Posts for Temple Category

I just hope the guy stays for more than two seasons. Let’s get some continuity in the Temple football program.

The first thing that jumps out to me is that the Diaz hiring follows the pattern of recent Temple hires. He’s a coordinator coming from a power five conference and a first time head coach. He’s in his early 40s. That fits the mold of what they had in Geoff Collins, Steve Addazio, and even Matt Rhule to an extent. It’s true that Rhule took the gig after moving to the NFL, but he had been with the Owls for half a decade prior. Addazio was more of an offensive guy, but Rhule, Collins, and now Diaz specialize in the defensive side of the game.

Diaz spent the last three years in Miami as Mark Richt’s defensive coordinator and linebackers coach. That follows stints with Mississippi State and Louisiana Tech in the same role. Tech was sort of a “rebuilding” type of job for him after he was fired by Mack Brown following a couple of disappointing seasons as the Texas Longhorns’ DC, but every other defense he’s worked with has been more or less sound, and he cut his teeth as a position coach on Chuck Amato’s NC State teams of the mid-aughts.

Diaz spoke this afternoon, and you can listen to his introductory presser after the jump:

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Per one national guy and one local guy:

Miami DC Manny Diaz has emerged as top candidate at Temple, source told @WatchStadium

— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) December 12, 2018

Source: Temple and Miami DC Manny Diaz are having discussions about the head football job. More to come.

— Marc Narducci (@sjnard) December 12, 2018

Texas A&M defensive coordinator Mike Elko was in the running for the gig but is now going to stay in College Station instead. Michigan DC Don Brown also apparently interviewed for the job.

Diaz has been at Miami since 2016 and was nominated for the Broyles award in his first season (nation’s top assistant), a year in which the Hurricanes went 9-4. They improved to 10-3 in 2017 and saw six defensive players selected in the NFL draft over those first two seasons. The Canes only went 7-5 this year but I’d blame the offense for those five losses much more than anything the defense did.

Geoff Collins is leaving Temple to take the Georgia Tech gig.

I had relatively high hopes for Temple Football this season. 8-4? 9-3? I thought we’d see a significant step forward in year two of the Geoff Collins era.

They’ve actually gone in the opposite direction, starting out 0-2 with home losses to Villanova and Buffalo.

Now they head to Maryland to play an unbeaten Terrapins team that knocked off Texas and clobbered Bowling Green on the road. Some of us identified this week three game as a chance for Temple to maybe steal a road win against a power five team dealing with an offseason scandal, but that doesn’t look likely. It looks like the Owls are going to be 0-3 out of the gates.

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Temple football got off to a slow start in the post-Matt Rhule era.

First-year head coach Geoff Collins began his tenure with three wins and fives losses as he worked to get more out of an offense and defense that both featured a good amount of potential but weren’t exactly operating like well-oiled machines. The Owls looked like a squad that was trying to find its footing after consecutive 10-win seasons that saw Rhule depart for Baylor and nine players move on to the NFL.

Would Temple continue to build on the good things Rhule developed in North Philadelphia, or would they regress to the norm?

It feels like more of the former rather than the latter, and it started last November with a solid home win over a decent Navy program. Quarterback Frank Nutile, who took over for Logan Marchi one game prior, put in a fantastic four touchdown performance, going 22-30 with 289 passing yards on the day. The defense limited Navy’s patented rushing attack to 136 yards on 52 carries, and the 34-26 win put the Owls back on track to qualify for a third straight bowl game.

They went on to win two of their final three, knocking off Cincinatti and Tulsa on the road and going on to smother Butch Davis and his FIU Panthers 28-3 in the Gasparilla Bowl.

It really was a nice turnaround for a team that looked more than pedestrian in September and October, struggling to carve out an identity through the first half of the schedule.

Now the Owls are back on stable ground, and you’ve got a program coming into 2018 with plenty of positives:

• a second year head coach with experience under his belt
• a serviceable starting quarterback
• the return of running back Ryquell Armstead and wide receiver Isaiah Wright
• a first round NFL prospect in safety Delvon Randall, who might be the best defensive player in the AAC
• a navigable front-end schedule with winnable out-of-conference games

Nutile ended up playing about half of the 2017 season and put up 12 touchdowns and 7 interceptions with a 61.3 completion percentage. A look at his numbers, along with the top ball carriers and receivers:

On the other end of the spectrum, the question marks are fairly standard:

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