Tag Archives: Temple football

03.23.18
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Patenaude: Watch What He Does, Not Says

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Spring practice is fully underway and Dave Patenaude handled the first questions thrown his way like Freddy Galvis used to handle hard hit balls to his right.

Flawlessly.

Galvis isn’t around town anymore, but Patenaude is and he said all of the right things about the quarterback position in a recent Temple News story—that Frank Nutile, despite being a bowl-winning quarterback, has to win his job and that Anthony Russo and Todd Centeio are both significantly better than they were at this time last year.

To get a better perspective, though, of what was said this year by the Temple football offensive coordinator, it helps to dig deep to find out what he said a year ago at this time. Patenaude was enthralled with the running ability of Logan Marchi—a player he tried to recruit for Coastal Carolina—and seemingly gave Marchi the benefit of the doubt despite a subpar performance in the Cherry and White game. To the fans watching under umbrellas on that rainy day, Marchi was easily the fourth-best quarterback behind, in no particular order, Nutile, Russo and Centeio.

russo

 

Will Russo get the chance that Nutile did a year ago in a “real” game—not a practice—and prove to be even a juicier upgrade?

 

That benefit turned out to be a detriment for the Owls as Marchi went way too deep into the season, starting seven games, and the Owls almost did not recover.

Pardon me if I don’t trust Patenaude as far as I can throw him. I’m from Missouri this year. He’s going to have to show me he’s playing no favorites and gives everyone a chance to move the team in a game. I didn’t see that last year until the eighth game.

When Nutile finally got his chance in a real game—not a practice, but a game, as Allen Iverson would say—fans saw the kind of difference they saw on Cherry and White Day.

It was obvious to anyone who watched the Army game last year that Nutile was the far better leader and winner than Marchi ever was.

That was probably just as obvious to Marchi, too, who saw the handwriting on the wall and got out of here.

Will Nutile be last year’s Nutile or this year’s Marchi? Certainly, Nutile deserves first dibs on defending his job. He does not deserve to play seven unimpressive games before another guy gets a shot.

Will Russo get the chance that Nutile did a year ago in a “real” game—not a practice—and prove to be even a juicier upgrade? Will Centeio’s “packages” result in real gains in terms of yardage or will they be blown up by defenses like they were last year? Will Trad Beatty get the benefit of a redshirt year that Nutile, Russo and Centeio enjoyed? They all benefited from the extra year of film study and in the weight room and if Beatty is headed to the pros, he deserves the same advantage, too.

Those are the questions that can only answered by deeds, not words but trusting what everyone sees in the upcoming  Cherry and White game might be a good place to start.

 

03.21.18
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The Bullhorn Lady and Rittenhouse Square

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The NAACP wants Temple to put a stadium here, in half the space they already own on campus

Imagine, for instance, if you wanted to build a deck on your property and several of your neighbors came over and said:  “We don’t think that’s a good idea and we’re going to the City Council to fight it.”

The deck is on your property, not theirs, yet they succeed at getting the city to deny you the opportunity to improve your property.

That’s the level of ridiculousness we’ve reached with Temple University attempting to build a stadium on its own property.

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“IF TEMPLE UNIVERSITY CAN COME UP WITH THE MONEY TO BUILD A STADIUM, THEY CAN INSTEAD GIVE IT TO THE COMMUNITY OR INVEST IT IN RAISES FOR TEACHERS.”

 

The sad thing is that the neighbors do not realize how ridiculous they look or sound and probably never will.

I got a taste of this walking into Mitten Hall for the March 6 “community Town Hall” that was drowned out by protesters 13 minutes into the festivities.

On the way in, I was greeted by this sound by a woman with a bullhorn shouting from the seat of a small red car:

“IF TEMPLE UNIVERSITY CAN COME UP WITH THE MONEY TO BUILD A STADIUM, THEY CAN INSTEAD GIVE IT TO THE COMMUNITY OR INVEST IT IN RAISES FOR TEACHERS.”

Huh?

I wanted to saunter over there and disabuse the nice lady of this ill-conceived notion but for my own personal safety let it go. I’ll just explain how “Temple came up with the money”  here.

