Tag Archives: Tyler Matakevich

01.05.24
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What we once had at Temple: Fairness

A couple of years before Steve Conjar committed, Wayne Hardin put Temple football on the map.

Honestly, what Stan Drayton might see as light at the end of the tunnel some of us (raising my hand here) see an oncoming train.

Give Drayton at least some credit here.

Pretty sure the Temple job he signed up for nearly three years ago is not the same as it was back then. Hell, in three years it might be worse. Yes, there was a transfer portal back then but NIL didn’t exist and neither did tampering.

At one time none of that existed.

A story on one of the two greatest linebackers in Temple history appeared recently on social media and it was a reminder of both simpler and fairer times.

Emphasis on fairer.

Steve Conjar in my opinion was a better linebacker than Tyler Matakevich because it took him three years to compile pretty much the same number of tackles Matakevich amassed in four full years.

Loved them both because they loved Temple back.

In that story, Conjar explained that “bigger-time” schools backed off from him because of a high school injury but Temple was the one school that remained loyal and that’s why he remained loyal to Temple.

Now, nobody shows loyalty to Temple anymore with the number of great Temple players who have entered the portal.

Temple was one of only a few (and the biggest-name school) to recruit quarterback E.J. Warner. Instead of showing gratitude to Temple by honoring his commitment, Warner bolted for another school in the same conference.

Really, nobody shows loyalty to anyone anymore because even Alabama lost 12 players to the portal this week.

The two greatest linebackers in Temple history meet up post-game.

That can be a good thing because nobody in any power structure cares if the Temples of the world are getting screwed in college football but start screwing the Bamas and the Georgias and watch change come from the top down.

Change will never happen from the bottom up but there is hope from the top down.

All we have now is memories of what Temple did against other schools with bigger names when the playing field was level.

Now it’s tilted in a 180-degree direction with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

Until the system backfires on the rich, nothing will change.

At least we had the Steve Conjar and Tyler Matakevich Eras.

Monday: Apples to Apples

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?

 

05.05.16
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Matakevich: Steel City Walker

Joe Walker is nothing special here.

By passing over the consensus national defensive player of the year, Tyler Matakevich, twice in the seventh round, Philadelphia Eagles general manager Howie Roseman has made Pennsylvania a battleground state for right or wrong.

joewalker

Joe Walker

Or, more precisely, an eye test. By, oh, the 14th game of this season, we will probably find out that Roseman needs to be fitted for a new pair of glasses. From Roseman’s subjective view, Walker was the better player.

Forget the fact that a whole bunch of other eyes saw enough of Matakevich to make him both the Chuck Bednarik and Bronco Nagurski Awards as national defensive player of the year, here are the stone hard cold numbers:

tyles

 

If that was a blind Player A and Player B comparison, most people would pick the guy with 138 tackles and 15.5 tackles for losses over the guy with 87 tackles and five for losses.

Not Roseman, though.

The explanation offered by Roseman for not picking Matakevich was tepid at best:

“He’s a good football player,” Roseman said of Matakevich. “Obviously we had a chance to watch him locally live. Coach [Matt] Rhule is a big booster of his. We know him well. We spoke to him a couple of times today. Happy for him that he got an opportunity in Pittsburgh. A good football player. He was in consideration for us when we were looking at linebackers here.”

Big deal because “in consideration for us” and picking Walker let the entire Philadelphia area know that the Eagles felt that Walker was the better player. The stone cold hard numbers suggest otherwise, as do a whole lot of good football people on both the Nagurski and Bednarik committees.

On the other hand, Roseman is a nerd who never played football. Matakevich will be walking the sidelines in the Steel City long after Walker is back home in Oregon. That’s not a prediction, it’s a promise.

Saturday: Stadium Stompers React To Our Story

05.01.16
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Owls Will Prove Character Prevails

Matt Ioannidis made one of the most iconic plays in Temple history at the 1:20 time stamp here.

Back when getting into college was literally a matter of life or death, a lot of the Philadelphia Catholic League high schools started shifting their focus from core subjects to doing well in the SATs. A lot of the tests and courses were geared to getting that minimum SAT score and thereby saving a lot of the lives of their students with a heavy does of late afternoon tutoring.

