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Not a Hot Take or Clickbait: I Believe Temple’s Choke Job Was Worse than NC State’s Choke Job
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Temple was up 42-28 with less than two minutes remaining in Toledo and lost the game 49-48 in overtime. Outrageous! Here’s how it happened:
The clip didn’t include this incredible Ajani Sheppard run, which preceded the failed two-point conversion. Sheppard played the entire game because Jaxon Smolik left during the first series:
K.C. Keeler said his team was struggling to stop Toledo in the red zone, which is why he tried to end the game in the first overtime with the two-point attempt. We’d all probably agree with that, or at least understand it. Temple wasn’t stopping Toledo at that point. The defense was gassed and had fallen entirely apart. So they went for two and Sheppard just missed 6’6″ Peter Clarke in the corner. They had the right play call but didn’t execute, and it’s a bummer because Sheppard’s run was a big boy, Sports Center Top 10-type run and one of the best plays of the entire afternoon.
Now, people are saying NC State had the worst choke job of the weekend. It was horrifying and grotesque. They had a 31-28 lead with 6 seconds on the clock and simply needed to run the ball out the back of the endzone, take a safety, and let the clock expire. Instead, they fumbled, Vandy recovered, scored, and covered, hilariously.
They had the game won.
But so did Temple. Temple had the game won. The Owls had a 14 point lead with 1:11 on the clock.
The difference is that NC State blew their game in one sequence while Temple had multiple opportunities in which to seal their victory, but failed in all of them.
They failed to:
- keep Toledo out of the end zone in garbage time
- recover the onside kick (honestly, it was an amazing onside kick)
- keep the damn receiver in front of them during Toledo’s final regulation drive
- put up any kind of defensive effort in overtime (Rockets scored with pitiful ease)
- convert their two-point attempt, with an open tight end in the end zone
So they failed at five different things, while NC State failed miserably at one. The Wolfpack’s lone sequence was absolutely more pathetic than each of Temple’s five, but the Owls legitimately had five different opportunities to claim this victory and went 0-5 on those opportunities.
It’s the kind of loss that I think gets me off the Temple bandwagon. I wanted this team to be good, and I want college football to matter in Philadelphia, but I think they’re just gonna be bang average, once again. They should be 2-1 and coming home for a key matchup against Army to kick off conference play. Instead, they’re 1-2 and bowl eligibility is looking really dicey. They are going to have to beat Army, UConn, Charlotte, UAB, and Rice just to get to 6-6. That’s how they get into a bowl game barring some road upset of Navy, Memphis, ECU, or South Florida. They needed to win two of three against Army, UConn, and Toledo, and so far they’re 0-1 in that endeavour.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com