The stadium will cost at least $130 million and the university is well on its way to reaching its goal of $100 million in private contributions and expects to surpass that by groundbreaking. The rest of the money will be transferring funds already earmarked for Lincoln Financial Field to play in the new stadium.

If the stadium isn’t built, the money goes right back to the donors. It does not go to “the community” nor will it be used for “raising teacher salaries.” The money is for a stadium, or there is no money at all. That’s how that works. Hypothetically, when the university fund-raisers call you on the phone and ask for a stadium donation, they don’t say: “Hey, Sparky, just a heads up. If we run into problems building the stadium, can we get your OK to divert your million bucks to the community or pay raises for teachers?”

Err, no.

Just when you think the level of ridiculousness could not get any more bizarre, the NAACP said Temple University should consider building its stadium in Rittenhouse Square. Three problems with that: One, Temple does not own Rittenhouse Square; two, it’s not a large enough area to build a 35,000-seat stadium on (Geasey Field alone is larger than Rittenhouse Square) and, three, Temple would have to move its campus to Rittenhouse Square for it to be cost effective and Temple simply is not going to do that. Rittenhouse Square is a total of seven acres. Just the “Geasey Field” part of the proposed on-campus stadium site is eight acres, half of what the university has allocated for the entire project.

That would be like your neighbors coming over to you and telling you no deck on your property, but they would support you if you wanted to build your deck five miles down the road in the dog park.

Doesn’t make sense, does it?

Very few things in Provincial “Not In My Backyard” Philadelphia ever do.

 

03.16.18
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Stadium: Rock and Hard Place

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Abstract cell art from our tailgate bud Darin Bartholomew

Depending upon who is consulted, there are two schools of thought regarding this too-long and drawn-out process called building a new football stadium:

  1. Relax. Everything has been taken care of behind the scenes. Everything you see now is for show.
  2. City Council will see a whole lot of protesters in its chambers come crunch time and vote against closing 15th Street, effectively killing the project.

Maybe it’s because I’ve lived inside the city limits all of my life and am all-too-familiar with the way this City Government works, and people in school of thought one live in far-flung places like Long Island and Virginia, but Temple is officially between a rock and a hard place if it does not get permission to close 15th Street.

Guess what?

It’s not coming.

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In my mind, just enough space to build if you move the Amos Rec across the street but the Star Complex replaced most of the track and football field here.

Darrell Clarke is dead set against it and the “community” seems dead set against it.

Temple could have built on that site if the Star Complex wasn’t built because it would not require the permanent closing—actually rerouting—of 15th Street. You could probably relocate Amos Recreation Center across 15th to the old student Pavilion and squeeze a 35K stadium into the spot occupied by both Geasey and Star.

Now, with Star built, that limits Temple’s options to this:

Extend the Linc Deal

This will require holding the nose, taking the medicine and swallowing because the “lease” is one of the reasons why the university wanted to build a stadium in the first place.

Go to Franklin Field

Not an option because the AAC requires member schools to have stadium control at least on Saturdays. AAC tolerates the Linc because it gives Temple that control. It will not tolerate Penn having control over AAC TV schedule.

Knock Down The Temple Sports Complex

Move the soccer, field hockey and lax teams back to Geasey and knock down a facility Temple just spent $22 million to build and replace it with a football stadium. If you really want to build a stadium on campus, that’s Temple’s only option. It would not require closing any street and because the “community” did not oppose building the stadiums already on that location, they would not have much of an argument against building a football stadium there.

Monday: Our New Scheduling Buddies

03.14.18
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Best Cherry and White Day Ever?

proof

Proof that a stadium or two can be built at TU without community opposition

Back in the day, they built a $22 million on-campus stadium right in the heart of Temple University’s footprint with nary a peep of protest from the surrounding community or student “Stadium Stompers.”

That day was two years ago and it is now the permanent home of Temple soccer, field hockey and lacrosse.

It will also be the temporary home of the Temple football Owls for what could be the best Cherry and White Day ever. The game will be moved to the soccer home of the Owls a few blocks south of 10th and Diamond this year, better know as the “Temple Sports Complex” or, more specifically, Howarth Field.

logical

We called for this a year ago and the university listened

We’ve called for the Temple spring football game to be moved here last year (see inset to the right) and finally the university listened. Meanwhile, we had a lot of the status quo apologists on social media pooh-pooh the idea saying “you can’t do it because of recruits” and “you can’t do it because of logistics.”

