rudolph the reindeer. He glanced at some notes he took from his pocket, and that’s when line coach John Rogers walked up to Pete. “Pete, you turned off the guy’s television. He’s not one of our kids.”

The largest crowd in Delaware history watched TU win in 1973

     Startled, Pete turned and saw the guy looking at him and rushed over. “Oh, I’m so sorry, sir. I thought you were one of my players. Look, let me turn the television back on, and I’ll get you another beer.” Pete turned the set back on, and just as the picture finally came clear, the announcer said, “Ten! You’re out!”

         The room exploded. The man stood up, and I thought he would punch Pete, but he just shook his head and walked away. We couldn’t control ourselves, and Pete was infuriated. He pulled out another piece of paper and read off thirteen names (out of twenty-six). “These guys stay here. The rest of you go the hell back to your rooms because we don’t need you anyway.”

__________

     The game itself was a horror. All week, we had practiced a sort of a single-wing formation instead of our usual “T.” Our tailback was Charlie Lotson, later to be the football coach at Gratz high school. Unfortunately, it had rained for three days before game day. The field was a sea of mud, and the temperature was around 34 degrees. 

     Somehow, in the first quarter, we’d driven down to about the Delaware 30 yard-line. Charlie was looking for a receiver when he got hit. The ball plopped into the hands of Delaware’s all-American end, Mickey Heinecken, and he took it 70 yards for a touchdown. The rout was on.

      In the fourth quarter, our coaches finally gave up and put in the scrub team. We were the guys who had been sent to our rooms the night before. When we stood on the sideline ready to go in, we were missing our center, whose name was Moses. Moses was hiding on the bench under the large, all-weather jackets and didn’t want to go in. Two of the starters went down the bench from either end, yelling “Moses.” They found him and dragged him to the sideline. Shortly thereafter, a nose-tackle crashed over Moses and nailed me in the backfield for a three-yard loss. At least I got my uniform dirty.

     Later, on defense, I ended up about 10 yards from Delaware’s legendary coaches, Dave Nelson and Tubby Raymond. I stood and stared at them. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I said, “What the hell are you doing? The score is 55-0, and you still have your first team in?” They turned and walked away. One of the reasons they did that was back then; there were “Dunkel Ratings” each week. If you won by a large number, your rating went up. Oh, the final score was 62-0. 

     The only possible moral of the story is if you think things are bad now, remember the past. 

Friday: Cincy and Why We Did It

11.21.20
by

TU Football: It’s going to get worse

Do you think these jackasses could have figured out a way not to kick it to No. 22?

As much as I like to dig through the boxes and find those Cherry and White colored glasses we’ve used in the past, this season has opened our eyes to a new reality.

Today’s hard truth. The Owls will finish 1-7 this year, probably should have been 0-8, and, next year, if they get a dozen games in, they won’t be more than 2-10 in the 2021 season.

If that.

Not unless they make a coaching change now, and with $6 million due the current coach, I don’t see that happening.

The result of that non-action is at least another mini-dark age for Temple football and Owl fans who have lived through one long dark age might not have the stomach for another.

As a once wise philosopher said, “ain’t nobody got time for that.”

A new coach–just throwing out names like Al Golden and Gabe Infante, for starters–could infuse new excitement and maybe keep the players around.

Did you see any excitement coming from the players in the closing two minutes as head coach Rod Carey took four consecutive delay of game penalties to get his ass out of there?

That’s a losing attitude. It’s nowhere near Temple TUFF and has very little to do with COVID.

When Temple was getting ready to play Memphis, even after the loss to Navy, the Owls had the best regular-season AAC record of any team in the league’s championship era, better than UCF, Memphis, Cincy.

Once-proud program fading fast

Now they’ve slipped from No. 1 to No. 4 overall in just a few short weeks.

The snippets of failure have been there for all to see all year.

When the Owls blocked a field goal early in the game when they were competitive, did you a see one Owl–just one–even have an interest in picking that block off the ground and taking it the other way?

That’s coaching, or lack of it.

Lew Katz is long gone and there is nobody out there with his kind of coin who gives two hoots about Temple football with the will and the cash to buy out current head coach Rod Carey’s contract.

Why is it about to get worse?

Players, good players, the best players on the team, are openly talking about jumping ship. One inside E-O source told me that both Branden Mack and Jadan Blue are gone next year and, if they don’t get drafted, they are headed to P5 schools. The team’s only returning AAC first-team defensive player, a tackle, told OwlsDaily last week he is “exploring his options.”

Too much talent has left the building and even more is contemplating leaving in the offseason.

That leaves Temple with glorified scout team players as the face of its program for next year, and maybe the one after that, too.

You can talk about all the young guys getting playing time all you want, but these “young guys” were part of middle-of-the-pack recruiting classes and, if the “young guys” on Cincinnati, Memphis and UCF–all classes ranked higher than Temple’s the last three years–had a chance to play on Saturday, the odds of them playing a more competitive game than 28-3 are significantly higher.

Time to cut the losses and inject new energy into the program. Time and money, though, are two different things. If the Temple administration can’t find the money, they will tell us to be patient and have the time.

Those of us who went through this before don’t have time for that, not after we went through the same thing from 1991-2009. Fall is a beautiful season and we can find better things to do and, if we have to, we will.

Monday: Fizzy’s Corner