Tag Archives: Temple football

05.07.19
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The Wisdom of Collins’ recruiting

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One of the benefits of arriving at Cherry and White Day a couple of weeks ago was the Temple football informational sheet they handed out to every guest.

On one side was the complete roster, broken down alphabetically at the top and numerically below.

On the flip side were the football schedule (Bucknell, ugh), quick facts, coaching staff, pronunciation lists and football recruits.

The recruits–mostly the guys who arrive in July–seemed like a thin list but you could always find a number of guys who could be immediate contributors.

Not this year.

This year we found one: Wisdom Quarshie, who is listed as a 6-foot-3, 310-pound tackle who could play on either side of the ball. Todderick Hunt, the “Ted Silary” of NJ.com wrote this about him: “Senior defensive tackle Wisdom Quarshie is, arguably, the most violent offensive lineman in New Jersey. His highlight tape is a non-stop real of pancake blocks and on-field devastation. And he’ll now bring his lunch pail to Temple, less than 30 minutes away from his home, where his family, friends and all who support him can watch him live his dream.” (Note he called him a defensive tackle but said he was the most violent offensive lineman in NJ.)

Quarshie, a two-time first-team All-State player at St. Joe’s (Hammonton), appears to be ready-made to help but, of the 15 players listed as “recruits” on the info sheet, his sticking out like a sore thumb among those ready to make an impact points out the, err, Wisdom of Collins’ recruiting. Or lack of same. Hard to see anything but redshirts for the other 14 guys on the list of incoming recruits.

Collins had three classes and the only one worth much was unveiled on St. Pete Beach at the Gasparilla Bowl. In that one, he got two immediate offensive line starters and a grad transfer who became a second-round NFL draft choice.

Wayne Hardin once said recruiting was easy at Temple because you could “put a pencil in the middle of Broad Street and draw a 200-mile circle around it and come up with enough players to win.” Collins got away from that formula by concentrating his recruiting in the South. Good for him and his Southern-centric coaches, but bad for Temple.

Now that Fran Brown is back in charge of the important business of Temple recruiting, the Owls should return to their neighborhood roots where the fruits of Brown’s earlier stint here produced a championship roster.

Fran knows what he’s doing and, with him supplying the guys and Rod Carey coaching them up, that should be a productive partnership.

Friday: The Listerine Bowl

 

 

05.05.19
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TFF: Banned by Collins

maymeister

The promised Mayhem was just another Collins’ lie.

In the two years observing Geoff Collins up close, we can sum him up in a few words:

More style than substance.


He always struck me
as Steve Addazio 2.0
with one eye on the
coach’s exit door
the entire two years
he was here

At least that’s my take and, after talking to a lot of former Temple football players who played mostly for substance coaches, that’s pretty much a universal take on him, too.

Now we can add another personality trait to Collins:

Thin-skinned.

I’m not much of a twitter guy. I’m on it only because of the business associated with this blog. I’ve never asked a single person to follow me and I never will but, much to my amazement, I have 378 followers.

Thankful for them all.

I’m a lot more selective in people I follow and only follow 238 but one of the people was Collins because he was a savvy social media guy and I wanted to hear what he had to say.  I never interacted with @CoachCollins on twitter, just followed him. Never said a word to him on twitter or reacted to any of his posts.

So consider my surprise a few days ago when I checked Collins out on twitter for the first time since he quit Temple only to see this:

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I can only assume that since I’ve never said anything to Collins on social media that he is blocking Temple Football Forever instead.

Forever.

I’ve been told I’m not the only Temple fan blocked by Collins on twitter but the difference between me and them is that most of those guys have said something to Collins on Twitter so I’ve got to assume that something was written in this space has gotten under Collins’ skin.

To that I say good.

For one, I’m glad he’s gone. He’s a terrible game-day coach and his offensive coordinator was the most ill-fitted coach, assistant or head, in Temple history.  As game day coaches of the last decade go, Matt Rhule was No. 1, Al Golden No. 2, Steve Addazio No. 3 and Collins fourth. When you are a worse game day coach than Al and Steve, that’s not good.

Mostly, though, it’s about credibility.

Really the only time I ever talked to Collins was at the first season ticket-holder party when I asked him to do me one favor.

“What’s that?” he said.

“Make Nick Sharga an every-down fullback.”

“Don’t worry. I’m the fullback coach and we’re going to use him more than they used him last year.”

Since “last year” was the year Sharga pretty much led the team to the AAC championship as a three-down fullback, I was satisfied with that answer.

