Special Qualities for 5 Temple guys

Antwone Santiago was a beast at Platt and made these same kind of plays at Temple last month.

Every once in a while, someone comes from out of nowhere to surprise the Temple football community.

Who would have thought, for example, that an obscure running back from Gainesville, Fla. named Kenny Harper would be such a leader of the 2014 Temple Owls or that a fullback named Nick Sharga would be the guy to a power offense built around his skills that led to a couple of double-digit win seasons?

Sharga is now a priest and we can only thank God for him.

Harper was the guy who got up at the end of the end of a 6-6 season in 2014 and told the team to “leave no doubt” the next season.

They did not, going on to the first of consecutive 10-win seasons and a couple of appearances in title games.

Sharga helped facilitate those wins by being the lead blocker for running backs Jahad Thomas and Ryquell Armstead, the epitome of Temple TUFF, and keeping the offense on the field for 7-8 minutes of each quarter and keeping other offenses off the field. That helped the defense stay rested and effective unlike the first two years of Matt Rhule’s spread offenses.

Now it is time for a new generation of guys with “special qualities” and, just from watching the Cherry and White game, some Temple fans are able to identify at least five:

One, linebacker Antwone Santiago __ Santiago made plays all over the place in the month-long spring practice and had perhaps his best outing at Cherry and White. Drayton: “He’s got a chance to be a special player here at Temple,” after the game. Still, he’s 6-3, 215 and to play effective linebacker he needs to both put on weight and hit the weight room in the next few months ahead.

Two, wide receiver Dante Wright __ Wright didn’t make first-team freshman All-American at Colorado State for fraudulent reasons. He was an impact player for the Rams and, last year, at Temple, was the Owls’ best receiver. He’s a terrific punt returner as well.

Three, defensive end Tra Thomas__ In a 27-23 loss to a bowl team (USF) last year, Thomas had a a pair sacks and had a career-high tackles (8) against Rutgers last year and, at times, looked unblockable against a Big 10 team. He had a great spring and appears poised to give the Owls one of the top edge pass rushers in the AAC.

Four, tight end Reese Clark__ A star for a three-time large school Pennsylvania state champion, St. Joseph’s Prep, Clark caught the lone touchdown pass in a 41-7 loss to Miami last year. Now, out from under the shadows of David Martin-Robinson, Clark is going to get plenty of opportunities to display his pass-catching and tackle-breaking ability at the position.

Five, running back Antwain Littleton _ At 6-1, 265 pounds, Littleton was a load to bring down at St. John’s (D.C.) and then, “slimmed down” at 6-1, 235 at Maryland, Littleton was able to make an impact in the running back rotation at a Big 10 school. When he left, Maryland head coach Mike Locksley bemoaned that his “second-team running back” demanded $100K or he would leave. Littleton was the only guy who fit that description and, hopefully, the Owls will get their money’s worth this season.

In a sport where 22 guys start, are five enough to produce a winning team?

No, but the past has shown that guys come out of nowhere and lead Temple football to big things and maybe that kind of history can repeat itself. The spring has shown Temple certainly has those guys in the building.

Monday: Splash Alert

A possible end-around for Temple football

International students probably won’t be included in NIL deals, which could save schools like Temple.

Otherwise, it was a forgettable moment in Temple football’s 59-34 loss to UTSA.

The Owls’ quarterback, E.J. Warner, rolled right and improvised a throw to tight end Peter Clarke, who caught the first touchdown pass of his career.

Peter Clarke is part of a great TE room at Temple this season.

Clarke is from London, England, and became the first foreign player ever to score a touchdown for the Temple University football team and the Owls have been playing since 1884.

Clarke is still here mostly because that was his most notable moment for the Owls. Still, had Clarke caught 40 passes for 10 touchdowns he would also still be here because, as an international student, he is ineligible to sign NIL deals and that removes the main incentive to enter the transfer portal.

It is what makes Clarke the quintessential Stan Drayton player. Drayton came to Temple promising to build a culture of guys who both want play here and win an AAC championship here. Then the wheels came off. Guys who were building blocks of the program left for greener (i.e., money) pastures. A 3-9 season in 2022 turned into another 3-9 season in 2023.

