Tag Archives: Temple football

11.09.20
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Fizzy: Once again, TU comes up short

This is when there was a lot of hitting in practice and pride six days a week leading up to game day where it was shown on the field and it was Temple handing out the 47-23 beatings.

Editor’s Note: Former Temple football player Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub brings the perspective not only of a player but a lifetime of coaching football, teaching and writing. He breaks down the SMU game here.

 

By Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub

Once again, the collapse began at the last possession before the half. The ball was at the 40, and Temple faced a first and 25, with about 1:43 left on the clock. There was plenty of time to throw a few passes downfield and attempt to score. Maybe you’d get a penalty or a big gain. Inexplicably, Temple tried to run out the clock (they failed) and gave momentum over to SMU.

      Once again, a team destroyed Temple in the second half. It’s the seventh time since the arrival of coach Rod Carey that Temple collapsed after intermission. It seems the only thing the Temple coaches adjust at half-time is their shorts.

     Once again, Temple had a first and goal, and a chance to gain the lead. This time it was in the third quarter. They ran on first down. They ran on second down. They ran on third down and had to kick a field goal. Not even Woody Hayes at Ohio State would have run three times. The coaches still haven’t learned that first down is when you innovate. 

     You’ll notice each of the above paragraphs began with, “once again.” I’m so tired of making the same comments over and over. 

Somewhere the sun is shining,

somewhere the skies are blue

But not with the Temple football group,

because our team is knee-deep in poop

Friday: UCF

11.07.20
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Temple: No incentive to win

After the first play, it was all downhill for Temple.

There are 127 FBS teams who opted into playing this season despite a global pandemic.

Just about every coaching staff is taking this season seriously.

Then there’s Temple.

“I know your right shoulder is hurt but can you throw with your left hand?.“

In a 47-23 loss to SMU on Saturday, the latest in a growing number of embarrassments for a once-proud football program, we saw this:

  • A quarterback (Trad Beatty) who arguably slid past the yard marker (you could make a case either way) for a first down in the first half, was ruled short, and Temple did nothing to challenge. The ESPN+ announcers said it was worth a challenge and it probably was.
  • A shotgun formation on fourth and 1 yard and a predictable loss with the ball snapped so deep. (Every fifth grade Geometry student can tell you the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.)
  • A kicking game that hasn’t even been addressed (missing an extra point and getting two more kickoffs hit out of bounds) despite it being an ongoing problem;
  • No quarterback holding on any kicks, eliminating even the chance of a fake.
  • Punts on fourth down late in the fourth quarter with the game out of reach when those could have been used as a teaching down for the offense.
  • Quarterback auditions during a game for the second straight week that should have been done during practice.

What does all of the above prove?

Temple is playing this entire 2020 season like it’s an extension of spring practice and not a meaningful business enterprise which, when you boil it down to basics, college football is a business and the business is winning.

Like many businesses that serve the public this terrible year, Temple is about to go bankrupt with that approach.

The Owls had more time to prepare for a triple option than both BYU and Air Force did and crapped the bed in that game. They could have invited the best minds in college football known for stopping triple options (say, the Air Force and BYU coaching staffs) but decided, “well, we can stop them doing things our way.”

Err, no. BYU and Air Force held Navy to 3 and 7 points, respectively. It would have been nice to at least review the film of those games and apply the same approach. Instead, Temple did the opposite of those schools and “held” Navy to 31.

Very little of this is attributable to COVID, the City of Philadelphia or injuries. Most of it has to do with the incompetence of the coaching staff and, frankly, a lackadaisical attitude. When you are making $2 million a year for three more years with a $10 million buyout, there is a decreased sense of urgency and that’s what we’re seeing now.

Schools that don’t produce as many NFL players as Temple does have the same problems with COVID but have found a way to succeed. Forget about the teams Temple is looking up at in its own conference (err, everyone). Liberty is 7-0. Coastal Carolina is 6-0. Marshall is 6-0. Hell, even Nevada and San Jose State are 3-0.

Can we get one of those coaching staffs?

The business of college football is flourishing everywhere but Philadelphia largely because winning is no longer a priority here. It’s a sad thing to see.

If it reminds you of a bygone time of nearly 20 years ago, it should. I don’t want to go back to it. Neither should you and, more importantly, the powers-that-be at Temple who were around then.