Well, Temple is doing what the naysayers said cannot be done and the powers-that-be (Pat Kraft and company) need to be applauded for that, moving the football game from an overly cramped facility to a more roomy location with plenty of seating.

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The discussion last year centered on just why the university was intent on squeezing 5,000 pounds of fans into a 100-pound bag when a 2,000-pound bag became available.  Bringing portable seats for 500 people when, on a nice day, you can get 5,000 people into a little over 100-yard square area made sense when you had no place else to go.

Now they do and I hope this is the temporary spot for the game going forward, at least until a larger stadium can be built. The soccer facility opened in the fall of 2016 and the place has 2,000 permanent seats and they can still move those portable E-O seats to that location.

South Florida, which also plays in a NFL stadium, moved its spring game from its football complex to its soccer complex in 2016 and it was an unqualified success. All the Bulls had to do was line the soccer field with football yard lines, put a couple of goal posts in and away then went.

April 14th’s Cherry and White game figures to be the best ever for a couple of reasons, a celebration of the school’s third bowl win and Paul Palmer being inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Bruce Arians can’t come this year due to a prior commitment, but has promised to catch a Cherry and White game in the future.

The people have been the ones who have made Cherry and White great in the past. Now that they get to enjoy it in a place slightly larger than a phone booth, the location just adds to the usual great time.

Friday: Rock and Hard Place

Monday: Scheduling Buddies

Wednesday: The Bullhorn Lady

03.07.18
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Eye on Atlanta: Root for Georgia Tech

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Hopefully, Temple’s stadium will be closer to this than the crude drawing released recently

Hard to believe, Harry (Donahue), that one of the websites that list such things has placed Georgia Tech’s Paul Johnson on the hot seat.

A few years ago, Johnson was one of the hottest coaches in the country at The Naval Academy, now he’s sitting on a hot seat. That’s life in the Power 5.

If you are a Temple football fan, you’ve got to root for him and his Georgia Tech team this season because when Owls’ head coach Geoff Collins called Temple “a developmental program” a month ago tomorrow, he probably meant it with his coaching staff, too. Three of four of Collins recent hires are from the state of Georgia and his current defensive coordinator, Andrew Thacker, was a position coach at Kennesaw State (also known as the Owls). Kennesaw is in Cobb County, which is in the Greater Atlanta metropolitan area.

Collins himself as a history at Georgia Tech, being the recruiting coordinator there for the Yellowjackets. If you don’t think this staff is being developed for a place like Georgia Tech, you probably don’t believe that General Billy Sherman burned the town to the ground 168 or so years ago. If Collins does well here this fall, he certainly would move to the top of the Georgia Tech wish list.

So that’s probably what Collins means by a developmental program. Ask him if he considers Georgia Tech a developmental program.

Still, rooting for a solid year from our friend Paul Johnson is almost as good as rooting for the Owls themselves.

That’s the lay of the land, though, in the “developmental” AAC.

In January, Navy head football coach Ken Niumatalolo interviewed for the Arizona opening. While he  decided to remain in Annapolis, had he left the Midshipmen it would have left Tulsa’s Philip Montgomery as the longest-tenured head coach in the American Athletic Conference, after only three seasons with the Golden Hurricane.

Coaching turnover has become a fact of life in the American with six head coaches leaving the AAC for jobs at “power five” schools. Next year, Memphis’ Mike Norvell and USF’s Charlie Strong are sure to attract suitors.

A good year for Paul Johnson probably won’t mean Collins will be here for life, but it would certainly close at least one very attractive door and limit the damage to Temple’s program for at least another year.

How’s that Georgia Tech fight song go again?

Friday: Thoughts on The Mitten Hall Fiasco

Monday: Spring (Practice) is in the Air

Wednesday: Our New Scheduling Buddies

 

03.05.18
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Three Facts and Five Questions

No matter what you call it, the “Town Hall” being held tomorrow night (6:30) at Mitten Hall has all the potential to be either a public relations disaster or a bonanza  for Temple University.

I’m not betting on Hos Cartwright here, though.

Television cameras from all four local stations will be there with the express purpose of finding some sound and fury that would make for good fodder for the 11 p.m. newscast.