You could be a real SOB but if you got the SAT score and the nice guy who got A’s in all of his classes sitting next to you did not, he was going to Vietnam and you were getting the student deferment.  It was a messed-up system, but it was the system of the day—SAT scores meant everything and grades meant little.

tavon

Tavon Young closes fast on Will Fuller.

So it is today with the NFL combine scores and the NFL draft. A lot of Temple nice guys who got A’s on the field got passed over but guys who did well on that combine test by SOBs.

The difference this time is that the nice guys will not get shot at, but instead will have a shot at sticking in the  NFL. The only Temple guys who got a fair shake were Tavon Young (fourth round, Balitmore Ravens) and Matt Ioannidis (Washington, fifth round).

Tyler Matakevich, the consensus national defensive player of the year, was seriously overlooked and went to the Steelers (seventh round) and Robby Anderson and Kyle Friend, while undervalued, will get a more than fair shake with Todd Bowles and the New York Jets as UDFAs.  Friend did not go to the combine, but both he and Anderson ruled Temple pro day. The real pleasant surprise was Brandon Shippen, who went to the Miami Dolphins as an UDFA.

The biggest offenders in all of this were the Philadelphia Eagles, who chose to draft guys of questionable character in rounds five and after when they could have had all but one of the Temple players. If you are wondering why the Eagles have never won a Super Bowl, here it is:

Of the six players, the Eagles drafted on Day Three, three face character questions. Of the six players the Eagles drafted on Day 3, three face obvious character questions.  Fifth-round pick Wendell Smallwood (West Virginia), was arrested on criminal charges of witness intimidation back in 2014.  In the seventh round,  the Eagles dipped into the sordid world of the SEC and took LSU safety Jalen Mills, who was arrested and charged with battery of a woman in 2014. Later that round, they picked Florida defensive end Alex McCalister, who  was dismissed from the Gators for an undisclosed reason in December. When they say undisclosed,  it usually is worse than you imagine.

Meanwhile, in a related development, former first-round pick Johnny Manziel watched the first night of the draft from a bar and purchased 300 shots for his fellow patrons.

Tuesday: Double Loss

Thursday: Soul City Walker

12.11.15
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Bednarik, Nagurski Awards for Tyler Damages Butkus’ Credibility

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzs72euFu6I

When members of the Dick Butkus Award committee watched as Temple’s Tyler Matakevich took home another impressive piece of college football hardware on ESPN Thursday, it was dinner, not breakfast, time, but they surely had to have egg on their faces.

chuckles

This is just huge for Tyler, TU and recruiting.

Left off the list of finalists for the Butkus Award given to the nation’s best linebacker, Matakevich won the Chuck Bednarik Award as the nation’s best overall player, which had to be embarrassing for the Butkus people.  An uproar of epic proportions followed  release of the Butkus finalist list with committee members peppered with emails and letters from Temple and AAC football fans who were wondering what the criteria was. Many of those same fans posted on social media that the committee claimed they had nothing to do with the selection of the finalists.

Matakevich not only took home the Bednarik Award, but it was his second such award as the nation’s best defensive player. Earlier this week, Matakevich won the Charlotte Touchdown Club’s Bronko Nagurski Award. That begs this question: If Matakevich, a linebacker, is named the top defensive player by two historically more prestigious groups than the Butkus one, just why was he left off the list of 10 finalists as the nation’s top linebacker?

The answer has to be that the Butkus “committee,” or whoever is in charge of pairing the list down to 10, did a sloppy job without a whole lot of homework done. Matakevich is one of seven players in the history of the FBS to have at least 100 tackles in four-straight seasons. With one game left in a soon-to-be 14-game season for Temple this year, Matakevich has 126 tackles and that is 13 more tackles than Butkus winner Jaylon Smith of Notre Dame. In a head-to-head matchup on Halloween Night, Matakevich was the clearly the best linebacker on the field as he had 13 tackles and an interception in a 24-20 loss, while Smith had 10 tackles. Matakevich had five more interceptions than Smith, who had none, and five more interceptions than anyone competing for the Butkus, Bednarik and Nagurski Awards.

The latter two groups took their jobs seriously, while it now apparent that the Butkus people shirked their responsibility. That is a hit on the credibility of their award from which it could be very hard to recover.