Under this system, progress seems impossible.

However, if the Owls were able to recruit enough guys with Peter Clarke’s background–not just from London but from all over the world–they could build the kind of winning culture Drayton envisioned when hired without the axe of the NIL and the transfer portal hanging over their heads.

Imagine this: Temple puts an international all-star team together and keeps all of those guys for four years because there is no financial incentive to go elsewhere.

Penn State’s Matt Rhule (98) gets up after tackling Temple’s Henry Burris while another teammate piles on for a 15-yard penalty.

The problem with this, though, are there enough great international players for Temple to win? Maybe not from Europe, Asia or Australia, but there is certainly enough evidence to suggest that Canada could be a fertile recruiting ground for the Owls. McGill, one of the great Canadian Universities located in Toronto, not only plays football but plays it on a high-enough level to contribute twice as many starters to the CFL as any other college, including the American ones. The current “Oklahomas” and “Alabamas” of Canada are Western, Laurier and Montreal Universities. Plenty of good AAC-level players on those programs who might enjoy the opportunity to compete in the states. If these guys can play in the CFL and become stars there, and they have proven that over the last 50 years, they can play in the U.S., too.

When you consider Henry Burris, a former Temple great, is arguably the greatest CFL player of all time, that’s impressive. Burris could be a catalyst to send good Canadian players South and there just might be enough of them to make Temple a perennial AAC power.

The Owls are just banging their heads against the wall by developing players from high schools here and then having them leave for elsewhere once proven. Putting together an international all-star team might be the kind of end-around play Drayton needs for the stability that doesn’t exist now.

It’s worth a shot.

5 Guys in the Portal who can make Temple a winner

P.J. Walker parlayed his time at TU into an XFL MVP and a backup job in the NFL

HELP WANTED: Quarterback, Temple University. One of the nation’s great universities, the sixth-largest educator of professionals in the world and located in a Top Four TV market, is looking for a dynamic, playmaking quarterback to lead the Owls back to national prominence.

In the last decade alone, Temple was ranked in the Top 25 three times (the most recent in 2019), won one AAC title and also competed in another ACC title game. Its 2015 game against Notre Dame was the most-watched college football game in the history of the Philadelphia market. It has had one XFL MVP (P.J. Walker) and another Maxwell Award winner as the best player in college football (Steve Joachim). We don’t have a big NIL bag of cash for you but if playing college football for money is your only goal, please look elsewhere. If, on the other hand, you want to gamble on yourself and make a ton of money down the road, this is the place for you. Temple has three great wide receivers in Dante Wright (a first-team All-American freshman, 2019), Zae Baines and Ian Stewart, a transfer from Michigan State. Also, walk-on John Adams might be the fastest WR the AAC. Reese Clark leads a terrific tight end group. Your major competition for the QB job is a guy who has four career TD passes against six interceptions as a FBS QB and another guy who lost, 55-0, to SMU last year. If interested, please contact Stan Drayton at @standraytonTU on X (formerly known as twitter).

That’s it.

That’s the pitch.

Temple QB Steve Joachim won the Maxwell Award as College Football’s Player of the Year in 1974.

There are about 18-20 quarterbacks in the transfer portal better than anyone currently in the Temple quarterback room.

The very success of the 2024 Temple football team rests on Stan Drayton’s ability to get one of those guys. There are plenty of programs who would like to have those 20 guys but only a very small handful that could offer a realistic chance for the starting quarterback job in a still high-profile program that appears on TV on a regular basis.

Hell, Temple opens on a Friday night on ESPN. The Flagship ESPN. Not ESPN2, ESPNNEWS, ESPNU or ESPN+.

The real thing.

The stage for a quarterback who believes in himself and has some good WRs to throw to does not get any bigger. Opening weekend of the college football season and the first college football game most people will see. “Who is this guy making those throws for Temple? He’s good.”