Monday: Fizzy’s Corner

11.05.20
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SMU hit the jackpot with Dykes

A competent coach would have given this guy a lead blocking fullback and designed a play-action passing game off fakes to him after establishing the run. But no, Rod Carey wants to do the same RPO stuff at Temple he did at NIU. It’s not working, Rod.

While the jury is still out on Rod Carey’s tenure at Temple (although the deliberation room is hostile), they’ve reached a verdict about SMU’s Sonny Dykes in Dallas.

Innocent of any charges he cannot coach after mixed reviews at a brief stint of head coach at California of the PAC-12.

Carey, on the other hand, is not facing a friendly jury after turning an eight-win Temple team into a likely 1-7 squad this season.

When Temple wanted to rebuild its program, it went with an up-and-coming coordinator, Al Golden, who was a top recruiter at Boston College, Penn State and Virginia. When it wanted stability after Steve Addazio, it went with a Golden disciple in Matt Rhule. It went somewhat back to the prior model with Geoff Collins, the difference being his recruiting chops were in the South. With Carey, the Owls went for a G5 head coach.

SMU did it differently, grabbing a Power 5 head coach who had some success at a higher level than the AAC and what Dykes has done at SMU is certainly more impressive than what Carey has done here.

The two coaching styles compare and contrast this Saturday (noon, ESPN+) at Lincoln Financial Field before a “capacity” crowd of 7,500 fans. (Capacity in that the City of Philadelphia will only allow that many Temple fans to enter the stadium due to COVID protocols.)

Dykes has a 21-12 record at SMU (including 6-1 this season and ranked No. 18 in the USA Today Coaches poll) and that includes getting his feet wet with a 5-7 opening season. Dykes has done it a little differently from Carey, turning last year into a 10-2 record season by grabbing 15 starters, mostly high-level Power 5 recruits, out of the transfer portal.

Dykes did it by offering guys an immediate chance to play and no one benefited from that more than starting quarterback Shane Buechele. While at Texas, he led the Longhorns to a win over Iowa State but lost his job to current starter Sam Ehlinger and transferred to SMU.

Dykes is a players’ coach who is able to keep his star players happy.

This is a Ray Davis’ retweet from Halloween

Contrast this to the gruff style of Carey, who is hemorrhaging good players at a level Temple fans have never seen. Last year, the Owls lost quarterback Toddy Centeio in the portal to Colorado State, as well as AAC Defensive Player of the Year Quincy Roche (Miami) and tight end Kenny Yeboah (Ole Miss). No one knows where Ray Davis is headed but losing a player who gained over 900 yards from scrimmage as the Owls’ best running back is a continuation of the bleeding.

Compare that to the places Carey was able to attract players from: Wake Forest (Manny Walker), NIU (C.J. Perez) and Dayton (Michael Niese.)

Usually, opposing coaches gush over Temple prior to the game but not this time. When asked about Temple, this is the only thing he had to say about the Owls: “We just have to worry about ourselves more than we have to worry about Temple.”

No one can blame him because he has a happy group of players and evidence points to that we cannot same the same about Carey’s Temple group right now.

The jury has reached a favorable verdict about Dykes and, while the foreman hasn’t announced anything yet, it’s hard to find anyone giving Carey a thumbs up right now.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis

Monday: Fizzy’s Corner

11.03.20
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Temple defense: The unspoken truth

It’s real bad when South Alabama gives Tulane a better game than Temple does.

How bad is it?

It’s bad.

Really bad.

Even when Anthony Russo gets back to fix the offense, and sadly that’s not this week, the unspoken truth about Temple football is that the defense cannot be fixed.

It’s this bad:

Temple’s defense gave up 37 points to South Florida, a team that scored only 27 on The Citadel, 13 against Tulsa and 24 against East Carolina.

Temple’s defense gave up 38 points to a Tulane team that could score only 27 on South Alabama and 24 on Navy. South Alabama? That noted power which lost to UAB, 42-10?

Yep.

Temple’s defense gave up 31 points to a Navy team that could only score three against BYU and 7 against Air Force.

If Rod Carey falters, looming in the shadows behind him is Gabe Infante

And very little of the above had to do with COVID, because much of the evidence had been there before head coach Rod Carey could pull that excuse.

What did Quincy Roche know and when did he know it?

It would be nice if the AAC Defensive Player of the Year had stayed at Temple to bolster a virtually non-existent pass rush, but he did not and Temple did not get an adequate replacement for him. Did Roche have a problem with Rod Carey? Or Jeff Knowles? Or Walter Stewart?

