Temple’s start has been slow, but Stan Drayton said his football team is far from ‘broken’
The Owls are at .500 but have come out of the gate slow in both games. Still, Drayton contends that Temple "is not a broken football team, we’ll figure things out."
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Slow starts have been the theme of Temple’s offense this season.
In a 24-21 win over Akron on Sept. 2, the Owls’ offense went three-and-out on three of their first four drives. On Saturday at Rutgers, Temple punted on each of its five first-half possessions in a 36-7 blowout loss.
Why the early struggles?
“I don’t have an answer in particular,” said quarterback E.J. Warner, who finished with 230 yards passing and a touchdown, but also had a pair of fourth-quarter interceptions.
Saturday was a night when the passing game especially struggled. Warner’s lack of accuracy led to several missed opportunities. He finished with 230 passing yards, two interceptions, and completed 42% of his passes.
The Owls’ run game contributed just 64 yards. Freshman running back Joquez Smith, who rushed for 45 yards on nine carries, was the lone silver lining.
“He was a spark for us,” said head coach Stan Drayton. “You can’t knock his production today, there’s times where he looked really, really good.”
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Rutgers ran away with the game, but if you take a closer look at it, Temple played two games on Saturday: one against the Scarlet Knights and another against themselves. Here are just but a few examples:
— False start on third-and-5; five dropped balls; two illegal substitution penalties; 15-yard offensive pass interference call on second-and-7; two failed red-zone opportunities.
All game the Owls made mistakes on both sides of the ball. Temple had several penalties that took themselves out of manageable situations on offense and put Rutgers’ offense in favorable ones.
Despite all of that, the Owls were able to keep the game close until a fourth-quarter collapse. Dante Wright’s touchdown reception early in the fourth quarter cut Rutgers’ lead to six. Following Wright’s TD, however, Rutgers scored 23 unanswered points.
Drayton, visibly upset after postgame, didn’t take kindly to being asked what broke in the fourth quarter.
“You tell me. … This is not a broken football team, we’ll figure things out,” Drayton said.
Defensively, Temple’s front lines were continuously moved off the ball, allowing Rutgers’ rushers to pick up several yards before contact. Linebackers Yvandy Rigby and Jordan Magee also struggled with run support and filling holes — a trait even Magee attested to being an issue.
“We were undisciplined getting in our gaps,” he said. “If we stay gap sound, we’ll be fine.”
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It was a shortcoming that benefited Rutgers running back Kyle Monangai. The Roseland, N.J., native ran for a career-high 165 yards and one touchdown, averaging 5.9 yards per carry..
Despite slow starts and some ineffectiveness, Temple is a .500 football team after two games. The Owls will attempt to get back on track against Norfolk State on Saturday at Lincoln Financial Field (2 p.m., ESPN+).
Drayton noted Monday that getting up to speed for this program appears to be as much psychological as is it physical.
“We got to be a lot more disciplined,” Drayton said at his Monday press conference. “It’s a mental thing for us, we got to get stronger that way.”