Collins, of course, lied. Now we know he followed this blog and was upset with its contents. My biggest problem with him in his first year was he pissed away any chance Temple had of repeating its AAC title by abandoning the very offense that its players were recruited to execute. Tailback with a lead fullback blocker, establish the run and make explosive downfield plays in the passing game off play-action fakes. Instead, he eschewed the “best fullback in the nation” (his words) by playing him one down a series, if that. Now he’s going to screw up his first season at Georgia Tech by doing the same thing. Making an entire team recruited to play the triple option run Dave Patenaude’s version (pass first, run second) of the read-option. If that’s not a formula for disaster, I don’t know what is. Georgia Tech fans, you can’t say you have not been warned.

So he’s a certified liar who was more schtick than substance and now we can add the trifecta of being thin-skinned. He always struck me as Steve Addazio 2.0 with one eye on the coach’s exit door the entire two years he was here. In fact, pretty much a year and a month ago we predicted that Collins would be headed to Georgia Tech with this post on March 7, 2018.

From what I’ve seen of Rod Carey so far, he hasn’t displayed any of those negative traits. Temple football is better off with Carey both on Sept. 28 and every other day going forward.

Tuesday: The Newbies

Friday: The Listerine Bowl

04.28.19
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Bulking Up a Forgotten Position

Like fullback, the tight end is becoming an extinct species with college football offenses trying to spread the field.

Still, there are old school coaches like Kurt Ferentz still out there who understand a 100×40-yard field can only be stretched so far and the tight end can still be weaponized for good.

That’s why it was heartening on the first night of the NFL draft to see one school (Iowa) get not just one, but both of its starting tight ends drafted in Round One.

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Tyler Sear gets big gain against national champion Clemson last year.

Rod Carey, being an old school coach, probably took stock of the Temple roster and saw only a pair of tight ends with game experience in Kenny Yeboah and David Martin-Robinson and, when a one-time Temple recruit was looking for a new landing spot, Carey offered a parachute.

Tyler Sear’s transfer from Pitt to Temple should give Owl fans a sense of security in that he was rated the No. 1 tight end in Pennsylvania in his senior year of high school.

He was Pitt’s starting TE this past season but left the team in October. Since two other tight ends left the team, a logical takeaway is that Pitt has de-emphasized the position so much that there was some grumbling in the tight end room.

Not so at Temple, where Yeboah was used in one of the more clever plays last year against Maryland. Quarterback Anthony Russo faked an out to Ventell Byrant (who sold it with a 37-inch vertical leap) and that drew two DBs to Bryant, leaving Yeboah free to run down the sideline for an easy six.

Carey has a history of utilizing the tight ends in pretty much the same manner.

Since waivers are routinely granted by the NCAA now, Sear will probably be eligible for the Owls this fall. The Owls are still waiting on a waiver request from Baylor DB transfer Harrison Hand, but these things routinely are adjudicated in the late summer and not in the spring.

Hopefully, these means more double-tight end sets in a run-oriented goal-line offense this fall.

Tuesday: The Drafted Guys

Friday: Shot Chart

Sunday: The Arrivals

 

04.26.19
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Gauging The Competiton: UCF, USF, Cincy

surprise

Just a small portion of the 33,306 Temple fans whose chant of “DEE-fense!, DEE-fense!” was so loud the Cincy QB could not hear the snap count. Heroes, really.

Gauging is a pretty good word.

Defined as “to determine the exact dimensions, capacity, quantity, or force of; measure. to appraise, estimate, or judge” it is probably first best used after spring football practice to determine the weaknesses and strengths of Temple football opponents.

If I were writing this with cherry-colored glasses now, I would rate Temple as THE favorite.

The Owls have in my mind the best quarterback in the league in Anthony Russo and POTENTIALLY the best running back in the league in Isaiah Wright. Since we’re not sure new head coach Rod Carey will use Wright on more than a handful of plays from scrimmage, we will have to take those glasses off and put on the regular ones with brown rims and a prescription.

(If Carey made the announcement today or in the summer that he’s putting what Army coach Jeff Monken said was a “touchdown waiting to happen” permanently in the backfield, we’d change our minds.)

temple

Looking through those, I’d have to rate Cincinnati as the AAC East favorite, followed by UCF and then Temple. I cannot see USF rated ahead of Temple under any circumstances, but those are the four strongest teams in the East.