That’s what’s on the plate for any one of 20 great quarterbacks in the portal now are smart enough to know that Temple offers them the best chance to start.

We’ve narrowed our choices down to five guys, two with Temple recruiting connections.

In no particular order, they are this:

Reece Poffenbarger

Does the former Albany quarterback, who has family within short driving distance of every home Temple game, really want to spend this 2024 season holding a clipboard at Miami for Cam Ward? I don’t think any competitive person wants to and I’m assuming that’s Poffenbarger’s makeup. This is a guy who can lead Temple to an AAC title and then name his price at the end of the season. Poffenbarger is not in the portal now, but he can be nudged in that direction as could any other FBS player.

Sol-Jay Maiava-Peters

There are a couple of would-be interesting connections between Peters and Temple. One, he was offensive MVP of the New Mexico Bowl in 2022 for BYU in a 24-22 win over SMU. Temple’s Chris Coyer, also a QB, was the offensive MVP of the same bowl in 2011. Two, he was a high school teammate of current Temple RB Antwain Littleton at St. John’s High School (D.C.). All Drayton has to do is call Littleton into his office, have Antwain dial Peters’ number and hand the phone to Drayton and Peters is on the next plane to Philadelphia.

Timmy McClain, QB UCF

If you want your program to bring in the most predictable, boring pocket passer, then Timmy McClain isn’t your guy. But if you want a dual threat option that makes absolutely insane plays from time to time, then McClain should be on the radar. Unlike the above three guys, McClain might be looking for a college payday over a chance to lead his team to a title but he’s still worth a shot.

Nick Evers, QB Wisconsin

Evers is a former 4* recruit who entered the portal after falling to No. 3 in the Badgers’ depth chart behind Tanner Mordecai and Tyler Van Dyke this spring. If you think Temple can’t attract 4* QBs, think again. In the past five years, the Owls were able to recruit Dwan Mathis away from Georgia and Re-al Mitchell away from Iowa State. Mathis was the starter on opening day in 2020 for Georgia and Drayton’s first opening day starter (2022). Mitchell, a backup to current 49ers starting quarterback Brock Purdy at Iowa State, never made an impact in Philadelphia. Both had ball security problems. Evers does not have that history.

Austin Smith, Eastern Michigan

Another Temple connection here is that Smith knows Nico Piriano, who is now Temple’s football director of operations. Piriano worked in the same capacity under Chris Creighton, a great head coach, at Eastern Michigan where he got to know last year’s EMU starter Smith. Would Smith be an upgrade over what Temple has now? Well, put it this way. Smith had more than twice as many TD passes (nine) in 2023 than Evan Simon has in his whole career (four).

Temple can get one of those five guys or another guy outside of those five currently in the portal or it can sit back and do nothing.

What would sitting back and do nothing tell you?

Stan Drayton is playing out the string at Temple and planning on pulling a Chip Kelly move to return to the P5 as an assistant coach.

Sitting back and doing nothing is not an option for Temple fans. Drayton owes it not only to those fans but his players to get the best quarterback available and not settle for the ones he has now.

Cherry and White game just one part of process

Maybe current Ohio State HC Ryan Day (seen here as Temple assistant) can do former OSU assistant Stan Drayton (now Temple head coach) a solid by sending him a 4* quarterback stuck deep on the depth chart.

Spring football ended on Saturday for Temple and a whole lot of other schools.

Pretty good crowd for the C&W game considering the 30mph wind and consecutive 3-9 seasons.

What we’ve learned over the last month is Temple probably hasn’t done enough to improve from 3-9 significantly.

Temple is probably a very few really good transfer portal starters at key positions from improving but the good news is that the transfer portal is getting ready to explode and maybe, just maybe, the Owls can fill those positions with an upgrade in talent.

Quarterback is one of those positions.

Temple is not going to have a bag of cash to give any of group of players in the portal but it does have something most schools can’t give–a real chance to grab a starting job.

There are 130 FBS teams and most of them have a starting quarterback at this time. Maybe five jobs are open and Temple is one of them.