Carey went into the season shrugging off the personnel departures like Roche, quarterback Toddy Centeio and tight end Kenny Yeboah, saying “we want to go with the guys who want to be here.”

Think about that point and extrapolate it for a second. If the entire starting offense and defense wanted to leave but the scout teams on both sides of the ball want to stay, do you really want to go with the guys who want to be here?

Why do only the good guys want to leave?

Do you think the Owls would have done better than three points if Toddy was still here?

I do.

The evidence is that the offense is an AAC high-quality one when Russo is in the game, scoring 29 against both Navy and Memphis and 32 (one was a defensive score) against USF. That’s on the high end of opponents against those teams.

Three points with two backup quarterbacks against a poor defense like Tulane is inexcusable, but it matters little if the defense cannot keep people off the scoreboard and nothing we’ve seen thus far provides any evidence that will change.

That’s the unspoken truth about this season.

Until maybe now.

Friday: SMU preview

11.02.20
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Loss leaves Fizzy speechless

The difference between Midwestern nice and Philly fans is this NIU fan apologizes.

Editor’s Note: Like many of us, a 38-3 loss to a Tulane team that barely beat South Alabama left a lot of Temple fans speechless and Fizzy was one of them. He could understandably muster up only a few words in the form of this poem

By Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub

I watched the game in disbelief,

as our football program crashed on a reef

Yes, there were injuries and infections galore,

but I couldn’t help shuddering at the final score

We couldn’t tally on the air or ground,

and somewhere an offense needs to be found

A freshman quarterback killed us with passes,

our coverages and strategies stuck in molasses.

I’ve watched Temple football for over sixty years,

and this downward spiral has me literally in tears

The many excuses simply won’t float,

All I can say is make sure you vote.

Tuesday: How bad is it?

Friday: SMU

10.31.20
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How Did Temple Get This Bad This Fast?

In any other year, Rod Carey would be on the hot seat at Temple University after a 1-3 start.

As we’ve all found out since about mid-March, this is not just any other year.

In the year of Covid, probably two or three years of it, really, no one is getting fired at any university because the revenue streams coming in are so unpredictable. The Owls are allowed almost no fans this year and next year is up in the air as well.

The university is in the hole for $10 million of a five-year contract to Carey and there is no Lew Katz around willing to eat it.

How did Temple go. in just two short weeks, from the No. 1 team in conference wins (since championship play began in 2015) to a likely 1-7 season?

In a word, Pride. In other, stubbornness.

As King Solomon, a pretty wise guy himself, said: “Pride Goeth Before the Fall.”

In Carey’s case, he had a nice “square peg” offense at Northern Illinois in the RPO and players suited enough for him there to post a 52-30 record as a FBS head coach. When he came to Temple, he found himself with “round hole” players who were more suited to a pro-set offense, and a quarterback who could never sell a defense on a RPO but is damn good at flinging it down the field after the run is established off play action.

Those of us who thought Carey might have been a good hire did so thinking a good coach adjusts his schemes to his available personnel and not try to force an ill-fitting system onto some great players from another system.

I did not see that coming. I thought a professional head coach would be able to improvise and adjust. Carey has not been.

What we learned in Temple’s 38-3 loss to Tulane–a loss that broke an 86-year (five games since the 1934 Sugar Bowl loss) winning streak–was that Anthony Russo is only about 10x a better quarterback than his two backups and that might be a conservative estimate.

Get well soon, Anthony.

Even more than that, though, is that Temple should have been 3-0 coming into the game had the Owls approached the red zone with some simple shit like throwing the fade to Branden Mack on first down instead of dicking around with runs on the first two downs. You’ve got a 6-6 wide receiver and a quarterback more than capable of throwing a fade like this and you piss away two wins by throwing a dump pass short of the goal (Navy) and running straight up the gut followed by a quarterback draw (Memphis)?

This is what Carey should have done for the 2-point conversion at Navy (30-second mark)

If Temple is paying Carey $2 million a year for that, the administration should demand its money back for those two losses alone.

Temple needed a running back and a pass rusher in the offseason but passed up on chances to get running back Ricky Slade from Penn State (who went to Old Dominion) and defensive end Scott Patchan (Miami, who went to Colorado State). Both were arguably better than any player they had here at both positions. Those are administrative errors, but Carey’s coaching errors cost the Owls two precious wins prior to the Tulane fiasco.