Here’s an early look:

(from USA Today)

UCF

UCF’s annual spring football game Saturday gave fans a chance to see just how close the quarterback battle is for the Knights. Head coach Josh Heupel let all four of his available quarterbacks rotate series under center.

Though they each showed flashes of brilliance, it was clear that more work needs to be done for a true starter to emerge.

“Some good and some bad,” Heupel said of his quarterbacks’ play today. “Today was not any of their best days collectively from start to finish. I thought there were some real positive things early when we were pushing the ball down the field. There were some times where we didn’t handle the tempo as well as we needed to.”

Redshirt sophomore Darriel Mack Jr. opened the game with a two-play drive that was capped off by touchdown pass to redshirt senior wide receiver Jacob Harris.

Senior Brandon Wimbush’s best came right before halftime when he led a lengthy drive that resulted in Jacob Harris catching his second touchdown pass in the corner of the end zone with 13 seconds left.

CINCINNATI

Like Carey, Cincinnati coach Luke Fickell does not believe in spring football contact:

He believes full contact special teams in spring are a throwback. Fickell remembered doing them in his days as a player at Ohio State under Jim Tressel.

“It’s not that often that you get to do it,” Fickell said. “Coach Tress used to do it. You kind of get worried. A guy can get rolled up or this, that and the other thing. But as tired as they are by the end of spring, as tired as they are after covering a couple of kicks, the contacts are nearly as high speed.

“It was a great opportunity for our returners, our kickers in those situations were they have to make some decisions.”

The Bearcats are coming off an 11-2 season with a win over Virginia Tech in the Military Bowl.  Quarterback Desmond Ritter, who blamed the Temple fan crowd noise for a key fumble in one of the two losses, looked good but he has lost his top wide receiver Kahil Lewis.

USF
The Bulls might have a new starter at quarterback in Plant City High’s Jordan McCloud, who was 17 for 25 for 228 yards and two touchdowns (and one pick) in the spring game.

The offensive line, though, which was the team’s weak point a year ago, needs “work” according to Charley Strong. It’s hard to make a living in the AAC with an offensive line in a state of flux like this one.

Sunday: Bulking Up a Position

Tuesday: The Drafted Guys

Friday: Shot Chart

Sunday: Blocked by Collins

04.19.19
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Temple Football: Checking Five Magic Boxes

Penn State v Temple

Robby Anderson celebrates win over Penn State with many of the 70,000 fans that day

There was a lot of talk on Saturday at the various aptly named fun-fest stops about the current and the future of the Temple football program but, to get an appreciation for where we are now, it is a worthwhile endeavor to reflect upon the last decade or so.

There was no one more optimistic than me on that December day in 2005 that Al Golden was hired but if you told me one … ONE … of these things would happen in the span of 10 years I might agree it was possible.

All five?

I’d have to say you were crazy.

Consider these five boxes checked:

Penn State v Temple

Sharif Finch suckers Hackenberg into a near pick six.

Beating Penn State: This I would have believed the most. Temple had come close many times before in this series but just never got to the finish line.  Getting this monkey off the back, though, might have been the most satisfying of the five boxes we’re checking today. Having a capacity house of 70,000 fans (more Cherry than Blue in the stands) cheering their heads off for something that has not happened since 1941 was awe-inspiring. Having Temple be the team showing mercy to Penn State by taking four knees deep in Nittany Lion territory when it could have scored easily to make it 34-10 made it that much better.

golden

Al Golden no doubt was watching this day. I wonder if he saw his photo?

Being the focus of ESPN’s College Football Game Day: Not only were the Owls the focus, but the thousands of cheering Temple fans that filled Independence Mall made it one of the more iconic Game Day shows in that program’s history. Mix in a national TV game between then No. 21-ranked Temple vs. No. 9 ranked Notre Dame that night in 2015 that went down to the last play and that was the topper. If the Owls ever won a game they lost (24-20), that was it. It was the second-highest rated college football game on TV in 2015 and the Philadelphia rating of 18.2 (higher than most Eagles’ games) made it the most watched college football game in Philadelphia of all time on ESPN.

Tyler Matakevich, Temple, Notre Dame,

 

Having the National Defensive Player of the Year: Maybe the most difficult needle to pass through is getting a Temple player a prestigious national player of the year award but, in 2015, Tyler Matakevich squeezed through it by getting both the Chuck Bednarik and Bronco Nagurski Awards as national defensive player of the year.

Getting Two NFL first-round draft choices: In Mo Wilkerson and Hasson Reddick, the Owls have had two first-round draft choices in a span of five years. More, obviously, to come–maybe this season–but that’s pretty good stuff.