TD celly‼️ @Reesexclark2 said…what’s up brother ☝️#TempleTUFF https://t.co/KdvqAsASjQ pic.twitter.com/xcdZhMw4Oh

— Temple Football (@Temple_FB) April 13, 2024

Reese Clark had to reach back and catch this TD pass, which is really a simple throw.

Temple would be a perfect place for a 4* quarterback like Wisconsin’s Nick Evers, who found himself third team after the spring and entered the portal recently. Miami transfer Tyler Van Dyke transferred in and grabbed the No. 2 job and former SMU quarterback Tanner Mordecai appears to have that job locked down.

Evers is a significantly more talented quarterback than anyone else in the Temple quarterback room but he’s the not the only one. According to portal experts, a good dozen or so accomplished quarterbacks will shake free starting today and several could be more talented than even Evers.

The Owls better get one.

Temple has some pretty good receivers in Dante Wright, Zae Baines and Ian Stewart. The Owls apparently have three good tight ends, led by St. Joseph’s Prep great Reese Clark.

They built depth among the both lines and their linebacking corp as a group appears better, even though they don’t have anyone as talented as Jordan Magee. The secondary, which was a disaster last year, was upgraded with a Texas State transfer. Another disaster, the kicking game, appears to have been fixed.

They’ve added two All-American running backs from the JUCO ranks and someone in Antwain Littleton who did some impressive running in the Big 10.

Their most pressing area of need, though, is the most important position.

The Owls are not that far away if … and this is a big IF … they are able to add a playmaking quarterback who can stick around for more than a couple of months this time.

Friday (April 19): Five Guys

Monday (April 22): A Possible Hail Mary For Temple

Friday (April 26): Special Qualities

Three stages of Cherry and White

Bruce Arians reminds all of us how young we were once.

Cherry and White are the two most glorious colors in the college football prism but the Cherry and White Day itself has manifested itself into three stages:

For me, it’s pretty much this:

LAST CENTURY–“We look so good we’re going to win a natty.” That might have been fueled by a fuel Rolling Rocks pre-game, but the Owls always looked good against the Owls. Some terrific performances by running back Ventres Stevenson (Bruce Arians’ Era) and a guy named Gibson (no relation, also Bruce Era) got us pumped for the next season. Interestingly enough, Temple’s GOAT (Paul Palmer) never played in a Cherry and White game due to injuries and what they refer to today as “load management.” In all my years of following Temple football, though, this was key: I never saw a 5-9, 190-pound player who was tougher than Paul and pretty much played almost every game of his three seasons when it counted (in the fall).

This 2015 Cherry and White Game was the prelude to the 27-10 win over Penn State four months later.

EARLY PART OF THIS CENTURY–With the arrival of Al Golden, Temple football fans saw a binder (not like Mitt Romney, of women) but a binder of great players up and down the East Coast who were going to take the Owls to prominence. Golden and Matt Rhule, his Lieutenant, followed that plan to a Temple T and did exactly that.

AFTER MATT RHULE–A collection of suspects and wannabes stayed only long enough to keep Temple relevant. Plenty of terrific moments for me at Steve Addazio’s first Cherry and White game when I talked to John Palumbo’s dad and he said: “Mike, my son said it was the difference between night and day between the Al Golden staff and this one because this is pretty much the staff that led Florida to the national championship last year.” Mr. Palumbo (and John) were right. Temple had the OC of the national championship Florida team as HC and the DC of the National Championship team (Chuck Heater) the VERY year after they won it. As a result, those guys took Golden’s recruits to Temple’s first bowl win in 30 years.

The 2012 Cherry and White Game was played at LFF.

TRANSFER PORTAL ERA–Rod Carey was a “my-way-or-the-highway” guy at the very time the most highways were built for the players. That turned out to be a disaster. Stan Drayton was able to plug a few holes in a sinking ship and point the program (“progrim” as pronounced by Bobby Wallace) in the right direction before taking a couple of torpedoes in his second year by hiring a completely incompetent DC (Everett Withers) to take over for a relatively competent one (D.J. Eliot). Loyalty to Withers surfaced its ugly head this season and the Owls handed over a defense that gave up 38.7 ppg to the same guy. If you think that bodes well for the 2024 prospects, Exhibit B was Withers being a worse DC for FIU only three years ago (39.7 ppg).

