Varner and Jordan's sack attack overshadowed in Friday's loss
While Darian Varner and Layton Jordan combined for 5.5 sacks and a pick-six in the first half, Temple could not stop Tulsa’s running game, which had not been a focal point of its offense until they met the Owls and beat them 27-16 Friday night at Lincoln Financial Field.
The Golden Hurricane came into Friday as the second-worst running team in the American Athletic Conference, ahead of only Temple, having averaged a little more than 109 yards per contest.
They left Philadelphia with 299 rushing yards on the stat sheet, paced by Deneric Prince’s 231 yards on 20 carries.
That hurt the Owls more than anything on a night when they otherwise would have been celebrating great individual performances from Varner and Jordan, two of their single-digit leaders on defense.
The Owls had a season-high six sacks in the first half, causing Tulsa quarterback Davis Brinn to feel uncomfortable for the majority of the first 30 minutes.
With their monster first halves, Jordan and Varner are now tied for the team lead in sacks with 6.5 through seven games.
It was the Owls’ gameplan to have Brinn feel uncomfortable in the pocket.
“That was just one of our gameplans,” Jordan said postgame, “just to get pressure because he’s a good quarterback. We credit him for being a good quarterback standing there, still throwing it, just being strong and getting back up. That was our plan to get him off his game, try to storm him, get to him, and make bad, contested throws so we can get the ball back.”
And for the first two quarters, that was happening. It just didn’t carry over into the second half.
Jordan has been the Owls’ strongest pass rusher this season. He had 2.5 sacks in the week two matchup against Lafayette and followed the next week against Rutgers with two more sacks. That took him into the top-five in the country in sacks. Then in week four against UMass, he got a one-handed, 41-yard pick six that helped key a 28-0 win.
After being held without a sack for three consecutive games, Jordan had two Friday night and a 35-yard interception return that helped Temple jump out to a 7-0 lead, becoming the first Owl to record two pick-sixes in a season since former Temple cornerback and current Carolina Panther Sean Chandler did it in 2015.
But while those two and the Temple’s defense dominated in the first half statistically, the Owls had trouble stopping the run. Linebacker Jordan Magee forced and recovered a fumble in the third quarter, but due to the struggles of the offense continuing, the Owls were on the field for large portions of the second half.
Pierce’s 84-yard, fourth-quarter touchdown run with 10:51 left to go was a dagger and pushed Tulsa out to a 24-10 lead, capping the Golden Hurricane’s run of 24 unanswered in the fourth quarter. Pierce went completely untouched on that run and gave a pass-heavy team some gaudy rushing numbers.
This weak performance stopping the run continued after Temple surrendered 304 yards to UCF last Thursday in a 70-13 defeat.
While the Owls struggled in that aspect of the game, Jordan believed they bounced back and played a better brand of football after being routed in Orlando by 57 points.
“Yes, we came in with a better mindset than we did last week, “Jordan said postgame. “We still got a lot of work to do, a lot of things to fix up. But we just want to keep working, keep pounding, keep stacking days.”
They’ll have no choice but to do just that. Temple will play next Saturday in Annapolis against a Navy team that of course does little else but run the ball with its traditional triple-option rushing attack. The Midshipmen lead the American in rushing heading into Saturday’s game against Houston with 1,581 yards and an average of 263.5 yards per game on the ground.