Nearly three years after he took over the program during a tumultuous time, Rod Carey’s tenure at Temple has come to an end.
Yahoo's Pete Thamel is reporting that the university is parting ways with Carey, who went 12-20 in his three seasons on North Broad Street, including this year’s 3-9 campaign that ended Saturday afternoon at Lincoln Financial Field with a 38-14 loss to Navy.
“It’s never an easy decision to replace a head coach,” Temple athletic director Arthur Johnson said in a release.. “The past two seasons have not been easy with the challenges of the pandemic. I want to thank Rod for staying committed to our student-athletes and wish him and his family well in their next chapter.”
Wide receivers coach Thad Ward will serve as Temple's interim coach until a replacement can be found.
Temple hired Carey back on Jan. 11, 2019, filling a vacancy that abruptly opened after newly-hired former Miami defensive coordinator Manny Diaz left just 18 days after replacing Geoff Collins to return to the Hurricanes to become their head coach after Mark Richt announced his retirement, a development Diaz claimed he never saw coming.
The Philadelphia Inquirer cited a source back in 2019 saying Carey signed a six-year contract when he was hired. If that is the case, then Carey is being dismissed with three years remaining on that contract.
Carey, who went 52-30 in six seasons as the head coach at Northern Illinois and led the program to two Mid-American Conference championships, got off to a promising start in his first season as Temple’s head coach in 2019. The Owls won three of their first four games, including a 20-17 win over No. 21 Maryland and a 24-2 rout of Georgia Tech and its new head coach in Collins, Carey’s predecessor – if you don’t count Diaz.
Temple finished the regular season at 8-4 but saw its season end on a sour note in a 55-13 trouncing at the hands of North Carolina in the Military Bowl.
The Owls were ultimately never the same after that under Carey.
Defensive end Quincy Roche, the 2019 American Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Year, left for Miami as a graduate transfer, and center Matt Hennessy decided to forego his final season of eligibility to enter the 2020 NFL Draft, where he was selected in the third round by the Atlanta Falcons. So did Baylor transfer Harrison Hand, who sat out the Military Bowl and was later selected in the fifth round by the Minnesota Vikings.
In a season wrought with absences brought on by COVID-19 protocols and injuries, Temple went 1-6 last fall, playing a conference-only schedule that ended one week early when the Owls’ season finale against Cincinnati was canceled and declared a no contest due to COVID issues with both programs. Carey’s reputation and that of the program took a hit when several players, including quarterback Anthony Russo (Michigan State), defensive end Arnold Ebiketie (Penn State), offensive lineman Vince Picozzi (Colorado State), linebacker Isaiah Graham-Mobley (Boston College) and Ifeanyi Maijeh (Rutgers), left Temple via the transfer portal.
The Owls were hoping to sustain some of those losses with their own transfer portal addition in former Georgia quarterback D’Wan Mathis, a former 4-star recruit who was ranked 125th nationally in the 2019 class and considered to be the No. 3 dual-threat quarterback in that class.
But Mathis’ season, like Temple’s, didn’t turn out so well. Mathis was injured in the Owls’ 61-14 blowout loss at Rutgers, and he missed the next two games – a 45-24 win at Akron and a 28-3 home loss to Boston College – before returning to help lead the Owls to a 41-7 win over FCS pushover Wagner, which went winless at 0-11 this season.
Mathis and Temple offered some hope the following week that they might be able to turn the season around in a 34-31, come-from-behind win over Memphis that saw Mathis complete 35 of his 49 passes for 322 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions. But the Owls were completely overmatched six days later in a 52-3 rout at the hands of No. 5 Cincinnati and never won again.
In their seven-game losing streak that closed out the forgettable 2021 season, the Owls were outscored by 299-59 in that span. And in finding a new way to define slow starts, Temple was outscored 98-7 in the first quarter this season.
Along the way, the Owls lost more players to the transfer portal, including defensive tackle Nick Bags and wide receiver Jadan Blue, who announced he was leaving four days after Temple got trounced by 45-3 at ECU. The redshirt junior, the only wide receiver in the program’s history to record more than 1,000 receiving yards in a single season, made his decision with three games left on the schedule and sitting at second on the program’s list in career receiving yards.
Mathis, as OwlScoop.com first reported back on Nov. 18, told the Temple coaches that he was intending to leave the program and enter the transfer portal. He has since announced that he intends to remain at Temple, but his former Pop Warner football teammate and fellow Michigan native, safety M.J. Griffin, announced Sunday that he will enter the transfer portal.
Griffin, the team’s second-leading tackler with 65 stops, plans to keep all of his options open, his father, Ryan, told OwlScoop.com Sunday afternoon.
As Temple turns its attention to yet another coaching search, its third in three years, it’s fair to say Carey’s successor will be taking on a significant rebuild. The Owls finished dead last in both scoring offense (16.3 points per game) and scoring defense (37.5 ppg.), as well as rushing offense (110.1 yards per game) and rushing defense (220.5 ypg.)
And with the NCAA’s early period signing day just 17 days away on Dec. 15, Temple has just seven verbal commitments from the 2022 class. The Owls’ class is currently ranked 99th nationally by Rivals and 10th out of 11 teams in the American Athletic Conference.
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