If Withers takes his buddy Stan down with the ship like he did Butch Davis and FIU in 2021, all that hole-plugging would have been for naught.

Ugh.

The Owls won’t improve as a team until AFTER Cherry and White Day and ONLY if they are able to grab a proven playmaking quarterback in the portal. Plenty will be available but Drayton telling OwlsDaily.com “we have four great quarterbacks” proves that he should take a day off next week and make an appointment with an Optometrist.

Song by Kevin Newsome, one of two 4* QBs to ever play in a C&W game (Dwan Mathis was the other).

So whatever you see tomorrow at Cherry and White, take with a grain of salt.

Make that a bolder.

The good news is that there are enough bodies for a real game for a change.

The bad news is that the Oklahoma game is one day sooner (pun intended) than it should be and the Owls don’t appear to be closer to making that a real competition today than they were at the end of last season.

Advice: Drink a lot of Rolling Rocks or brewski of choice and bring those Cherry and White colored glasses. The Owls added a lot of JUCOs but, if they are going to get better, they need a few more great players once that transfer portal explodes as expected on Monday.

Monday: Cherry and White Recap

Friday (April 19): Five Guys

Monday (April 22): A Possible Hail Mary For Temple

Friday (April 26): Special Qualities

Philly Eclipse Means a winning season for Temple

Temple’s band prior to football game against St. Joe in 1925. (photo courtesy Temple archives)

Depending upon which conspiracy theory you believe circulating around the internet, at about 3 this afternoon, all of us are going to be raptured into Heaven or sent to a hotter place. Hell (pun intended), one member of Congress floated that possibility on her twitter account.

Since I’m not a conspiracy theorist, and there is really no good way to predict the 2024 final Temple football record without knowing which big-time quarterback Owls can attract here on or around April 15, I decided to do some research on what the Owls did in prior Philadelphia eclipse years.

Good news.

While the Owls have had more losing seasons in their history than winning ones, some of their best seasons have come when solar eclipses visited Philadelphia. In fact, they have not had a single losing season in the past 100 years during an eclipse year.

No quotes in this story but an interesting lede nonetheless.

1925–Under head coach “Heinie” Miller, the Owls finished 5-2-2, beating Upsala, 19-0, at the “old” Northeast High, 8th and Lehigh. They also moved a couple of blocks West to beat St. Joseph’s College (now University), 32-0, at Baker Bowl, Broad and Lehigh, that year. The Philadelphia eclipse occurred on Jan. 25.

1932–The 5-1-2 Owls played all home games at the then new Temple Stadium including a 14-0 win against Denver (Colo.). Their only road game was a 7-7 tie against Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh. Carnegie Tech, which played NYU at Yankee Stadium that year, also finished with a winning season. The Owls also beat Penn State, 13-12, at Temple Stadium. They also beat West Virginia, 14-13. The eclipse in Philadelphia occurred on Aug. 31.

1963–After the July 20th eclipse, the Owls of George Makris finished 5-3-1 and likely would have finished 6-3-1 if they had been able to play their final game of the season. That game was originally scheduled to be played on Saturday, November 23, at Temple Stadium but was canceled due to the tragic assassination of President John F. Kennedy the prior day.

2017–On Aug. 21, the Owls were wrapping up their first camp under new coach Geoff Collins and got off the field during the eclipse that day (1:21-4 p.m.). They finished 7-6 that season with a 28-3 bowl win over FIU. QB Frank Nutile was the MVP.

2024–Maybe the Owls pick up a big-name quarterback in the portal post the Cherry and White game who leads them to a winning season. Of course, there was no transfer portal in prior eclipse years so the Owls had to settle on whoever was enrolled in the school at the time. They need an upgrade so the transfer portal could provide good news soon.

We can only hope so. They have an eclipse tradition to uphold.