If Temple fans who want the stadium show up and dominate the session with applause and support for the ideas presented, that segment would probably find a way to the cutting room floor. If, say, for every 10 people who attend, one voice is against it and nine are for it, the narrative will be “there were some opposed and some in favor” and they will find one voice in favor and one opposed, even if there are more fans for it than against. That’s the way the drive-by media works these days. If no fans show up and only “community” members expressing opposition are there, it will be the top news story of the night.

I think we are going to be somewhere in between those two extremes, though.

mitten

It was pretty ingenious for the university to set this town hall up at a time when the students are gone. Most of the “Stadium Stompers” among the students are from relatively far-flung places like Allentown, Lancaster and Scranton and their activism on the topic probably only extends to the time they have to be in North Philly. It’s hard to imagine them giving up a spring break visit to Florida or time home with their Penn State friends for idealism. At least when idealism is not convenient.

President Dick Englert did not even address the stadium when he talked at the recruiting “celebration” on Feb. 7 so to me, the forum presents an opportunity to answer some hard questions that were not even broached then. Here are five of them:

yulman

Yulman: Rejected by ESPN

How did the stadium shrink?

Two months ago, when the plans were officially released, the minimum seating was going to be 35,000. Now, we’re hearing “between 30-35 thousand (see above video).” Not good. Why is this important? Because 30,000 will make the stadium look like Tulane’s Yulman Stadium and, by most accounts, that stadium was obsolete the day it opened. All of the Temple fans who I talked to and have been there hated it.  It’s nothing more than a glorified high school stadium and the league told Tulane the TV sightlines and lighting almost made it impossible for ESPN to schedule a night game there. Temple should go bigger (at least 35K) or go home, making the stadium look more like successful ventures like Houston, Cincinnati and Florida Atlantic. Moody Nolan needs to come clean. Will this look more like Tulane or more like FAU?

What, exactly, will go into the retail outlet?

What kind of retail will be considered or will the university build five empty franchises and hope that the market dictates the tenant? Some kind of smaller version of Xfinity Live would work, maybe a WAWA. I wouldn’t put another student bookstore or pizza shop in there, though. When I lived in Doylestown, we desperately needed a grocery store in the center of town. Instead, we got five coffee shops that mostly went out of business because wives of the rich guys who lived there always had the fantasy of opening coffee shops. Build what the students and community will need and support.

smuboulevard

Where will the traditional tailgating be held?

We all know that the university is planning to put the thousands of students who now take up a large portion of Lot K into Polett and Liacouras Walks and that’s a terrific idea. SMU has shown how successful that concept can be. Still, how many of the university’s 11 outside parking lots be set aside for more traditional tailgating on Saturdays or are the days of the traditional smaller tailgates over?

What is the timeline?

The university should set a timeline that it expects to meet. City Council approvals by this summer, next summer or the summer after or somewhere in between? At what point does this project cross the Rubicon of no return and what are the options other than Franklin Field if it is abandoned? Temple cannot allow the endless speculation on this to continue and must set some realistic parameters for getting this done.

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Does the University Have the Stomach to Play Hardball?

We’re not talking about restoring the baseball program here, although you could probably configure the stadium for those purposes if needed. If the City of Philadelphia does not give the necessary permissions, can the architects reconfigure a stadium that would not require 15th Street to be shut down? That’s what is going to have to happen for the uni to pursue legal action to get this done. An argument can be made that if places like Maryland, Rutgers and Georgia Tech have the legal right to build whatever it wants on property owned by them so, too, should Temple.  Hardball–threatening to move the uni out of Philadelphia–is what ultimately got the LC built and the uni might have to play some sort of hardball to get this done as well. Pete Liacouras had that stomach. Does the current BOT?

Wednesday: Eye on Atlanta

Friday: Reflections From Mitten Hall

03.02.18
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What a Revolting Development ….

revolting

With only a few seconds in an eminently winnable game NBA at Miami, something stood out like a 6-foot-11 sore thumb.

The Philadelphia 76ers were winning and this decade’s version of “Hack-A-Shack” was in the game. Of course, instead of two 90 percent free throw shooters Mario Bellinelli and J.J. Redick being in there to catch the ball and get fouled and win the game, Ben Simmons was spotted and fouled immediately and the Sixers lost at the buzzer mostly because he missed two free throws.

