A short week and a 3-0 Army team await Temple
After a 45-29 victory over Utah State delivered Temple its first win of the season, a short week now awaits the Owls as they prepare to host a 3-0 Army team Thursday night at Lincoln Financial Field.
Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m., and the game will be televised nationally on ESPN.
Players are not being made available to speak during the short week, but third-year head coach Stan Drayton held his weekly press conference Monday with reporters to wrap up conversation about Saturday’s win and look ahead to an Army team that will present Temple with a familiar triple-option look that the Owls have already encountered twice this season.
AutoMaddux
Temple hit the transfer portal heavily during the offseason to retool its roster on both sides of the ball, but the special teams addition of Austin Peay placekicker Maddux Trujillo was just as critical as that of any quarterback, wide receiver or defensive player.
Trujillo, a Flowery Branch, Georgia native who made 38 of his 52 field goals through three seasons at Austin Peay, came to Temple with the promise of the strongest kicking leg the Temple program has seen since Brandon McManus.
And through four games, he hasn’t disappointed.
On Saturday, his record-breaking, 64-yard field goal just before halftime cut the Owls’ deficit to four at 21-17 and gave them some much-needed momentum heading into halftime.
Trujillo’s 64-yarder eclipsed Philadelphia Eagles placekicker Jake Elliott’s two 61-yard field goals in 2023 and 2017 as the longest made field goal in Lincoln Financial Field history. And in addition to surpassing Don Bitterlich’s 56-yard field goal that stood as a program record for 49 years, Trujillo’s field goal was the longest collegiate kick since UTEP’s Jose Martinez hit a 64-yarder in 2008 against UCF.
So how did a pretty good kicker playing in SEC country end up at Temple through the transfer portal?
“He had some Power 4 offers and things of that sort,” Drayton said Monday when asked about Trujillo’s recruitment. “I know he took a visit to Arkansas, I want to say, but I think Maddux was a guy who had a clear vision of what he wanted. He wanted to be a field goal kicker, along with a guy who kicks off, and I don't know if every school had that opportunity available for him. We did, obviously. We needed help on our kickoffs, and we definitely needed a field goal kicker.
“He came here on a visit with his mom initially, and they fell in love with Philadelphia. They fell in love with the opportunities for him as a grad student, what he can get educationally, and this was a good fit for him that way. He liked our culture. He liked what we wanted to do and he just kind of embraced it all in the recruiting piece. I got off the phone with his dad, and his dad said it’s purely up to the kid of where he wanted to go. And he felt that the opportunities were right and fitting for him at Temple, so he made the decision to come here.”
Diwun Black and Zae Baines will return this week
After missing the first four games of the season due to off-field issues, defensive end Diwun Black and wide receiver Zae Baines are eligible to return and play Thursday night against Army.
Black, a former 4-star recruit, transferred to Temple from Florida prior to the 2023 season. He tallied 29 tackles and 3.5 sacks last fall and wound up on the Senior Bowl watch list. Baines, a 6-foot-3, 175-pound redshirt junior wideout, hauled in 36 passes for 442 yards last season.
Black and Baines have been able to practice with the team, Drayton said. How much they’ll contribute Thursday night remains to be seen.
“On paper, they are very, very talented individuals, both of them,” Drayton said. “What they mean to me on the field, we'll see. It is a production-based business, and they have not played a game. And I'm sure there's going to be some of those jitters that they've got to overcome, some mistakes, and how they overcome those mistakes is something that I'm going to be paying attention to very closely during the course of the game.
“They haven't played a game, and what kind of shape are they in, right? You just want to make sure that you're putting them in the right situation so they can have success. It really forces us as coaches to put them in situations where they can have success. Their strengths can be displayed, but like every player, they have their weaknesses, and we’ve got to be careful that that doesn't get exposed as well. They mean a lot to me because they're a part of this family. I love all these football players, but this is a production-based business, and we'll see on game day if they're going to be productive for us.”
Previewing Army
Army quarterback Bryson Daily ran for three touchdowns and accounted for two more in the air to lead the Black Knights past Rice 37-14 last Saturday in West Point. Their triple-option attack has produced the nation’s second-best rushing offense, one that is averaging 356 yards per game on the ground.
Defensively, Army has allowed just 9.3 points per game in wins over Lehigh, Florida Atlantic and Rice, placing the program at eighth nationally in scoring defense. The Black Knights operate out of a base 3-3-5 defense with three down linemen, three linebackers and five defensive backs.
In scouting Army, Temple’s coaching staff of course watched film of Army going up against Rice quarterback E.J. Warner, who threw 41 touchdown passes and passed for more than 6,000 yards in his two seasons at Temple before hitting the transfer portal after last season.
Warner got into more of a groove later in the game last Saturday, but the Black Knights held him in check and picked him off twice on a day that saw Warner throw for 235 yards and two touchdowns.
Army’s defensive approach, Drayton said, starts with controlling the line of scrimmage.
“What they do is they try to eliminate the run,” Drayton said. “Everything up front is twisting, linebackers coming downhill. They're very, very physical. They do a very good job in pursuing to the football. There's a lot of bang-bang type situations in the past game and linebackers making contact on or around the line of scrimmage a lot. They know exactly what they're doing, and they play very, very hard.
“So whether that's film I saw against E.J. or Lehigh, it's the same type of effort, same type of discipline, same type of physicality that you see. If they force you to be one dimensional, you’ve got your hands full. Because on the other side of the ball, they're going to control that clock, so you have to try to the best of your ability to try to get out in front. And I think you have to match their level of intensity and their physicality early in the ball game. If you don't, you're in trouble.”