Devil of a debut
DURHAM, North Carolina - In what is certainly a rebuilding job, how Temple wins and loses in head coach Stan Drayton’s first season will look just as important as the final score.
And by both measures, Friday night’s opener at Duke was not a good start.
The Blue Devils, another program with a new head coach coming off a three-win season, handed the Owls a 30-0 drubbing at Wallace Wade Stadium.
There were very few bright spots to cling to for a Temple team that got thoroughly outplayed in every phase of the game – even on special teams on a night when Duke placekicker Charlie Ham missed three field goals.
Temple was on the wrong end of a shutout for the first time since 2007, and it became abundantly clear that the rebuild could be an expansive one.
The Owls mustered just 159 yards of total offense on 58 plays, a paltry average of 3.09 yards per play. They fumbled the ball four times and lost three of them. They allowed Duke quarterback Riley Leonard, a player with one career start and seven total games on his resume, to complete his first 15 passes and finish 24 of 30 passing for 328 yards and two touchdowns.
He needed just 2 minutes and 3 seconds to march the Blue Devils 75 yards on five plays on their opening drive, which was capped by a Jaylen Coleman 1-yard touchdown run.
“Here’s the thing,” Drayton began. “I come to Temple and I’m here for a reason. I know we want to have early success. Who doesn’t? But the reality of it is, I knew I had my work cut out for me, and I’m not shying away from that. Obviously, we want to win them all, but the truth of the matter is we’ve got to stay steady and fight. We’ve got to endure tough times. And I knew at some point this was going to be the case for us in moments, and it’s still going to be that way. We’re going to have our highs, and we’re going to have our lows, and I have to be controlled and I have to be optimistic. Because I do believe in our young men.”
That’s what a first-year head coach should say about a rebuilding program. He’ll need all the patience and positivity he can muster while he also learns as a first-year head coach.
Because he does have his work cut out for him, and there were very few highs and several lows Friday night. Drayton said he was encouraged by the second half, which saw Temple hold Duke to a pair of field goals and 163 yards of total offense.
But what transpired in the first half was more than enough to give the Blue Devils the cushion they needed.
Turning point
Was it when the Owls elected to kick off after winning the coin toss?
All sarcasm aside, you could point to fifth-year left tackle Isaac Moore’s holding penalty on Temple’s third drive that cost running back Darvon Hubbard a first down. The Owls were trailing 10-0 at that point, and the flag, one that came from a veteran player who recently earned a single-digit, was a momentum killer on a night when Temple needed all the help it could get.
The Owls punted three plays later, and Duke put together a 7-play, 72-yard drive on its next series that pushed the Blue Devils out to a comfortable 17-0 lead.
“It was a blow,” Drayton said of the penalty and momentum swing. “But again, those things happen in the game of football. And as a football family, we’ve got to learn to overcome those things and keep it going.”
Cutting it loose: Something Temple simply couldn’t do Friday night
Drayton used the phrase cutting it loose three times in his postgame press conference when it came time to summarizing his team’s numerous struggles and miscues. Temple indeed did look like a team that was thinking much more and reacting less and not having a whole lot of fun.
Leonard, on the other hand, had plenty of time to throw and went a perfect 15-for-15 for 239 yards and two touchdowns before he threw his first incompletion. He was sacked just once, by Darian Varner.
Other than that, he looked like he was having a heck of a lot of fun dissecting Temple’s defense.
Temple starter D’Wan Mathis, by comparison, went 7 of 14 for 56 yards in the first half and finished 11 of 21 for just 83 yards.
“Yeah, I feel like we weren’t cutting loose enough,” Temple linebacker Jordan Magee, who tied defensive end Layton Jordan with a team-high eight tackles, said. “As a team, we were making mistakes that we can clean up in practice. It can be better on our end.”
It has to be, starting next week at home against FCS opponent Lafayette.
The offensive line
Temple’s week one depth chart had Jermaine Donaldson starting at right guard, but Wisdom Quarshie started there instead against Duke, with Richard Rodriguez playing center. James Faminu played left guard, and Moore and Adam Klein started at left and right tackle, respectively.
Klein said a lot of what ailed the Owls’ offensive line Friday night was self-inflicted.
“I think it was just a lot of critical mistakes on our own part,” said Klein, who also earned a single digit from Temple’s coaching staff, although NCAA rules don’t allow offensive linemen to wear a single-digit number in games. “Credit to Duke. They did a really good job out there. They prepared well. They played really good defense. I think a lot of it is just self mistakes that we can clean up, little things that can become drive killers.”
Injury update
Tight end David Martin-Robinson was not in uniform Friday night and did not play. Drayton still considers him “day to day.”
“DMR is going to be fine,” Drayton said of Martin-Robinson, who caught four passes for 61 yards as a redshirt sophomore a year after catching 11 passes for 147 yards. “It’s day to day. I like where he is from a recovery standpoint, and we’ll assess it daily.”
Amad Anderson, Elijah Clark struggle
Wide receiver Amad Anderson and cornerback Elijah Clark had an opener they would most likely want to put behind them.
Anderson seemed indecisive in the return game, losing a yard on the only punt return he had and tallying just 23 yards on two kickoff returns. Temple started at its own 5-yard line to start the second half because Anderson decided to take the ball out of the end zone and couldn’t get upfield.
“We’ve just got to get him settled in,” Drayton said of Anderson. “There's times where he feels like he can make the play and there's times where he's a little hesitant, and that can play on the psyche of a returner from time to time. We just got to get him reeled in … because he's really a good returner when he's just cutting it loose and making good decisions back there.”
Anderson also lost a fumble later in the third quarter on a reverse that was recovered by Duke’s Datrone Young.
As for Clark, he was beaten decisively by Duke wide receiver and St. Joseph’s Prep graduate Sahmir Hagans on a 39-yard touchdown pass that helped put the Blue Devils ahead by 24-0 with 7:08 left in the second quarter. He also missed a tackle later in the game.
Stat stuff
In addition to being shut out for the first time since 2007, Temple has been shut out in the first half in five of its last six games dating back to last season. … Edward Saydee had a team-high 24 yards on 8 carries on a day when Temple couldn’t get anything going on the ground, or at all. Jakari Norwood had 11 yards on four carries in his Temple debut. … Jose Barbon led Temple with five catches for 45 yards on eight targets.
Front page photo by Don Otto.