Friday: Cherry and White Preview

Monday: Cherry and White Recap

Friday (April 19): Five Guys

Monday (April 22): A Possible Hail Mary For Temple

McDowell proves Thomas Wolfe wrong

John Rienstra, unlike Clifton McDowell, made a name for himself at Temple and did more than OK.

The Clifton McDowell Era ended at Temple and, when the book of the Transfer Portal is ever written, McDowell may have provided the most unusual chapter.

Proving Thomas Wolfe wrong.

Wolfe, in his novel, “You Can’t Go Home Again” talked about the story of George Webber, who writes a book about his hometown that became a national success but the residents of said town are unhappy with what they perceived was a distorted depiction of them. They send him death threats and tell him he’s not welcome.

Fortunately for McDowell, he didn’t badmouth Missoula, Montana on the way out the door so his reported return to them yesterday will come with welcome arms. He wants his old job back.

Like Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone TV series, though, every good story has an ironic twist at the end.

My predicted twist–and I believe this will come true no later than September–is that while McDowell went home with the intention of reclaiming his starting job, a guy named Logan Fife will turn out to be the eventual starter. Fife was the very capable backup last year at Fresno State and Montana only felt the need to recruit him because McDowell left for Temple.

The Owls, on the other hand, don’t have a quarterback on the current roster with the resume of Fife, let alone McDowell. Fife was a much better backup at Fresno than Evan Simon was at Rutgers but that’s what Temple is stuck with at this current stage of the game. That, or a JUCO who looked like total crap subbing for E.J. Warner last year.

Maybe walking down the street in Missoula, Montana without looking over your shoulder means that much to McDowell, who didn’t turn out to be Temple TUFF.

What Temple needs now is a Fife-level transfer because, while the loyalty of the current quarterback room HOPEFULS (and we use that word loosely) is laudable, the undeniable fact is that the current leader, Forrest Brock, looked only about 1/10th as good as E.J. Warner in his lone Temple action last year. That’s even being generous to Brock. Stan, this is your one chance to get someone better than Warner. Settling for worse would be at your own peril.

I don’t know about you but I’d rather get a guy 10x better than Warner than one 10x worse.

The good news for Temple is that the transfer portal is getting ready to explode on April 15 and at least one very good P5 quarterback will shake loose from a No. 2 on his team’s depth chart to become available to Temple. If that guy is smart, he will turn down a $250,000 NIL deal to be a backup elsewhere and gamble that on himself and a very good chance to start at Temple to make a million down the road.

If McDowell’s leaving leads to Temple being smart enough to land one of those guys who can be better than Warner, and McDowell ends up as a backup in the middle of nowheresville bored out of his mind, that’s the kind of ironic twist that would meet with the approval of Serling.

Not to mention Temple fans who wouldn’t mind watching or reading a good ending for a change.

Biggest victims of portal and NIL? The players

Every day you learn something new about both the NIL and the transfer portal.

For me, I didn’t think quarterback Clifton McDowell leaving Temple football in the middle of spring practice would have been a thing.

Would have at least expected he’d wait until the end of spring practice, give himself a chance to shine in the Cherry and White game, and then move on if the handwriting was on the wall.

This isn’t about the Clifton McDowells, though. It’s about the other kids.

The great majority of them.

Gary Segars, who does one of the best college football podcasts out there (Winning Cures Everything), said that since December 23 alone, 2,332 college football players have entered the portal and, as of last week’s show, only 1,116 have found a new home.

That’s less than half.

Tickets for Temple’s road opener going for as low as $36

What happened to those 1,216?

They not only have no place to go, but also lost their scholarships at the prior schools and the cost-of-attendance stipend (at an AAC school like Temple) of roughly between $3-5,000-per-year. This whole NIL Transfer Portal system has left the majority of the players homeless.

So this is pretty much a Ponzi scheme. Former Oklahoma head coach Barry Switzer, who lives 100 yards from the stadium (Gaylord Family Stadium) where Temple opens the season, described it perfectly: “You know what NIL stands for?” Switzer told Dan Sileo last week. “Now it’s legal.”

