For a program that has experienced plenty of pain and frustration in its history, Temple’s 29-20 loss to UConn Saturday at Rentschler Field was reminiscent of some of its most improbable setbacks of the past where the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat wrestled to determine the outcome.
Down three with three seconds left and the ball at the Huskies’ 1-yard line, Temple had one play left on fourth down to score and win. The Owls just needed a yard. Less than a yard, really.
Third-year head coach Stan Drayton elected to put redshirt-freshman backup quarterback Tyler Douglas on the field instead of starter Forrest Brock, the player who engineered the drive to put Temple in position to win the ballgame.
The snap from center Grayson Mains to Douglas never got there cleanly, and the football popped the wrong way out of the goal-line scrum. UConn defensive back Rante Jones got credited with the forced fumble, and fellow Huskies defensive back Jordan Wright picked up the ball and returned it 96 yards for a touchdown as time ran out, kicking off a celebration from which several Temple players could only shield their eyes.
Had Temple scored and won on the game’s final play, the Owls would have gone jubilantly into their bye week at 2-4 with an outside chance to get bowl eligible in Drayton’s third season.
Instead, they’re 1-5 and now must stew for two weeks about a loss that might remind the program’s fans of some of the darkest days in the late 1990s and early 2000s when Temple teams led by Ron Dickerson and Bobby Wallace would find ways to lose games in the Big East or turn the game on a dime in the wrong direction. Before they got the program heading in the right direction, Al Golden and Matt Rhule endured their moments, too.
Brock, who started in place of an injured Evan Simon, was himself recovering from a wrist injury he sustained in Temple’s loss at Navy back on Sept. 7. When asked postgame if Douglas is the player that was going to be called upon to execute a sneak on that final play, Brock explained that it’s still difficult for him to take snaps from under center, implying that might have been the reason he exited the game in favor of his backup, who was playing in his first college football game after redshirting last season.
“I believe in Tyler,” said Brock, who went 18 of 31 passing for 136 yards and an interception but also scored on an 8-yard touchdown run that helped put Temple ahead by 20-16 at the 9:52 mark of the fourth quarter. “That's not on him. There's many things I could have done to help us win.”
Durell Robinson's 1-yard touchdown run and Chris Freeman’s extra point put UConn ahead 23-20 with 3:46 left to play and finished off a 70-yard drive on a day when Temple had otherwise played quite well against the nation’s 11th-best rushing offense. The Owls held the Huskies to 99 yards on the ground Saturday, far less than the 244 yards-per-game average they brought into Saturday’s contest.
From there, Brock and Temple’s offense went right back to work. Brock connected with wide receiver Dante Wright on a 21-yard pass on the first play of the ensuing series, and junior running back Terrez Worthy got 35 of his career-high 95 yards on the next play. After Antwain Littleton got two and six yards on the next two carries, Douglas got a yard on third-and-2 and then scratched out another yard on fourth-and-1 from the UConn 10 to keep the drive alive, prompting Huskies head coach Jim Mora to call a timeout with 1:46 remaining.
Drayton could have called upon placekicker Maddux Trujillo, who had earlier hit from 60 yards, missed from 32 and then converted from 42, to attempt what would have been a very makeable 27-yard field goal to tie the game. The Owls would have then had to hope they could stop the Huskies on the ensuing possession and force overtime.
Drayton was more than comfortable with his decision.
“I'm going to coach to win, because that's the way my players want it,” Drayton said. “That's what we want as a coaching staff. That's what I want as a head football coach is to win ballgames, and I think our players have been through so much and they deserve that. I think it was absolutely the right call. I would do it again.”
After a 5-yard run from Worthy and another UConn timeout, Worthy got three more yards as Temple elected to keep the ball on the ground and bleed out the clock. Worthy initially looked like he might have scored, but the play was reviewed and upheld as the officials called it.
On third-and-goal from the UConn 1, Brock took a snap from the shotgun and handed to Littleton, who was stopped for no gain by Jones and Jelani Stafford. The Owls let 39 more seconds tick off the clock before Drayton called timeout.
Out came Douglas, who had carried the ball five times prior to the last series on RPO packages to shake things up with Simon out of the lineup and to give UConn a different look.
This was something different altogether. Drayton was asking a redshirt-freshman who started the season third on the depth chart to go in and win on the game’s final play.
Asked why he went with the 195-pound Douglas on a quarterback sneak in that situation, Drayton said, “He’s what we’ve got. He’s our quarterback.”
Temple seemed to have found its quarterback in Simon, the Rutgers transfer who grabbed hold of the job after Brock got hurt late in the fourth quarter of a 38-11 loss at Navy. In starts against Coastal Carolina, Utah State and Army, Simon passed for 680 yards, nine touchdowns and just two interceptions while completing nearly 65% of his passes.
Keeping Simon in the game on the final series of last week’s 42-14 loss to Army came with its consequences. Simon took a hard hit and sustained a sternoclavicular (SC) joint injury that kept him out of practice this week and out of the lineup Saturday.
After surrendering seven sacks last week that led to a net-minus rushing total, Temple’s ground game bounced back Saturday to the tune of 134 yards, 95 of which came from Worthy. The packages designed for Douglas prior to the final series and the final play had no success, as the Ocean Township High School product mustered just 10 yards on six carries, with five of them coming on one attempt.
Saturday could have otherwise been a tale of Temple overcoming obstacles and bearing down for some gritty contributions from other areas of the roster. Linebacker Antwone Santiago, who played his high school football about 30 minutes away from Rentschler Field, got the Owls on the board with a blocked punt that John Adams recovered in the end zone to give way to a 7-3 lead at the 10:32 mark of the second quarter. Linebacker Tyquan King was Temple’s best run defender and led the team with 15 tackles, and defensive end Diwun Black was a factor with eight tackles and three QB hurries.
But bad football teams find ways to lose games. The Owls haven’t won on the road since Sept. 11, 2021 at Akron, and Saturday’s loss bore all the symptoms of a program that has very much lost its way in knowing how to win. Drayton, who replaced Rod Carey prior to the 2022 season, is now 7-23 as Temple’s head coach and must maintain control of the program’s psyche heading into the bye week.
Drayton was asked if he had ever been part of a loss like this in his coaching career, one that stretches back to his days as an assistant at places like Texas and Ohio State and NFL assistant coaching stints with the Bears and Packers.
“I surely have,” Drayton said. “It hurts. Any loss hurts. We’ll learn and grow from that, and I think we should be encouraged by how we played today, and we’ll find a way.”
Oliver Economidis contributed reporting to this story.