NCAA FOOTBALL: DEC 03 AAC Championship - Navy v Temple

Winning a championship: Winning the AAC is not a national championship, but it’s darn good. The year the Owls won their league, 2016, Navy beat Notre Dame (28-27), Cincinnati beat Purdue (38-20), Memphis beat Kansas (43-7) and Houston handed Oklahoma one of its only two losses (33-23). Temple, though, was the team in that league which hoisted the championship trophy of that league.

Hopefully, there’s more of that kind of hoisting to come.

Tuesday: What’s Next?

 

02.28.19
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Gabe Infante Hints at New Offense

MO-gabe-infante-colin-lenton-940x540

National High School Coach of the Year Gabe Infante will have a positive impact on both Temple’s game plans and recruiting

A few weeks back, a writer for Philly Voice named Joe Santoliquito (who I will henceforth drop the journalistic norm and refer to him as Joe in any second reference) made a big splash by spilling some locker room gossip about Carson Wentz.

No names were attached to the quotes in that piece but it got a lot of attention.

Nice story and it got a lot of clicks for a website called Philly Voice but a more newsworthy story Joe did last week received as much splash as a pebble skipping across a puddle on 13th Street.

In other words, none.

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It deserves mention here because it says a lot more about the other Lincoln Financial Field football tenant, Temple University.  Full disclosure here: As a big fan of the Catholic League, I’ve followed Infante’s teams closely over the last decade and I can write without hesitation that it was the best-coached team, college, high school or NFL, I’ve seen in that time frame. Infante will have a positive impact on Temple’s preparation and recruiting, which has been lacking in the past couple of years.

Joe did a story on new Temple running backs’ coach Gabe Infante and, in it, Gabe went on record as saying more revealing than anyone said in that Wentz story: “There’s no chance to catch your breath and learn how to do it, while you’re installing a new offense.”

On the surface, that’s a pretty innocuous remark. Of course, moving to a new job would naturally involve a new offense except for the fact that St. Joseph’s Prep and Northern Illinois ran essentially the same read-option offense a year ago. It was also pretty much the same offensive look Dave Patenaude ran at Temple last year.

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While Prep and NIU had the personnel to run such an offense, Temple does not. The Owls have a classic NFL skill set passer in Anthony Russo and fans had to cringe every time Patenaude was asking a talent like that to slide, which he did rather well.

Maybe this group of accomplished coaches looked at the current Temple personnel grouping and decided to fit the offense around the skills of the players they have and not tried to force a system onto ill-fitting players. The offense Temple should run is the exact same system Bill Belichick ran while leading the New England Patriots to the NFL championship–heavy use of the fullback to establish the run and explosive downfield plays in the passing game as a result of play-action.

Definitely the antithesis of the RPO game and something to look forward to in the weeks ahead.

Joe wrote a story that had a lot more meat to it than his Wentz one because it attached a name to a quote and hinted at real positive change.

We should find out soon enough but, with Infante around, the Owls should be in pretty good shape.

Saturday: Pure Gold

Tuesday: The Annual Season Ticket Call

Thursday: 5 Things to Watch in Spring Practice

 

02.23.19
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Temple 2019: Upgrading The X’s and O’s

The great Bear Bryant once said: “It’s not about the X’s and O’s, it’s about the Jimmie’s and Joe’s.”

Given Byrant’s six national championships at Alabama, there is a lot of street cred behind that remark.

Still, when it comes to Temple’s football history, if you really look at it, it’s more about the X’s and O’s.

bright

Mark Bright, a “legacy” recruit, became the MVP of the Garden State Bowl

 

Look at the 1979 team for instance. The above video is the coaches’ game film from the 28-17 Garden State Bowl win over California. (A big thanks to Zamani Feelings for unearthing this pure gold. I once had a copy of the national broadcast of this game but lost it.) In it, you will find a lot of guys who had only one other scholarship offer or none outplaying a lot of guys who were four stars for one of the PAC-10 powers of the day.

None other than Bill Belichick has said that game film illustrated a masterful coaching job by Wayne Hardin that day. “I looked at that a lot and I lot of things didn’t make sense at first, but then rewound it and said, ‘Geez, I knew what Wayne is trying to do there and now it makes sense.’ ”

Bright

Mark Bright was the son of Jim Bright, the starting fullback of the 1950 Owls’ team.