Due to missing 13 players (covid) and Russo (shoulder) it is hard to blame Carey for the loss to Tulane but, in the history of college football, rotating quarterbacks has resulted in about zero wins in 1 million games.. That’s why, if Russo is injured, you’ve got about three days to settle on one guy and not use a game as an audition.

This ain’t Hamilton where you audition guys to play the role of Aaron Burr during the play itself.

The Owls have tried two methods of hiring head coaches, one bringing in up-and-coming assistants, and one bringing in a proven FBS winning head coach. They haven’t tried the Greg Schiano Method (hiring a guy who proved he could do the same exact job at a high level), but Al Golden is available. Maybe even a better option is grabbing a local head coaching legend like Gabe Infante, who has been proven to be a great gameday coach.

So far, the prior two methods have been problematic. If Temple goes back to the old way, do you trust Fran Dunphy to identify the next Matt Rhule?

I don’t. Fran is more likely to bring a guy like Bob Diaco than he is a Jeff Hadley.

One led to a revolving door that ended finally after an 18-day turnaround. Another brought in a guy who wanted to do it his way when he was delivered a blueprint for winning at Temple long before he got here.

He ignored it and now we’re stuck with him for three more years. Saturday was ugly, but it’s about to becoming uglier and, unless one of us hits the lottery and are willing to buy him out, we can’t do a damn thing about it.

Brace for impact. To paraphrase King Solomon (and Barry McGuire), we’re on the eve of destruction.

Monday: Fizzy

10.29.20
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TU-Tulane: What we won’t see

No one knows what we will see when Temple and Tulane play in New Orleans on Saturday.

We do know that Vegas believes the game will be decided by around three points and Vegas has usually proven to be right so making a play in special teams for once in Rod Carey’s short Temple life could be the difference between a win or a loss.

.This was just two years ago. It now seems like 200.

Judging on nearly two years of evidence, we do know what we won’t see: An impact play by Temple on special teams. By impact play, it’s simply this: A blocked field goal, punt or return for a touchdown.

It’s as simple as that and as complicated. Penn State might be Linebacker U and Miami (Ohio) might be the cradle of coaches but it wasn’t that long ago Temple was “Special Teams U.”

James Nixon’s 93-yard kickoff return in the 2009 game beat a 10-win Navy team. Delano Green’s punt return in 2010 beat Fiesta Bowl-bound UConn. Those plays were the residue of hard work in training camp below and the coaches putting their most elusive athletes in a position to advance the ball.

Who is the Matty Brown on this team?

Willie Erdman is our Matty Brown this year and that says more about Rod Carey than it says about Erdman. I rarely have to rub my eyes and go to the roster when I see a Temple player but when No. 84 fielded a punt against Memphis I had to ask myself: “Who is 84?”

It turned out to be Erdman, who was profiled on OwlsDaily this week. When I read the lead that he was a transfer from Georgia, I got excited for about a millisecond. “Must’ve been a five-star recruit with moves like Gale Sayers” went through my mind before discovering he was a walk-on with zero punt returns for zero yards at Georgia.

I’m all for transfers from P5 schools coming to Temple, but you can leave the walk-ons there to the Villanovas of the world. If I get a P5 transfer, I want it to be a guy from Penn State, Ricky Slade to throw out a name, who had to transfer to JMU to get playing time despite being the No. 1-rated RB recruit in the country.

Back to Erdman, though. Carey seems to be from the school of thought that just catching the ball and securing it is enough. He doesn’t seem to understand that securing the ball and advancing it are not mutually exclusive concepts.

Where is our Avery Williams?

Williams is shown above blocking a punt. Under Carey, Temple hasn’t even tried to block a punt and no one knows why but a clue can be provided by how Carey approaches the return game. Carey is risk adverse, which means that he’s probably worried more about getting a 15-yard penalty for roughing (or running into) the kicker than he is about, say, Branden Mack using that 91-inch wingspan to leap up and block a punt and then have about 10 other Owls chasing it into the end zone and falling on it.

Again, it’s possible to block a punt without running into the kicker. Temple used to do it all the time. For instructions on how, pick up the phone and ask Ed Foley.

Carey is too proud to do that and too conservative to change his special teams philosophy now. Let’s hope he can make up the three points in other areas but abandonment of one of the three most important phases of the game is not something Temple can sustain.

