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Temple Will Shock the World this Weekend, and Cover Against Oklahoma
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Your team, your town, your Temple Owls have everybody feeling good after a 55 to 7 drubbing of the Howard Bison at Licoln Financial Field on Saturday afternoon. Evan Simon threw three touchdown passes on just 10 attempts while the boys ran the ball 50 times for 329 yards and three scores. This was a run/pass ratio that would have sent Buddy Ryan-era Eagles fans into spiritual nirvana.
What we have now is Temple’s first winning streak since 2021 and the first time they’ve opened a season 2-0 since 2019, when they knocked off Bucknell and Maryland en route to a 5-1 start that included two wins against ranked teams. That was pre-pandemic, before everything went to shit.
As such, we’re feeling good about this team. They went out and thumped a MAC team on the road and thumped a MEAC team at home, which is what a program like Temple should do. K.C. Keeler has the boys rolling with enough momentum that the oddsmakers only made them a 24.5 point home dog against Oklahoma in week three. Miss Cleo used to say “call me now!” but I’m saying “tail me now” –
This is a Sooner team that beat Illinois State 35-3 at home in week one, then took out Michigan in Norman 24-13 on Saturday. They limited the Wolverines to a 3-14 mark on third down and held freshman Bryce Underwood to a 9 for 24 passing mark and 142 yards. He finished with a 40.1 QBR. The only real success Michigan seemed to have was running the ball with Justice Haynes, who finished with 19 carries for 125 yards and a TD, though a long run of 75 yards really skews the statistics. If you take that out of the equation, Haynes ran it 18 times for 50 yards, which is a 2.7 YPC rate.
On the offensive side, Temple is gonna have their hands full with QB John Mateer, who threw for 270 yards and ran for 74 on Saturday. He had three total touchdowns in what amounts to a Jalen Hurts-ish type of performance. They don’t seem to have a bona fide lead back, but Mateer is a killer in both phases and showed us that during his 2024 season with Washington State.
As nobody is expecting the Owls to win, this will be a moral victory type of a game. It’ll be a scene setter, if you will, a good barometer for the early portion of the Keeler era. All anybody is asking for is a good atmosphere at Lincoln Financial Field and a gritty effort from the home team. If they can make it a game and stay in it until the second half, that will go a long way towards readying them for conference play. Similar to Rome, North Philly was not built in a day.
You have to think of these next two games as prep for the American slate. OU is an enormous task. Going to Georgia Tech is a rough one as well. But if they battle in these next two games, you feel pretty good about them coming home and smashing UTSA, setting them up for that Navy game. This season is all about rebuilding this squad into something respectable, not winning the College Football Playoff, so while we’re tempering expectations, we’re happy to see the Owls moving in presumably the right direction again.
editor’s note: Oklahoma’s band only knows one damn song. They play Boomer Sooner every five seconds. Hopefully they don’t travel for this one, but if they do, bring ear plugs.
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