The MVP of the game, fullback Mark Bright, had no scholarship offers out of William Tennent High school in Warminster but Hardin took a flier on him because Mark’s dad, Jim Bright (the then principal at New Hope-Solebury High), was a starting fullback for the 1950 Owls. “At Temple, we take care of our own,” Hardin said the day he signed Mark.

Hardin broke down film as well as he made it mandatory viewing for other legendary coaches and he saw something in Bright’s game that he liked. Same for starting quarterback Brian Broomell, who was recruited out of Sterling High in South Jersey as a strong safety. Broomell was good enough to crack the starting lineup as a true freshman on defense, something that never happened in those days and Hardin, needing a quarterback, converted that athleticism to the offense the next year.

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Other players on that team like linebackers Steve Conjar and Mike Curcio became the Jimmies and Joes under Hardin they probably weren’t before they got to Temple and it all added up to the best team in modern Temple history. Hopefully, with 2019 being the 40-year anniversary of that first bowl win they will be honored at halftime of a game this fall.

That’s where 2019 comes into play. There are a lot of Jimmies and Joes on the team along with the documented fact that Rod Carey is the first proven winning FBS-level head coach to come into the school since Hardin.  Geoff Collins really did not have that kind of knowledge nor did even the Sainted Matt Rhule or the devilish Steve Addazio. Carey is not Hardin, but if he’s even close it’s a significant upgrade in the X’s and O’s department.

Mix the knowledge of X’s and O’s that Carey has with the Jimmies and Joes who have been mostly the product of Matt Rhule’s hard recruiting and this could be a special season. For it to be the most special season of all, this is the minimum benchmark: 11 wins, including a bowl game, and at least a No. 17 or better ranking in both major polls.

The 1979 Temple team proved you needed both X’s and O’s and Jimmies and Joes and it should be fascinating to see if the 2019 team can use that same formula to produce similar results.

Tuesday: Tweet Storm

Thursday: Hinting at a New Offense

Saturday: Season Ticket Call

 

02.21.19
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King Solomon Solution to a King-Sized Dilemma

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Kicking the can down the road has been a hallmark of the stadium issue from a figurative standpoint for seven years. Kicking it down the road literally offers perhaps the best solution to a vexing problem.

If you haven’t heard anything on the stadium issue, there are at least a couple of reasons for it.

One, when Mitchell Morgan takes over for Patrick J. O’Connor as the Temple University Board of Trustees chairman on Aug. 1, that big folder marked “Temple Stadium” will be left on his desk along with another one “candidates to replace Dick Englert.” (Englert has held the job as President since Neil Theobald was let go three years ago.)

If there was every a can kicked down the road, it’s a stadium that was a supposed “done deal” as far back as March 2012 and talked about prior to the Liacouras Center even being built.

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Unfortunately, these guys are still around and it looks like a few Temple fans have switched to their side as former Cherry Crusader Luke Butler is listed as “Interested in going” to this event.

 

That’s a little ironic because the final piece in this puzzle could literally be kicking the can down the road.

Splitting the baby was King Solomon’s solution and the Board of Trustees needs to split this baby as painful as it may be but killing off a perfectly good and nearly brand new $22 million Olympic stadium and putting a $130 million football stadium in its place.

Kick the football stadium can down the road to Broad and Master and return the Olympic sports teams back to their original home, Geasey Field, at 15th and Norris. The neighbors who object so strongly to football lived with the Olympic sports for 50 years at Norris Street without any histrionics so it would be disingenuous to object to those sports returning now.

There are really only two solutions now and the preferable one is admitting that the first mistake was trying to build at 15th and Norris. The university did not expect the kind of opposition it got from neighbors at that location, the same neighbors who never objected to the lacrosse and field hockey teams playing there for almost a half-century prior to this latest fiasco.

The second is dropping the whole stadium issue entirely but, before that happens, all other avenues should be exhausted.

There will still be opposition to the Broad and Master site, but the fact that the university had rather large and working stadiums at that site for the last five years should mollify the opposition somewhat. There’s plenty of room for a football stadium at Broad and Master and the fact that by converting it to a football stadium m48akes it less intrusive, not more, on the community that the three sports currently there. Those fields now were used 48 days for home games in the Olympic sports, while football will only be used for six days or nights.

Plus, Morgan Hall, which is used over 300 days a year, is just next to it and the new BOT chair should know something about that high-rise. It was named after him.

Saturday: The Jimmies and the Joes

02.19.19
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First Sign of Spring: Temple QBs and WRs

 

beatty

There are little indications that give you a hint spring is coming.

