Tag Archives: Todd Bowles

04.09.18
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Spring Phenoms Old and New

zamani

Great Zamani Feelings shot of Bruce Arians, Geoff Collins and Todd Bowles on Saturday.

Having seen names like Myron Myles and Lou Angelo light it up on Cherry and White Day and disappear a few months later, I’ve come to take a skeptical view of one-day spring wonders.

That said, spring practice is more than a month of hard-hitting and difficult throws and catches so the cream seems to rise to the top over 30 days and this year offers several intriguing candidates. Forget some of what you will see on Saturday in the spring game and remember a lot of what you see below.

From what I’ve been told from people who have been able to see at least one practice every week, these are the guys who are getting the reps that might surprise you (hometowns in parathesis):

Sean Ryan, WR, New York City

After Ventell Bryant and Isaiah Wright—probably one of the best receiving tandems in the nation—there was a huge dropoff in talent from the first to second unit. Ryan, one of NYC’s top receivers a year ago, seems to be filling the talent void and has made a number of difficult catches with the kind of deep speed that Wright seems to have. Offensive coordinator Dave Patenaude likes to use three-receiver packages and do not be surprised if Ryan is able to make an impact right away.

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Anthony Russo, QB.  Doylestown

Patenaude said at the end of last year that Russo was “light year’s different” in practice in December than he was in September. Add that to the fact that Patenaude also said early last March that Russo corrected a “looping motion” in his release plus increased playing time with the ones means that Russo could slot into the role Nutile had at the beginning of last year—a guy in the No. 2 slot who is ready to get his chance in a real game. Mix in the fact that the staff is trying to find new positions for Todd Centeio and there is a clear indication that the first and second jobs are Frank Nutile’s and Russo’s. A lot of the Philadelphia area has been waiting to see what Russo can do in a real game and not a practice or a scrimmage and this year could very well be that chance. It took the staff eight games before it finally decided to insert Nutile in there to give him a chance to run the squad and hopefully they will give Russo the same chance this season that Juice got last one.

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Jager Gardner, Black Mountain (N.C.)

One thing that has been a relatively accurate predictor of future success at Temple for any player has been eye-popping numbers in high school. Folks here kind of knew Adam DiMichele would have projected as a pretty good quarterback here when he tossed 35 touchdown passes as a senior for Sto-Rox in the WPIAL. As a running back, Gardner had far better numbers than the other guy, Ryquell Armstead, who came in his class. Gardner’s senior year numbers: 2,776 yards and 36 touchdowns on 282 carries. Armstead’s senior year numbers at Vineland (N.J.): 1,488 and 18 touchdowns. Gardner got injured and fell behind and now seems to have caught up. Head Coach Collins said this has been a “break out” spring for him. Since Gardner already owns the Temple all-time record for longest run from scrimmage, that bodes well for this year.

Rock Ya-Sin, DB, Decatur (Ga.)

Already one of the greatest “names” in Temple roster history, Rock looks primed to become one of the great producers on the field in this his first season for the Owls after transferring from FCS school Presbyterian. Last season, playing for a Villanova-level school, Ya-Sin led his team with 49 tackles and five interceptions. More importantly, he has stood out during spring practices in an area of need—defensive back—as the Owls scrape hard to find replacements for three departed starters.

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Benny Walls, Safety, Cherry Hill, N.J. and Keyvone Bruton, Norfolk, Va.

Walls was a standout for a great state championship team in St. Joseph’s Prep and clearly the star of Wednesday’s practice when Collins tweeted that Walls had a dominant day. Walls was a two-time first-team All-Catholic playing in one of the best high school football leagues in the nation. Benny has great athletic genes. His dad, also Benny, played basketball at Camden High and his uncle, Kevin Walls, was even more famous–scoring 81 points in a single game for Camden High before going off to Louisville to play his college basketball. Bruton—not to be confused with defensive backs coach Nate BURTON (different spelling) had 18 interceptions for Lake Taylor (Va.) High and is just as likely to be a starter with Delvon Randall as Walls is and this should be a position battle that lasts through the summer.

Wednesday: The Scrimmage

Friday: 5 Things to Watch for at Cherry and White

 

09.19.15
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Gameday: Leave No Doubt

New York Jets' head coach Todd Bowles rocks the Temple gear on Friday night's show.

New York Jets’ head coach Todd Bowles rocks the Temple gear on Friday night’s show.

If you are tuning into ESPN College Football’s Gameday this morning looking for extensive talk about  Temple, don’t bother. The Owls will have to take care of business not only today against UMASS, but also in the four weeks after that just to get something other than the casual mention they got this morning.

