The up-and-down season of wide receiver Amad Anderson Jr. was on full display in Temple’s 27-20 overtime loss to Navy Saturday night in Annapolis, with such lows as a muffed punt that led to a Midshipmen touchdown and bad penalties to positives like having a 100-yard game for the second consecutive week.

Anderson Jr. was part of one of the best offensive plays of the Owls’ season with a one-handed catch on a third-and-10 play in the fourth quarter that went for 40 yards and put Temple inside the red zone with less than two minutes to go down three in a position to either tie or win the game.

Anderson Jr. was running a seam route through the middle of the field and Temple freshman quarterback E.J. Warner threw it behind him. It seemed like an improbable catch, but Anderson Jr., with his left hand, reached for it on his right side and turned away from his defender to make it an even bigger play with the yards after the catch that put the Owls at the Navy 5-yard line.

While Temple didn’t punch it home and win the game, that play did allow the Owls to send it to overtime.

“E.J. did a good job of holding off that safety and just drilling it in a spot where nobody else could catch it, throwing it back shoulder,” Anderson Jr. told OwlScoop.com Monday. “I kind of just reacted kinda late, I left it there so nobody can react to it. But he did a good job of placing it where nobody, none of the defenders would be able to deflect it or intercept it.”

Without Adonicas Sanders and Ian Stewart in the previous two games, Anderson Jr., who was originally the starting slot receiver for the Owls heading into the season, has returned to his original role and run with it over the last two weeks.

“He’s just a hard worker,” Warner said of Anderson Jr. after the game Saturday night. “I mean, comes every day to practice. He knows what he does, knows what to do on the plays and stuff like that, and works hard. And then he puts in extra work outside, but we go in there all the time, just me and him, to watch film and teach him things, how to find what the defense is doing on different zones that can help us to just work hard and just executing and making those plays when you had the chance.”

While Anderson Jr. had a good stat line - eight catches for 114 yards and a 20-yard, fourth-quarter touchdown catch - for the second consecutive game, he did have some low moments in the first half.

On Temple’s second drive that resulted in a three-and-out, Anderson Jr got an unsportsmanlike penalty that affected Temple’s upcoming punt. Then on the following Navy drive, Temple forced a three and out, but Anderson Jr muffed the punt and gave Navy the ball at the Owls’ 17-yard line and set up a Daba Fofana 15-yard touchdown run three plays later that spotted the Midshipmen a 10-0 first-quarter lead. He later continued his first-half struggles with a block-in- the-back call that got rid of a 10-yard completion to tight David Martin-Robinson.

“I rallied around my teammates,” Anderson Jr. said. “I needed them. I was kind of down on myself. But I knew there was a lot of ball left and they were behind the coaches and the teammates were behind me. So once it happened, it happened. I had to flush it and next play mentality.”

“That’s a little bit like our offense, up and down,” said Temple’s Chief of Staff Everett Withers, who coached the team for an ill Stan Drayton Saturday night, about Anderson Jr. “He needs to not have the issues in the first half and help us in the first half as much as the second half.”

While the offense has been very inconsistent, Anderson Jr. has been the most consistent receiver in the last two games. Last week against Tulsa, he had eight catches for 112 yards with a touchdown. In the first six games of the year, he had just eight catches for 74 yards and no touchdowns.

Sanders has a knee sprain and is doing “much better,” Drayton said Monday, but there’s still no official word on his status for Saturday. And Stewart posted a tweet Monday about having successful surgery, and a timetable for his return has not been discussed by Drayton or the team.

Even if Sanders returns Saturday against USF, without Stewart in the slot, Anderson Jr. will once again need to step back as the slot receiver and continue his recent success and try to bring some consistency to both special teams and the offense.