One was Groundhog Day earlier this month.

Yesterday was the full squad reporting for the Philadelphia Phillies.

A week ago it was pitchers and catchers.

Soon, March 10, we will move the clocks ahead, one day ahead of the real pitchers and catchers.

This is not official yet, but I’ve been told by reliable sources that the next day we will see the “real” pitchers and catchers–quarterbacks and wide receivers–report with the team to full practices as the Owls gear up for the spring game (April 13, which is official).

It just so happens that pitchers and catchers are probably the strength of the 2019 Owls. In starting quarterback Anthony Russo and backups Toddy Centeio and Trad Beatty, the Owls have set themselves up with pretty solid quality and depth at the most important position on the field. In fact, in my 40-plus years as a Temple fan, I can only remember three quarterbacks of this quality way back in the 1970s when Maxwell Award-winner Steve Joachim led a room that included Marty Ginestra.

carey

Got to be impressed with any coach who takes pen and paper in hand and sits down to write a note. Nobody does that anymore. Thanks, coach Carey.

Depth-wise, that pales in comparison, though to the catcher part of this equation as the Owls are set with wide receiver starters Sean Ryan, Branden Mack and Isaiah Wright and pushed hard by backups Jadan Blue, Randall Jones and Freddie Johnson.

That’s a lot of depth and one would hope that to strengthen the running back position, new head coach Rod Carey is open to moving a former tailback, Wright, back there to help keep the running game among the best in the league as it has been for the last five seasons.

We should find that out soon and the idea has been proposed to Carey, who like all good coaches, is open to moving players from a position of strength to shore up an area where the depth might not be as impressive.

Meanwhile, unofficially, there has been a lot of pitching and catching at the Edberg-Olson Complex both outside on the field and idea-wise in the coaching offices.

The fruits of that back-and-forth should be unveiled soon.

Thursday: A King Solomon Solution to a King-Size Dilemma

02.02.19
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Three Identical Strangers: TU, NIU, Miami

wamo

Hopefully, Rod Carey keeps the Cherry helmets this fall

Nothing I see on TV usually blows my mind.

Like everything, there are always exceptions to the rule and the recent CNN documentary “Three Identical Strangers” falls into that category. Without getting deep into it, it was about three young men separated at birth on July 12, 1961, intentionally by an adoption agency as a case study for the effects of nurturing versus naturing.

The college football version of that show is far less intense and intrusive but the study elements are close this fall. The case studies will be separated not by 100 miles or less but by about 500 miles West and 1,000 miles south of Philadelphia.

Proven coaching or talent. Young, unproven coaching or talent.

The question in the fall of 2019 will be: Given the somewhat equal talent in three separate settings does a proven head coach produce a more desirable result (winning) than a hot assistant?

My theory is that Temple football dodged two big bullets over the last decade, separated by one letter.

Daz and Diaz.

Had Steve Addazio stayed at Temple, the Owls probably would have tapped out at the seven-win mark, a number that has concerned the powers-that-be at Boston College so much that they worked in an eight-win minimum into his contract extension this season.

Manny Diaz would have been a college football version of one-and-done but never got to that point. Temple did not need to hire another head coach for one year only to see him leave because, at some point, the instability has to take a toll on recruiting.

“You don’t want to go there,” the bad guys will begin to tell recruits, “they change coaches every year.”

That begs the question: Why can’t Temple have both excellence and stability?

Rod Carey, who by any account, gave Northern Illinois that for the last six years, shows a lot of signs of being the real deal. If the Owls dodged a bullet with Daz and Diaz, they may have the benefit of getting a lot of ammunition from Carey for their weapons.

The lab experiment for this theory will take place in three places: Philadelphia, DeKalb, and Miami.

Only one of the schools hired a proven winner as a head coach. The others took a flyer on unproven assistants as Baltimore Ravens’ running back coach Thomas Hammock was hired by NIU and Diaz went back to Miami.

Interestingly enough, all three schools return 14 starters from the 2018 squads. If the Owls are able to record the most wins of the three schools, the data won’t be complete on this experiment but will certainly point to a brighter future in Philadelphia than those other towns.

From a talent standpoint versus their respective leagues, there is not much to chose from the three experimental samples.

By December, someone should be able to write a pretty good case study.

Tuesday: Dear Rod Letter

Thursday: Who’s Coming and Going?

Saturday: Signing Day No. 2

Tuesday (2/12): Plugging Holes