What does this have to do with Temple football?

ceremony

Because after the game, Sixers head coach Brett Brown said it was “more important for Simmons’ development” to be in there than it was to win the game.

The word “development” caught my ear because I heard, by my count, Temple football head coach Geoff Collins a derivative of it not one, not two but four times at the recent recruiting celebration. Collins said “we’re a developmental program”  while reviewing some recruiting film and saying a lot of these players are in the developmental stage and are coming here to be developed. It wasn’t the first time he used it. This is what he said in an interview on SI.com last May:  “I think this place is a developmental program, so I take pride in that.”

I guess Florida wasn’t a developmental program.

Hmmm. I’m sure Collins means well, but I don’t like the term.

Developmental program is a term I’ve never associated with Temple football before Collins came to town. AAC championship program, yes. Top 25 program, yes. Developmental program, no. While players certainly have been developed and nurtured (the most recent example is Haason Reddick), the primary purpose of Temple football has been to win as many games as possible. If someone got developed along the way, fine, but development was always secondary to playing in championship games.

To me, like the Sixers’ game above, winning is not the most important thing, it’s the only thing. I could not give a rat’s ass about Simmons being in there to learn a lesson, nor could I give a similar derriere for Logan Marchi’s “development” as a quarterback meant keeping him in there for seven games, looking awful against a bad Villanova team and stinking up Lincoln Financial Field in winnable games against Houston and UConn. A seven-game career as a starter was way too long for Marchi, who failed an eye test two games into his starting career and should have earned a permanent spot on the bench.

Big-time college football is a business and, in business, it’s either up or out. Marchi wasn’t treading upward after a brutal Game Two performance against Villanova and should have been out.

One of William Bendix’s catch phrases in the old TV show “Life of Riley” was “What a Revolting Development” and that applies to the word “developmental” and Temple football. A year ago, Collins was touting Temple as a “Top 25 program” and now it’s “developmental program.”

I prefer Top 25, thank you.

Let’s hope Temple never becomes the Sixers and sacrifices a precious game for the development of any single player. The football Owls don’t get to play 82 games a year. They can’t afford to trade wins for development.

Monday: 5 Questions for The Stadium Meeting

Wednesday: Eye On Atlanta

Friday: Reflections on The Town Meeting

3/12: Spring Practice Begins

 

02.28.18
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Current Staff? Meh ….

raponecould

This is the resume Nick Rapone could have brought to Temple.

Everything in life is a trade-off and, so it is with Temple football coaching staffs as this story illustrates.

“My son said, ‘Dad, it’s like Night and Day between this staff and Al Golden’s staff,’ “ John Palumbo’s father told me during Steve Addazio’s first Cherry and White Day. “He said, Dad, these guys are all National Championship coaches. They know what they are doing.”

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Palumbo knew what he was talking about. He started at center for both Golden’s last team and Addazio’s first team. Daz took Golden’s talent and made it a bowl-winning team.

Golden was the great CEO-type, someone with a binder full of recruiting contacts up and down the East Coast and nobody was more well-equipped to stock the Temple roster with the talent it needed to succeed—if not win—the MAC.

Addazio was the ambitious successor, a guy who supposedly loved the macaroni and South Philly Italian food so much that he would stay here 10 years. We later found out what he was, a bull-bleeper who could sell snowballs to the Eskimos. In that sense, Daz bought an all-star staff with him to Philadelphia—the defensive coordinator at Florida, Chuck Heater, and Scot Loeffler, a damn good offensive coordinator.

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They were a good sight better than Mark D’Onofrio and Matt Rhule, Golden’s last coordinators but part of the price of bringing that kind of talent to Philadelphia was that Daz probably promised that he would take them along to a P5 stop in a year or two.

When the Owls hired Geoff Collins from Florida, I had a feeling it would be more like a Daz hire than a Golden or Rhule hire in that he’d poach the Florida staff of a couple of top position coaches with a promise of making them coordinators here. No such luck. The only person he poached from the Gators was the equipment manager.

It wasn’t what I expected.