What got SMU the death penalty in 1986 is standard operating procedure in 2024.

Only the top 1 percent of the players are getting head-turning deals and a large portion of the other 99 percent think they should get those kinds of deals, too.

The hard reality is beginning to set in for the majority of those players.

The Oakland basketball coach said his star player is getting offers between $250K and $300K per year and there is no way Oakland can match that. The player was called “Mr. Oakland” for his loyalty to the school but that apparently is out the window.

The real smart football players at Temple are the ones who are staying because, after a trifecta of consecutive 3-9 seasons, there’s not a lot of value a Owl can offer a big-time school like Georgia or Alabama and those are the types of schools that can offer that kind of money.

They can increase their value by being a part of a winning Temple program.

The good news for Temple is that this transfer portal works both ways. Among the 1,216 players currently available in the portal are a lot of good players who can help Temple, if not against Oklahoma on Aug. 31, win against a similar skill pool of AAC players later. Five players left the Miami Hurricanes last week, including the team’s leading rusher. It’s getting late for those players to find a place and it’s likely the Owls won’t have to offer a bag of cash. Just an opportunity to play should be enough.

The coaching staff that identifies those players will win the AAC. Temple has to scour the portal and find players who can help it in areas of need and a lot of those players will need Temple as well.

The ones who don’t find a home will have a sad story to tell 60 Minutes once this sordid chapter of college sports history is over.

The hard truth about the depth chart

Sol-Jay Maiava-Peters is a former teammate of current Owl starting running back Antwain Littleton.

Amid all the noise about no lopsided scrimmages and things looking good at Temple football’s spring practice is this indisputable truth.

The best quarterback on the team left for reasons unclear and there is no one on the current roster who possesses the same kind of skill set or talent level as Clifton McDowell.

Don’t believe me.

Quite a number of good uncommitted quarterbacks on that list but, for specific reasons connected to Temple, Stan Drayton should zero in on getting Sol-Jay Maiava-Peters.

Believe the numbers.

There is not a single quarterback on the roster who has put up the kind of numbers in college football as Clifton McDowell did.

If the season were to start on Cherry and White Day against Oklahoma and not a meaningless game between good guys and good guys, which is what the Cherry and White game has always been, the starter would be a guy who had four college touchdown passes against six college touchdown interceptions or a JUCO guy who did nothing above the JUCO level and looked like total crap in his only game against SMU.

Not good options.

Had to laugh when I read on message boards “next man up.”

Not a believer in “next-man-up.” Never was. Never will be. Temple’s got to go out and get a replacement for McDowell with similar athletic ability.

I saw Forrest Brock play in the SMU game and, if he was better than the kid from Ocean City (Tyler Douglas, got to assume he was because the coaches put him in first), Temple is bleeped. He didn’t show me any throws that indicated he could start at West Chester, let alone Montana. Next man up gets you beat 55-0. Forrest Gump might have played better. Hell, Forrest Tucker of F-Troop, a college football star before getting into acting, certainly would have.

I saw enough of Simon in the RU-TU game to know he was the second-best quarterback in that game.

Temple needs to get better than E.J. Warner at that position, not worse.

Sol-Jay Maiava-Peters would give Temple two QBs who were offensive MVPs in the New Mexico Bowl. (Chris Coyer was the first.) Hell, if he comes here, he might get another NMB MVP trophy for the Owls.

McDowell offered that possibility, having thrown 13 touchdown passes and only four interceptions for FCS national runnerup Montana. Contrast that to Warner’s 23 TDs and 14 interceptions for Temple last year and there was a chance that Temple would get better just on the turnover factor alone. Warner had this nasty habit of throwing Pick 6s at exactly the time Temple didn’t need them (Rutgers, 2022 and USF, 2023).

Temple head coach Stan Drayton knows what he has to do.

Get a big-time quarterback in the transfer portal.

