Tested Owls ready for Navy

It’s something you hear college football coaches say each year right around late August.

In Temple’s case, as the start of its football season has been delayed due to the complications associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s coming in late September as Owls head coach Rod Carey and his team are less than two weeks away from opening an eight-game regular season on Oct. 10 at Navy.

“You get to a point where you practice so much in preseason – and this happens in normal years, too – where you’re really done with your evaluation parts of your team,” Carey said during his weekly Tuesday video conference with reporters. “You really can’t evaluate the next part of your team until you play, and that’s where we are with this right now.”

Carey painted the picture of a team that, given the unusual circumstances surrounding the pandemic, appears to be mostly healthy with the start of the regular season just 11 days away. Carey said redshirt junior defensive tackle Ifeanyi Maijeh, who said last week that he would be “ready to go” by the Oct. 10 season opener, has continued to be a full practice participant “for a little over a week now.” And redshirt junior Christian Braswell, the team’s top returning cornerback, appears to be nearing end of his recovery from a hamstring injury.

“Bras is really one that’s kind of turned a corner pretty quick. The last few days, he’s gone the entire practice and felt good,” Carey said of Braswell, who earned a No. 2 single digit in preseason camp after wearing No. 14 last season, when he tallied 29 tackles, 10 pass breakups, two fumble recoveries and an interception. “He’s been a little sore afterwards but felt good.”

Carey said starting quarterback Anthony Russo has sat out the last two days with a muscle strain he described as “nothing serious at all,” and he also said offensive guard Vince Picozzi is returning to the practice field Wednesday. Picozzi, who has recovered from a season-ending knee injury he sustained last November at USF, was able to participate in Zoom meetings while quarantined.

“Everybody by Sunday, which is really when we’re staring the game week, everybody should be ready to go on Sunday,” Carey said, “and that’s really the start of Navy prep, even though we’ll sneak in some Navy prep this week.

Special teams competition

As of now, redshirt junior Will Mobley and junior Adam Barry appear likely to start the season once again as Temple’s placekicker and punter, respectively, but Carey said Tuesday that they could face some increased competition soon from freshmen Will Leyland and Rory Bell when asked about them.

Mobley finished third in the American Athletic Conference last season in field goal percentage at 84.6 percent (he converted on 11 of 14 attempts) but has never made a field goal in his career longer than 44 yards.

Barry’s 37.8 yards per punt average ranked last in the American last season, and he nearly cost the Owls the game in an eventual win over No. 21 Maryland with a 7-yard punt inside the game’s final five minutes. Later in the season at Cincinnati, he dropped to his knee deep in his own territory to catch a low punt snap and was marked down at the Owls’ 6-yard line. The Bearcats later used the miscue to kick a field goal that provided some difference-making points in a 15-13 win.

“Will (Mobley) and Barry have done a good job,” Carey said, “and Will’s gotten better and so has Barry. They probably haven’t been pushed as much because they haven’t had that daily competition, but I certainly do see improvement.”

Carey explained that the daily competition at the kicking and punting positions hasn’t happened because Leyland and Bell have been “isolated in quarantine.”

“They’re entrenched right now (as the starters),” Carey said of Mobley and Barry. “When we get those guys (Bell and Leyland) back, I think there’s still good opportunity for some really good competition there as the season goes.”

Leyland, a 5-foot-11, 220-pound local product out of Souderton High School, and Bell, a 5-9, 185-pound kicker out of Ohio’s Wilmington High School, were recruited to Temple as preferred walk-ons. According to MaxPreps.com, Leyland averaged 56.3 yards on 49 kickoffs with 18 touchbacks.

“Both of them have the ability to do both,” Carey said. “Where I think that they can compete is in kickoffs for us right now. And I would hope that Rory then could compete in field goals for us. He’s probably a little ahead of Will (in terms of leg strength), but Will, he’s a good player, too. So it’s good to have that versatility.”

Promising test results

Carey said during Tuesday’s media availability that the football team has not had a positive COVID-19 test in two weeks.

“Our last two tests, we’ve had zero positives,” the second-year head coach said, “and we’re starting to amp up our testing right now. This week, we’re testing twice. So we tested Monday and now we’re going Wednesday again. And then game week will be three times."

Some players, like Picozzi, Leyland and Bell as previously noted, have had to sit out 14 days in quarantine due to contact tracing.

“It was really two tests ago and then three tests ago when we had some, and really one,” Carey said, “and then you contact trace from there. But we had one or two each one of those tests, and that led to that contact tracing that gets that number petty big pretty quick, and that’s been difficult.”

“But in camp, since that test two times ago, we’ve had zero,” Carey added. “Guys have done a really good job. Some of that, I have a really hard time saying, ‘Hey, good job, guys. We’ve had zero.’ Because we could be doing everything right and someone could still get COVID. So I hate touting that as we’re doing something else no one else is. Shoot, everyone could be doing something right and still get it. But that part hasn’t been as hard because we haven’t had those positive tests, so we haven’t had contact tracing. So we’ve been pretty consistent here through camp.”