You get what you pay for. Two days after he was hired, Steve Addazio wooed his buddy, then Florida national championship co-defensive coordinator (really, THE guy according to Urban Meyer), Chuck Heater. Temple paid Mark D’Onofrio $200,000 to be DC in the 2010 season. Daz convinced Lewis Katz, his guy, to kick in an extra $200K to secure the services of Heater. Katz is gone and probably so are the days of Temple outbidding P5 teams for any assistant football coach’s services. Heater loved it here, biked every day from Center City to 10th and Diamond and had a good relationship with many Temple fans, big donors and small.

Now, we have an offensive coordinator from Coastal Carolina, a defensive coordinator from Kennesaw State and position coaches from West Alabama and Georgia State. It’s particularly sad in that Nick Rapone, a former FCS defensive coordinator of the year who spent the last few years with Bruce Arians with the Arizona Cardinals, expressed an interest in the DC job after Taver Johnson left. So did Temple legend Kevin Ross, who was the DB coach with the NFL team.

Instead of NFL guys, we have Kennesaw State and West Alabama guys. Not the kind of resumes that will make sons of the current Owls tell their fathers that the Rhule and Phil Snow did not know what they were doing.

Maybe the trade-off is a little more loyalty for fewer wins. Give me consistent wins on Saturday or any day of the week against mediocre 7-6 records and loyalty every year of the decade. I know I would have them with guys like Scot Loeffler, Chuck Heater, Nick Rapone and Kevin Ross.

These small school guys?

Not so much.

Friday: Developmental Program?

 

02.26.18
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Coaching Shuffle: It’s Who You Know

vested

When it comes to getting an assistant coaching job at Temple, as anywhere, it really comes down to who you know.

Geoff Collins.

If you know Geoff Collins, you are in, and that was pretty much what happened with the hiring Nathan Burton as safeties coach after being the “quality control” coach at North Carolina State last season.

performance

Coastal Carolina soft

Burton met Collins when he was walk-on in the last century at Georgia Tech and Collins was a graduate assistant there.

Prior to his time with NC State, Burton served as the defensive coordinator at West Alabama for three seasons. West Alabama was the place where former Temple head coach Bobby Wallace finished his career after making his chops at North Alabama.
Burton was hired as safeties coach but will take over the entire defensive backfield due to the exit of Cory Robinson for Rutgers. Robinson had been the defensive backfield coach at Temple last year.

To me, that was addition by subtraction.

One of the most disappointing areas of the team was the play of the defensive backs. Three starters returned from the AAC championship team and a fourth, Mike Jones, eschewed a chance for being a late-round NFL draft pick last year (Mike Mayock had him projected as the steal of the sixth round of the 2017 draft) to play for Temple.

Time and time again, the Owls were burned by touchdown passes late in the games (particularly Army and Navy) and they appeared to be out of position and the communication was not there like it was two years ago. Fran Brown and Phil Snow did a much better job with essentially the same players.

Defensive coordinator Taver Johnson, who presumably had a role in that miscommunication, was “demoted” to co-coordinator, probably saw the handwriting on that wall and took a lesser job at Ohio State.

Larry Knight will take over the linebackers, a role current defensive coordinator Andrew Thacker had last year. Knight had been the “director of player personnel.”

To me, the Knight move was interesting considering that he performed that same role at Georgia State in both 2015 and 2016.  Nick Rapone and Kevin Ross, probably overqualified to be DC and DB coach at Temple, expressed interests in the open jobs through back channels. No doubt in my mind they would have been better for the kids than the guys hired, but Collins is comfortable with who he hired and it is Collins who will sink or swim with them.

Would I like to see more ex-Temple guys like Nick Rapone and Kevin Ross included in this staff? Sure, but they did not know Collins before now and apparently Collins apparently did not have the same comfort level with them.

At least those of us who care about those things still have native son Adam DiMichele and adopted son Ed Foley. Hopefully, that’s enough to swing the pendulum of the offense back in the direction of Temple TUFF and away from the Coastal Carolina SOFT we witnessed too much a year ago.

The defense is pretty much all Collins anyway. Maybe it takes a year to install the Mayhem we have been promised. Let’s hope so because I didn’t see any evidence of that last year, the lone exception being the bowl game.