There is a list published in the graphic of this post of the current big-time quarterbacks available. One, former Georgia Tech and Nebraska starter Jeff Sims, is available. I would not go that route, rather looking at quarterbacks with Sims’ talent but with a demonstrated history of protecting the football. (Temple already tried to get a 4* quarterback with a history of fumbling, Dwan Mathis, and that did not work out too well.)

Drayton has to ask himself this question: Is he more comfortable going into the Oklahoma game with possibly a quarterback (Brock) who lost, 55-0, to SMU in 2023 or a guy who beat SMU, 24-23, in the final game of 2022?

One possibility on this list of undecideds in the BYU quarterback, Sol-Jai Malavia-Peters. Kid led his team to a bowl win and is a great runner. Former teammate of Antwain Littleton at St. John’s (D.C). Like many other great football players in this transfer portal, Peters still does not have a home. He can help Temple and Temple can help him.

All Drayton has to do is call in Littleton after practice tomorrow and have him do the heavy lifting to recruit a guy who won a bowl game for BYU as a starting quarterback.

Since Littleton is 6-1, 235 pounds lifting that cell phone and selling Peters on Temple should not be that hard.

Monday: Ponzi and Temple

Temple’s path to winning: A unique style

“You guys hang in there because one of our alums is going to win the MegaMillions Tuesday.”

Failing me winning the Powerball tonight or the Mega tomorrow, there are a couple of other pathways to respectability for Temple football that were apparent over the last few days both in the basketball tournament and the football scrimmage.

One, that probably can’t happen.

What we saw is that, after the first round, the teams who paid the piper (i.e., NIL) largely won and the brackets settled into favorite mode.

You can count on @DLcoachbeck to bring the energy and the noise 😂🔥‼️#TempleTUFF pic.twitter.com/fY7sUCKQ7K

— Temple Football (@Temple_FB) March 22, 2024

So Temple or any G5 team winning the national championship until this current financial landscape probably cannot happen in either major sport.

One, that could happen.

The teams who pulled off the upsets in the first round (Grand Canyon, Yale, Oakland, Duquesne) all had a unique style of play that other high-seeded teams were not ready for. Grand Canyon pressed and had line-change substitutions. Yale slowed it down. Oakland ran an offense that accentuated its strength (the three) by an entry pass into the paint followed kicking out to a shooter. Duquesne played a 1-3-1 zone that confused BYU.

All exceeded any national expectations.

Temple football could carve out that same niche in the G5 college football world if only it would embrace its recent past.

Fullback, two tight ends, establish the running game, chew up the clock with 7-8 minute drives each quarter and occasionally hit an explosive downfield play in the passing game by faking it into the belly of one of their talented running backs, and throwing over the heads of a defense whose linebackers and safeties were forced to inch up to the line of scrimmage to stop the run.

That’s how Al Golden turned Temple from a 20-game losing streak to a first bowl appearance in 30 years. That’s how Matt Rhule progressed from the morass of his first two seasons to double-digit wins in his final two.

That’s how Temple won an AAC championship, appeared on College Football Gameday, and posted the highest-ever prime time TV rating for a national college football game in the Philadelphia market.

After Temple beat Navy, 34-10, for the AAC title, Middies coach Ken Niumatalolo made a great comment about Temple being just as hard to prepare for everyone in the league as his team was because Temple didn’t do the same thing any other team did from a scheme standpoint.

The Owls lost their way and strayed from their roots since then and tried to do the same thing every other college football team did–a spread offense where the passing game was supposed to set up the running game.

That hasn’t worked here. Running to set up the play-action always did.

It was heartening to hear that the Owls established the run in their first scrimmage.

Keep it up and commit to it and the Owls can be the football version of Grand Canyon and Oakland this season.

If I win the Powerball tonight or the Mega tomorrow, they can dream of being a Georgia or a Michigan because the Owls will be the highest-paid team in the NCAA and it would be delicious irony to hear that “the only reason Temple is winning is because some alumn hit the $1.1 billion Megaball. Let’s go back to the old system of no transfer portal or NIL so Georgia and Michigan have a fair shot of winning again.”

Duh?

Until then, style over substance.