Monday notebook: Drayton recaps Duke loss, looks to Lafayette

First-year Temple head coach Stan Drayton spoke with reporters Monday afternoon at Edberg-Olson Hall to wrap up conversation about the Owls’ 30-0 loss at Duke and turn his attention to Saturday’s home opener at Lincoln Financial Field against Lafayette.

There were not many positives to find in the Owls’ loss to the Blue Devils Friday, but Drayton talked about what he took as a bright spot – the players working through some first-game jitters to hold Duke to six second-half points, as well as looking ahead to playing the next three games at home at Lincoln Financial Field, starting with Saturday’s 2 p.m. kickoff against the Leopards, who are also rebuilding.

Lafayette and new head coach John Troxell are coming off of a 6-0 win over Sacred Heart, a two-time defending Northeast Conference champion at the FCS level.

This Saturday will mark Drayton’s first game as a head coach at Lincoln Financial Field.

“Everything is a first time right now,” Drayton said. “Getting a chance to be around our cheerleaders, band, and fans will be pretty awesome. We will get into a routine and prepare ourselves like any other game. But to sit there and be in front of our home crowd will be pretty special.”

You can listen to Drayton’s Monday interview here and read some excerpts from it below.

Drayton’s evaluation of his running backs at Duke:

“(Jakari Norwood) dropped a couple of balls. Really that rotation with those running backs was to give all of those guys an opportunity to play so we can evaluate who they are during a course of a game. All of them had an opportunity to play on third down. I wanted to see who can protect the quarterback and who can be that receiving back for us. (Jakari) muffed a couple, but he does have really good hands, so we’ll settle down and figure that piece out as we go.”

Drayton on his offensive line, which had its five starters - left tackle Isaac Moore, left guard James Faminu, center Rich Rodriguez, right guard Wisdom Quarshie and right tackle Adam Klein - play at the same position for the duration of Friday’s game:

“You would love to have five guys who can line up for you every play and have great communication and get the job done. That's ideally what we would like every play. But the fact that they have been trained in a versatile way, if something were to happen to one of those guys, we could keep the ball rolling and keep the continuity because they have practiced that way. You have to prepare for those what-ifs if someone would get hurt.

“There was a lot of growth in our (left) guard, our tackles played a good game, and our (left) guard James Faminu did a phenomenal job. Not knowing what we were going to get playing for Temple for the first time, but there still needs a lot of growth with those five guys.”

Drayton on the secondary play on Friday, which included two penalties from Dominick Hill and a blown coverage by Elijah Clark on a 39-yard touchdown catch by Sahmir Hagans:

“We want our guys to not be afraid to play aggressive football. They just need to play smart in those situations. We want them to be in position to contest throws and catches, and they were. They just need to play smarter. I do believe that they need to put themselves in better positions to stop explosive plays in the run game. I don’t think we tackled well on the back end. They owned that and they’ll get better this week about that.”

Drayton on guarding his players to not overlook Lafayette, an FCS program:

“Lock them in on us. We have our own issues. We’re playing against Temple, and Temple beat Temple. Not taking anything away from Duke. Duke played a style of football to win that game. But we can definitely play a lot better, and we need to focus on those things so we can put on a better display of who we are as a football team, so we can’t take anyone for granted.”