12.08.15
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But the Big Story on Action News Is ….

matty

The first time I ever heard the name Bronko Nagurski was holding the transistor radio close to my ear as a kid and listening to the great play-by-play guy, Ron Menchine, do a Temple game at Pitt.

“There’s Dynamo Hyno with the ball getting, 10, 15 yards and he’s running like Bronko Nagurski,” Menchine said.  “The Pitt defenders just cannot bring him down.”

cleansup

Tyler cleans up good. (Photo courtesy Charlotte Observer)

I didn’t know who Nagurski was, but I knew who Dynamo Hyno was—Temple fullback Henry Hynoski—and I knew this Nagurski guy must have been pretty good if he was being compared to Hynoski.

Now I can say the same for Nagurski and Tyler Matakevich. This Nagurski guy must have been pretty good if they are giving an award named after him to the great Temple linebacker, who I know is pretty good.

Great, really.

Years from now, the alumni from this team will gather around the post-game tailgates and talk about Tyler Matakevich with alumni from other eras. They will have plenty to talk about because the big story on Action News tonight is that Matakevich became the first Temple player to bring home a major award in 41 years when he was named the Bronko Nagurski Trophy Winner as the nation’s best  defensive player.

It is an award well-deserved.

I had a long conversation with Tyler in Lot K the week before the UCF game and I told him the greatest thing about the Leave No Doubt motto was that UCF was a championship game, like the week before that one and the week after.

menchine

Ron Menchine

“Absolutely,” Tyler said. “We know that’s the only way we can have success.”

Then he explained the what’s the #what’snext hashtag. It was a fascinating conversation and he could not have been more gracious with his time. We talked about other things, like his visit to 97-year-old former Temple end James Woodside, but his take on turning a couple of slogans into a meaningful foundation for this season was illuminating.

I had an inkling Matakevich might win it when a story I wrote for Rant Sports.com ranking the five finalists for the Nagurski Award and putting Matakevich as No. 1 was not only liked by the official twitter account of the Charlotte Touchdown Club, but retweeted to each and every one of the voters.

liked

 

I followed that up with the following chart and it was a pretty stark black and white (well, cherry and white in this case) difference between Matakevich and the competition.

nagurski

The last Temple player to earn a major award was Steve Joachim, who won the Maxwell Award was the nation’s best college player. Matakevich is also up for an award from that same club called the Chuck Bednarik Award, also as the nation’s top defensive player.

I have a feeling that he’s also going to bring home that trophy as well. It could not happen to a nicer guy or a better player. Dynamo Hyno should be, and Bronko himself, who has long since left us, would have been, proud.

Related:

http://www.rantsports.com/ncaa-football/2015/11/24/ranking-the-5-bronko-nagurski-award-finalists-for-nations-top-defensive-player/

http://www.rantsports.com/ncaa-football/2015/11/04/dick-butkus-award-will-be-a-complete-farce-without-including-temples-tyler-matakevich/

Tomorrow: Temple vs. Houston Photo Gallery

11.04.15
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Dick Butkus Award is a Complete Joke

Left it all on the field, as usual.

Left it all on the field, as usual.

bednarik

If the Dick Butkus Award selection committee got points for honesty, probably all of them would admit to skipping the Notre Dame vs. Temple football game on Saturday night. The award is supposed to go to the nation’s best linebacker.

One of the linebackers in that game had 13 tackles and an interception and is the nation’s leading active career tackler and the only player in the FBS to lead his team in tackles for all eight games. Another had 10 tackles and no interceptions, is not the FBS career leader in tackles nor has led his team in tackles in each and every game.

lombardi

The guy with 13 tackles and an interception, Temple’s Tyler Matakevich, was left off the list of Dick Butkus Award semifinalists released by the committee on Monday. The guy with the 10 tackles, Notre Dame’s Jaylon Smith, was on it. There were 10 linebackers on that semifinal list and not to include Matakevich should be enough evidence to get every member of that committee fired.

The argument extends beyond that single game and the comparison with that single foe. It is supposed to be an award based on this single season of performance in the college football realm alone, not on where the guy projects in the NFL draft. On their criteria, it is hard for the committee to make a case for any of the 10 being better than Matakevich.

lott

Along with Smith, the following are the semifinalists:  Kendall Beckwith and Deion Jones of LSU, Su’a Cravens of USC, Kyler Frackrell of Utah State, Leonard Floyd of Georgia,   Blake Martinez of Stanford, Raekwon McMillan of Ohio State, Antonio Missison of Florida and Reggie Ragland of Alabama.

