Is there hope for Temple's offensive line in 2024?
The position group that has seen the most shuffling and instability during Stan Drayton’s two-year tenure as Temple’s head coach is the offensive line, largely due to injury.
Single-digit right tackle Victor Stoffel and guard Wisdom Quarshie will be returning for a sixth year to help maintain some stability and experience, but the Owls clearly need more talent and consistency from their offensive line if they want to help get the program turned around in 2024.
Drayton and offensive coordinator Danny Langsdorf believe they took a step in that direction on National Signing Day by adding College of the Canyons junior college teammates Mausa Palu and Linus Lindberg, as well as tackle Evan Dailey from Ohio’s Lincoln High School.
Of the three, Drayton believes the 6-foot-4, 330-pound Palu has a chance to make an immediate impact at guard and possibly start the 2024 season opener at Oklahoma.
“Really good size. … Athletic, can bend, moves people on film, plays with a chip on his shoulder, plays like he's angry and finishes blocks,” Drayton said Wednesday during his Signing Day press conference with reporters. “I think he brings a demeanor to that offensive line that we absolutely need.”
Beyond the injuries, Drayton didn’t mince words when it came time to talking about improving the talent level and competitiveness along his offensive line. Next season’s group will be protecting a new quarterback following the departure of E.J. Warner to Rice via the transfer portal and the addition of Rutgers transfer Evan Simon, and they must do their part to improve one of the nation’s worst rushing offenses, one that finished 121st out of 130 FBS programs in 2023.
Temple has long considered itself a developmental program, and there’s probably no more of a developmental position than the offensive line. In an ideal situation, offensive line coach Chris Wiesehan would have had the luxury of redshirting true freshmen like Luke Watson and Melvin Siani, but both played right away, while Siani was able to preserve his redshirt.
They, along with guard Eric King, have given Drayton some reason for hope and will obviously benefit from a full offseason program.
“We’ve just got to be more competitive and create a competitive environment in that room,” Drayton said. “We need to get more athletic and get bigger. There's some really good talent that we’re excited about in Melvin Siani, Luke Watson and Eric King. Two of them played a lot of football for us, but Eric King did a redshirt year. They're in a development stage right now and we're expecting those guys to compete to win a starting job here.”
“We need that offensive line to have a demeanor,” Drayton continued. “Develop a demeanor that I don't think we've reached yet, but we've got to have a nasty demeanor about ourselves. We've got to finish blocks in the run game and we've got to protect our quarterback more consistently. I think we've recruited to that standard so far and we've got to go get more. But I am expecting to get way more inner-squad competition in that room so that guys can develop at a level where they should be developing.”
In his conversation with OwlScoop last Wednesday, Langsdorf said he shared Drayton’s excitement and optimism about Palu and Lindberg.
“I do (think Paulu can play right away),” Langsdorf said. “I think he's got the power and the strength, and he could be probably more of an interior guy, where Linus will be probably more of an edge guy. And again, we play, we train those guys at all five positions, so we want to play the best five. We don’t just say, ‘Hey, you're only a tackle.’ Even the tackles usually can play pretty well inside. And we have them all snap, too. So if we lose a center, we don't have a bunch of problems with guys that have never practiced snapping, so they're pretty interchangeable, and we'll play the best five. But Mausa’s got strength to power.”