Wednesday: Comparing Staffs

02.23.18
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5 Best Trick Plays of The Ed Foley Era

 

A couple of days ago in this space, we outlined that Temple—not Clemson—was responsible for The Philly Special that goes under the name “Clemson” in the current Temple playbook and the proof was that Temple pulled off the same play in the Penn State game a year before Clemson did and was credited with it.

The special teams’ coach on the day of that Penn State win was Ed Foley and now that he is assistant head coach in charge of offense—presumably supervising current offensive coordinator Dave Patenaude—he will have some input at least into the play-calling and game-planning on the field.

At least that’s the hope.

The other hope is that the Owls will have more trick plays than the two they succeeded at last year. Here are five successful ones that should be rolling around Foley’s head since he was on the staff for all five:

The Good Old Fashioned Flea-Flicker (2006)

Head Coach: Al Golden

Offensive Coordinator: George DeLeone

Ed Foley’s Role: Tight Ends Coach

After being pummeled (70-14 and 70-21) by Bowling Green two years in a row, the Owls needed some trickeration to end a 20-game losing streak and DeLeone pulled out this one from the playbook. Quarterback Adam DiMichele received the snap from center Alex Derenthal, handed the ball to running back Timmy Brown, who pitched it back to ADM, who hit 4.3 sprinter Travis Sheldon all alone for six. Temple won, 28-14.

The End-Around Touchdown Pass (2010)

Head Coach: Al Golden

Offensive Coordinator: Matt Rhule

Ed Foley’s Role: Recruiting Coordinator

With the Owls just outside the red zone at Army, Rhule had speedy wide receiver Joe Jones take a reverse handoff from quarterback Chester Stewart. While on the run, Jones hit wide receiver Michael Campbell on a 24-yard touchdown pass in the corner of the end zone for the points that made a big difference in the 42-35 win.

The Double-Reverse Touchdown Pass (2013)

Head Coach: Matt Rhule

Offensive Coordinator: Marcus Sattersfield

Ed Foley’s Role: Tight Ends Coach

Even though the Owls finished 2-10 that year, that doesn’t mean they did not have their fun moments. All season in this space we called for wide receiver Jalen Fitzpatrick—the starting quarterback in the Big 33 game—to throw a pass in a real game. We finally got our wish on Oct. 26 at SMU when Fitzpatrick reversed to take a handoff from Zaire Williams and found Robby Anderson all alone behind the defense for an 86-yard touchdown pass. Temple lost, 59-49, but it clearly was not the offense’s fault.

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The North Philly Special (2015)

Head Coach: Matt Rhule

Offensive Coordinator: Glenn Thomas

Ed Foley’s Role: Special Team’s Coach

Previously outlined in this space two days ago, it was the precursor to The Philly Special that the Eagles ran in the Super Bowl. It is in Temple’s current playbook by the name “Clemson” but they might want to change that name since Clemson stole the play from Temple. Former quarterback John Christopher took a pitch from Jahad Thomas who threw back to Walker for a 25-yard gain in a 27-10 win over Penn State. In the Super Bowl, the role of Thomas was played by Corey Clement, while Nick Foles (P.J. Walker) and Trey Burton (Christopher) assumed the other parts.

The Hokey Pokey (2007)

Head Coach: Al Golden

Offensive Coordinator: Matt Rhule

Ed Foley’s Role: Recruiting Coordinator

Only unsuccessful by the result (a bad call), the Owls used this to unofficially beat (but officially lose to) UConn and only a very bad play call by the MAC officials and upheld by Jack Kramer, the Big East replay official, ruined it. In the play, another wide receiver—former Hyde (Conn.) Leadership Academy quarterback Dy’onne Crudup—took the ball on a reverse and threw the ball ostensibly for quarterback Adam DiMichele in the end zone. DiMichele tipped the ball backward, where Bruce Francis caught the ball one-handed with one foot clearly inside the back of the end zone. Temple lost that game, 22-17, but really won, 24-22. Both national announcers on the TV broadcast that day said Temple was jobbed as did Connecticut-based ESPN, which replayed the play several times on Sports Center that night. The fatal flaw on this play was obvious to anyone who knows Football 101. Never have a guy take a pitch and force him to throw against his body. Crudup should have been lined up to the left, not the right, and made a natural right-handed throw.

Monday: The Coaching Shuffle

Wednesday: Staff Comparisons

Friday: Developmental Program?