Predictions this week: Had Marshall laying the 26.5 on FIU but that ticket returned voided due to game being canceled; also was lucky enough to jump on BC getting the 31.5 before the Lawrence injury and picked Georgia Southern covering the 6.5 (barely) in a 24-17 win over visiting South Alabama. Of course, won’t count those so we start at 0-0 with these official TFF picks:

Air Force getting 14.5 against Boise State (any team that beats Navy 40-7 has my respect); going with Boston College now getting “only” 24 against Clemson and Michigan laying the 25 against Michigan State. BC is incredibly well-coached, while Michigan State hiring Mel Tucker coming off a 5-7 season at Colorado was a real head-scratcher to me and that was reaffirmed by Rutgers’ win at MSU last week. Not touching Temple-Tulane (no trust in Temple’s defense or special teams), Memphis-Cincy or Houston-UCF, three AAC games that can go either way.

Update as of 11/1: Lost on both Air Force and Michigan, won on Boston College.

Record so far: 1-2 against the spread.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis

10.26.20
by

Fizzy: Success comes down to this

TU had 500 yards and 30 first downs, but still found a way to lose.

                                                                                                                        

Editor’s Note: Former Temple football player Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub brings the perspective not only of a player but a lifetime of coaching football, teaching and writing. He breaks down the Memphis game here.

By Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub

    If I could be the defensive coordinator facing Temple every week, I could be the fourth Temple guy in the College Coaches Hall of Fame along with Ray Morrison, Wayne Hardin, and Pop Warner. That’s because I know what happens when Temple gets a first and goal inside the opponent’s 10-yard line.

  1. The first play will be a run up-the-gut.
  2. The second play will be a quick-screen to the outside.
  3. The third play will be a fade to the corner of the end-zone.

     I know this because that’s what they did all of last year and the first three games of this year.

     Coaches Rod Carey and Mike Uremovich don’t understand the importance of the first and goal play call. If you run the ball and don’t get real close to the goal line, you are screwed. The defense can now assume the next two plays will be throws or trick plays. A first and goal is the most wonderful time to call a play-action pass or another kind of imaginative play.

The TU football playbook in the red zone so far has been 2 runs followed by an incomplete pass.

      Thus far in 2020, Temple has been to the goal line three times in the first half in three straight games and come away with 3 points, 6 points, and 7 points. Saturday, they had a missed field goal, a made field goal, and a missed fourth and goal. That’s why they lost. The main reason Temple is 1-2, instead of 3 -0, is they don’t know what the hell they’re doing at the other team’s goal line. Temple could just as well be 0-3. 

     Success in football depends on three essential factors, coaching, coaching, and coaching. Temple keeps making the same mistakes over and over. Do you blame the players or the coaches? 

Friday: Tulane Preview

Saturday: Tulane Game Analysis

10.24.20
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TU-Memphis: No Mulligans Allowed

There is a school of thought out there that because of a national pandemic things like doing your job correctly should be overlooked.

That maybe this year every coaching staff in America should get a Mulligan and be re-evaluated next season.

Noble, but incorrect because other people in your same profession have no trouble doing theirs. The new head coach at Boston College is doing just fine. The Georgia State coach is doing great. The BYU coach is a sensation.

All have arguably lesser talent than Temple with the possible exception of BYU.

Whether or not Rod Carey is the right head coach for Temple University’s football team going forward is very much an open question.

What we do know based on the evidence of three games is the program is going backward.

In three games, we’ve seen the Owls allow 31 points to a Navy team that scored only 27 on a very bad ECU team, allow 37 points to a team that got beat 42-13 by Tulsa and now made some very questionable moves in a 41-29 loss to Memphis on Saturday.

If you think that’s the Temple football we have all come to know and love, think again.

We said this before the game.

Matt Rhule preached “not beating yourself” but running the ball twice after a turnover that gives you a first down at the 10 is beating yourself. Not doing the basics in the kicking game is beating yourself.

Even the best part of the team, offense, is riddled with coaching mistakes.

In the red zone, the Owls have a ready-made mismatch in 6-6 wide receiver Branden Mack against any secondary. Why not lob it to him in the back of the end zone on the first play after the turnover when the Memphis defense is not set? Your chances are a lot better of a) scoring and b) getting a pass interference that puts the ball on the 1 with a first down than what Carey chose to do. Would Rhule have thrown to Mack?

I bet he would have. That’s why he’s in the NFL and Carey is 0-7 in bowl games.