For the season—and that’s what this award is based on—Matakevich has 78 tackles, four sacks and five interceptions for the 7-1 Owls and has led a defense that is ranked No. 9 nationally in scoring defense (15.8 ppg.). He has more sacks and more interceptions than anyone on that list and only one player has more tackles.

Certainly, it cannot be because Matakevich plays for a Group of Five team because he has reserved his two best games against Power 5 teams—a 27-10 win over a 6-2 Penn State team and a 24-20 loss to No. 8 Notre Dame. Plus, Frackwell–wit his measly 53 tackles and no interceptions by comparison–is on the list and he’s on G5 team. If the Dick Butkus Committee is going exclude Group of 5 linebackers, it should say so in the criteria. Otherwise, this award is a complete farce.

In almost every category across the board, No. 8 ranks No. 1.

In almost every category across the board, No. 8 ranks No. 1.

The hard numbers suggest none of these linebackers rate on a par with Matakevich, let alone deserve to jump over him. Craven has 50 tackles and two interceptions. Beckwith and Jones are tied for the LSU team lead with 51 tackles and only Jones has interceptions (two).  Frackwell has 53 tackles and no interceptions.  Floyd no interceptions and 44 tackles.  Martinez has 91 tackles, but only one interception. McMillan has 74 tackles and no interceptions and there is a poll on one Ohio State website questioning whether he is even the best linebacker on the Buckeyes, let alone one of the top 10 in the nation. Missison has 60 tackles and no interceptions and Ragland has 71 tackles and no interceptions.

No one has made the kind of impact in the nation and on his own team as Matakevich and the Butkus Award committee should be ashamed to leave this young man off a final list of 10. There can be no valid reasons for this sloppy work, just excuses.

10.15.15
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A Special Milestone for Tyler Matakevich

One more tackle to No. 400

One more tackle to No. 400

If Tyler Matakevich was playing baseball instead of football on Saturday night, they would stop the game and give him the ball for what he is about to do and, while it’s not a home run, it will be just as significant.

Instead, when Matakevich gets his next tackle, which will be his No. 400 career one, against visiting Central Florida, the AAC game will go on and the Temple football linebacker will have to settle for getting his just rewards at the end of the season. Four hundred is just a number, but add that to all of the other numbers Matakevich has been able to compile over both his career and this season and he is building enough currency to purchase some valuable hardware at the end of the season.

tackles

With just 10 tackles on Saturday, Tyler moves from No. 30 to No. 22 on the all-time list.

Sports are all about numbers, with different numbers meaning different things but some meaning everything. For Matakevich, it’s just one more tackle but it should move him one step closer to winning the Dick Butkus’ Award as the nation’s best linebacker. It certainly will cement his legacy as one of the greatest ever to play on the defensive side of the ball in college football. In college football, 400 tackles means just as much—if not more—than 500 or 600 home runs mean in major league baseball simply because the number of guys who have done both is approximately the same.

Already, Matakevich is the nation’s leading active career tackler in all five NCAA classifications (FBS, FCS and Divisions I-III) and what’s left for him is to add to it in his final season by getting some much-deserved hardware in addition to the Butkus’ Award. One of his top competitors for the trophy, Scooby Wright III of Arizona, has played only one game due to injury. Matakevich has to be considered at the head of this year’s linebacker class.

When it comes to numbers, few have been as impressive as Matakevich. He is the only active FBS player with 100 tackles in each of his last three seasons. This year, he is the only player among FBS teams to lead his team in tackles each game—remarkable on its own, but even more impressive in that his defense is the No. 13-ranked scoring defense in the country. With 44 tackles in five games, he is right on pace for 100 in 12 games and, with the way the unbeaten Owls are playing, they could easily have more games than the regular-season minimum. The Temple school record for tackles, by Steve Conjar (492) clearly is in sight and, should Matakevich reach it, only two players in the history of college football, Boston College’s Luke Kuechly (532) and Houston’s Marcus McGraw (510) will finish ahead of him.

With that career and with this season, that should be more than enough to get Matakevich long overdue recognition.

Tomorrow: Forgetting is Not An Excuse

Saturday: Game Day Preview