Money talks, bullbleep walks is the saying and, when it comes to college football, the most important thermometer to measure the temperature of the sport is ESPN’s College Gameday Show. Simply put, if you are a fan of a Power Five team, they talk about your squad. If your team is in the Group of Five, they do not.

There is little wonder, then, when it comes time for the musical chairs to start again, a relatively small number of the current G5 teams are pressing their noses against the window like a shopper on Black Friday waiting for the doors to open.  To be sure, networks like ESPN have a vested interest in talking about only the big conferences because TV contracts have been signed far into the future. In college football, though, the issue runs a little deeper than that because there is a substantial fear that sometime within the next decade, the teams in the Power 5 will break away and make the rest of the schools in the NCAA as irrelevant in college football as today’s Ivy League is.

espn college gameday,

That’s why, for schools like UConn, Boise State, Cincinnati, Houston and Temple – the top G5 candidates for P5 expansion — how football does this year and next is so important. In college football today, it’s all about TV markets and eyeballs, and at least three of those schools (Houston, Temple and Cincinnati) can deliver both a decent football program and a big-time market. For Boise State and UConn, it’s not so much about the markets as it is about the programs. Boise State might have the most consistent football program of the five, but the TV market is so small that it’s irrelevant. UConn has a terrible football program, but a great basketball one.

Cincinnati and Temple are comparatively strong in both sports and Temple can deliver the largest available TV market of any of the five top G5 schools, the nation’s fourth-rated one. There are P5 teams in the New York market (Rutgers), the Chicago market (Northwestern and Notre Dame) and the third-ranked market, Los Angeles (UCLA and USC), but none in the fourth. Temple would complete a chain that includes the fifth-ranked market, Dallas-Fort Worth, which has Waco suburb member Baylor. Houston is No. 10, while UConn (Hartford-New Haven) is No. 30 and Cincinnati 34.

Whatever happens, all of those schools are on the outside looking in because ESPN College Gameday is not talking about them now. The G5 is dying and the evidence is on TV every Saturday morning for all to see.

Temple has a chance to pump some life into it by going 7-0 into the Notre Dame game, but the Irish will have to keep their end of the bargain by beating Georgia Tech today. So those are at least two teams to root for, another would be Penn State to add further legitimacy to the opening-day win. If you are a G5 team like the Owls are, a lot of dominoes have to fall your way.

Depth Charts

Here is the depth chart for UMASS with no changes from last week and the depth chart for Temple follows below.

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08.02.15
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Temple Having a NFL Head Coach Cannot Be Minimized

Bruce Arians' players showing former teammate Todd Bowles some love.

Bruce Arians’ players showing former teammate Todd Bowles some love.

When the Bruce Arians’ crew made the trip to Florham Park over the weekend for the first full day of New York Jets’ training camp, the contingent of ex-Temple players were treated like the champions they were.

The fact that Temple has a head coach in the NFL, Todd Bowles, cannot be minimized. Hopefully, Matt Rhule can use it as a recruiting tool. He already has the support of Arians’ players, guys like Sheldon Morris, Kevin Jones, Joe Greenwood and Paul Palmer and hopefully that kind of networking will work in Temple’s favor over the next few years.

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No, Arians’ players did not win the Big East—there wasn’t even a Big East back then—but they helped put Temple on the national football map by having two winning seasons in three years against two schedules that were ranked No. 10 in the country.

Think about that for a moment. Back then, Temple played a schedule equal or superior to the current powers the SEC, PAC-10,and Big 10 and more than held its own. It did so practicing on a rock-strewn field (now the Student Pavilion) when Geasey Field was taken over by the lacrosse or field hockey teams of the day. The weight room was located next to a bowling alley in the basement of McGonigle Hall.

When Arians was asked if beating the Super Bowl winning Seattle Seahawks was the biggest win of his career–he was the last team to beat them before they won the 2014 Super Bowl–he stopped the press conference by saying no. “My biggest win was when I was at Temple, beating Pitt for the first time in 39 years,” Arians said.

Through it all, they beat Pitt three out of five years, beat West Virginia, blew out a Virginia Tech team that won 10 games and a Toledo team that was 9-2-1. They had a Heisman Trophy runner-up in Palmer, who should have been a Heisman Trophy winner. They went down to East Carolina and shut out the Pirates, 17-0. Even in those days, places like Pitt, West Virginia and Virginia Tech had multi-million dollar dedicated practice facilities but Temple did more with less.

It had to.

Arians built his teams around a great running game with a great blocking fullback and hopefully Rhule can take something from that formula, which has been the way Temple has played football for a long time. Arians had an eye for good quarterbacks, like Lee Saltz, Tim Riordan and Matty Baker.

The guys who played for him have always been “tight as a fist” and it was good to see them enjoying and supporting their former teammate the other day.