The Owls missed a chip-shot field goal their first drive. Before the game, Carey said he was “happy” with the kicking game. Any other coach in the United States would look at the results and not only say he wasn’t happy, but that “our kicking game sucks and we need to do something about it.”

Let’s see. After a comical performance in the kicking game the first two games, the Owls not only missed that chip shot field goal but also missed an extra point, had two kickoffs go out of bounds and only by a miracle missed a third kickoff going out.

When you have three kickers on the team and one of them has kicked it out of bounds twice, what do you do? Of course, try another kicker.

Instead, Carey sent out the guy who kicked it out of bounds twice for a try at a third kick out of bounds. Only by some miracle did the ball take a crazy hop and squirt down the sidelines and stay inbounds.

This happens to no other team in America yet Carey tolerates it and has done so for two years.

Sure, Anthony Russo threw three interceptions but one of them was a ball delivered perfectly to Jadan Blue that should have been caught and another came after a brutal non-call on a perfectly-thrown ball to Mack that probably would have led to a touchdown for Temple and robbed Memphis of a touchdown.

That’s a 14-point swing right there and it would have been the difference in the game.

We said before the game that the defense needed to hold Memphis to 28 points or less for the win but because they did not generate even a semblance of a pass rush, they could not.

The kicking and special teams, though, is another story and there is a minimum standard that every team must achieve and Temple is far below that standard.

It has nothing to do with COVID and plenty to do with incompetence and that’s a standard Temple cannot accept but knowing the Temple administration as I do it probably will.

Monday: Fizzy’s Corner

10.23.20
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Memphis-TU: Can anyone here play defense?

Hold this team to 28 points again and it’s a Temple win.

Temple football came back from the dead with an injection of special teams and defense and a little binder of men written by Al Golden.

Right now, it doesn’t look like the special teams are coming back but maybe the defense will.

Temple has the best all-time record in conference play (since championship play began in 2015) and Memphis can tie with a win on Saturday.

That’s really the only hope 13.5-point underdog Temple has for winning Saturday’s noon showdown (only on ESPN+) at Memphis.

Full disclosure here: I thought going into the season that Temple’s offense was going to be the better of the three units (special teams, defense, offense) and had little hope for the special teams to improve.

Defense, I thought, was going to be a different story. I thought the defense was going to be an almost equal partner in any success the 2020 Owls would have.

So far, I’m wrong but it’s only two games.

Sure, the Owls had to replace their top nine tacklers but they had star quality players returning in tackles Dan Archibong and Ifeanyi Maijeh, linebackers William Kwenkeu and Isaiah Graham-Mobley and safety Amir Tyler along with four solid corners.

One of those corners, Ty Mason, opted out due to COVID-19 concerns on his part but three–Christian Braswell, Linwood Crump Jr. and Freddie Johnson–have plenty of solid starts under their belts.

There’s no way a team with this much talent should have given up 31 and 37 points, respectively. That has to turn around if the Owls are going to have a chance this week.

Maybe they will play up to their potential on Saturday, maybe they won’t. Maybe the first two games were the result of lack of hitting due to City of Philadelphia restrictions. Maybe the fact that the current staff never faced a triple option had to do with Navy’s success.

There’s no excuse, though, for what happened against USF and that’s concerning.

Maybe our expectations for this group are way too high but we should find out by Saturday at 3. Temple has to hold Memphis in the high 20s or low 30s for the win and score in the mid-30s.

I think they have the talent to do it but they have to start putting pressure on the quarterback and force fumbles and interceptions.

The good news is that Memphis doesn’t play any defense, either, so it should be an entertaining game nonetheless.

When Golden got here in 2005, he understood the fastest way of getting Temple from the Bottom 10 to the Top 25 was to build the defense first and then make plays on the special teams. His reasoning was that if you could keep the bad guys off the scoreboard, you could stay in every game and, if you can stay in every game, you can steal a few maybe you shouldn’t.

Stopping the run and getting after the quarterback were the hallmark of Golden’s teams. The binder of men had to do with Golden’s Eastern recruiting contacts developed as an assistant at Boston College, Penn State and Virginia. Golden went out and got physical, tough, defensive players who were mostly captains of championship high school teams.

That leadership developed the culture.

Something has happened in the last couple of years to stray from that culture. Special teams have become suspect and defense has suffered a noticeable decline. There are a lot of good players on defense but they have to play up to their potential.

What we do know is the physical and tough Temple defense we expected to see early in October has to show up now that November is just around the corner.

Or that one win we saw on Saturday might be it.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis