Temple just beat the No. 23 team in the country, East Carolina, by playing its worst game of the year.
First, a story: The Owls started their season 4-1. This was a nice surprise to most of us considering they were coming off of a 2-10 season. They beat underwhelming Vanderbilt and then some even more underwhelming opponents in Delaware State, Tulsa, and UConn. Still, we reassured ourselves that Temple winning those games meant they could at least beat the bad teams.
At this point, casual fans must have looked at Temple’s 4-1 record and thought its sophomore quarterback P.J. Walker was having a great season. He had a really nice second half last year and gave fans a lot of reason to believe he’d be the face of the team this year and onward.
But instead, Walker was kind of having a not-so-good year. This was then really exemplified in the following games (Houston and UCF) when he really struggled to get any kind of offense going and at one point hurt his ankle and was replaced by the backup and former starter, Connor Reilly.
Walker’s accuracy and decision making have been off. It’s safe to say he took a step backwards this year. I theorized last week that Walker may be crumpling under pressure now that Temple is relevant and could be bowl eligible for the first time since he’s been an Owl. The jury is still out on that theory since we haven’t really seen Walker drive the ball in a really high leverage situation yet.
So instead of Walker, it was the defense that was winning the games for Temple. This was unbelievable to any Temple fan because of how bad the defense was last year.
Then again, just as we got ready to label Temple’s defense as a force, it slumped a bit against Tulsa and then slumped a lot against Houston and UCF.
At that point, we were thinking Temple wasn’t really as good as we thought it was, but still better than we initially expected it to be, but we still didn’t know if it was capable of beating a good team but … in other words, we didn’t know which Owls team would show up to the ECU game, but we knew it didn’t really matter. They wouldn’t be good enough.
That brings us to the present day.
Not only did Temple beat conference-standout ECU last Saturday, but it did so as only Temple could. And I mean that literally. Last week, if you would have asked me how Temple could beat ECU, I would have said that Walker needs to have the game of his life (which I did say).
You could have countered that and asked, “What if Walker continued to struggle but ECU played ridiculously undisciplined?”
“No.”
“…And what if ECU turned the ball over a bunch of times?”
“No.”
“…And Temple didn’t turn the ball over at all?”
“…No.”
“…And it rained?”
“Alright, maybe.”
The rain was the kicker because it meant ECU quarterback Shane Carden wouldn’t be able to be 100 percent on his game (although he still had a good game going 24-for-41 with 217 passing yards.
Look at these numbers:
| ECU | Temple | |
| First Downs | 30 | 10 |
| Total Yards | 428 | 135 |
| Penalty Yards | 116 | 65 |
| Turnovers | 5 | 0 |
Every Temple football game is like an episode of Lost. We get one answer—yes, Walker’s struggles under pressure are real—but then we have 10 more questions. Why isn’t this defense consistent? What happened to the running backs? What position will John Christopher show up at tomorrow? Why did the Owls cause seven turnovers against Vanderbilt, force seven fumbles against ECU (recover five of them), but flop against Tulsa? The most glaring: If the stars and the moon didn’t align perfectly last Saturday, could Temple have stood a chance against ECU?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imoi5hQvvYw?list=UUFC2zFM8DcNjfCDEARBME_A]Most people probably watched that game thinking Temple had no business winning. Maybe they were right, but that wasn’t what I took away from the game.
***
Last year, Temple’s main weakness was defense, and it wasn’t really that close. It came down to the fact that the Owls opponents knew that they could pass with ease and the Owls couldn’t stop them. This was a combination of two things that I’m sure you can guess (since you are reading a football article)—weak pass rush and weak secondary.
Head coach Matt Rhule made it a point in the offseason to fix these things. According to Rivals, five of Temple’s top eight recruits were defensive backs and two of them were defensive ends. The 2015 class already looks promising highlighted by four-star recruit Kareem Ali Jr., another defensive back.
One of the Owl’s strengths coming into this year was running back, or so we thought. Last year, Kenny Harper proved to be a good power back that could catch passes while Zaire Williams and Jamie Gilmore averaged 5.3 yards per carry each. This should have been enough, but Rhule converted Jahad Thomas, a defensive back, to running back. Thomas has been far and away the Owl’s savior on offense this year while Harper has seen much less playing time and Williams has barely seen any.
This is a Temple team that has two starting seniors on offense and zero starting seniors on defense. They are young and talented. When Rhule took over the Owls, they were a run-first team. Rhule quickly turned them to a pass-first, relevant team by his second year.
The game against ECU was Rhule’s first significant win as a head coach. Now we know that Temple is capable of beating better teams even if they’re overmatched. We know Walker is capable of playing well, but he still has to prove to us that he can perform under pressure. We know the defense is strong but still has to prove they can be consistent.
Rhule, on the other hand, has nothing left to prove. I trust him. Sure the rain helped Temple take advantage of some fumbles, ECU couldn’t stay out of the penalty box, and the rain made for the perfect storm. But when nobody else stepped up, he did.
With Rhule, you just can’t count Temple out of any game anymore.
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