Stan Drayton says Temple football team has camaraderie down. Now, it’s getting ‘game tested.’
Temple added 50 new players. But the Owls head coach feels confident in what he's seeing out of his team.
Fifty new players.
They, along with the returning corps, are whom Temple coach Stan Drayton and his staff are trying to game plan for to improve and have sustained success in his second year — at least that’s the goal.
It’s a task Drayton noted during his weekly press conference on Monday ahead of Temple’s season opener against Akron at Lincoln Financial Field on Saturday (2 p.m., ESPN+) that has gone well in terms of building camaraderie. Now he says it’s time to get “game tested.”
“They’re having a good time and enjoying each other and they’re working and there’s real leadership on this football team,” Drayton said. “It feels real different in Year 2, and I think the guys realize that there have been some upgrades … but nothing is time tested yet; we haven’t had any of the new guys or this new vibe into a game yet, and for us, that’s the missing piece.”
Drayton is excited about where the Owls stand heading into the opener, perhaps even more than he was last season.
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“You just have a firmer sense of the guys you’re working with in Year [2] compared to Year 1,” Drayton said. “You know the personalities of these guys and you’ve even been to war [on the field] with some of them, so I know how they’re going to react when adversity hits. But then [there are] the other 50 [new] guys that I don’t, so to sit here and say that I’m excited and know what the end result is going to be, I’m not going to do that. … It’s been an investment in this football team over the course of this offseason, and I’m excited to see how they plan to cash in on their investment.”
Next up: WR John Adams
A big wait-and-see for Drayton and his staff will be the upgrades made to the offensive and defensive lines, with many eyes peeled on defensive lineman Allan Haye, the 6-foot-2, 305-pounder who transferred from Miami in the offseason.
Also, Drayton pointed out that redshirt sophomore wide receiver John Adams has had a “good camp” and is expected to be a guy who could be featured. Adams, a walk-on in 2021, has played sporadically over the last two seasons but could have more of a role this season.
“John Adams has had a really good camp,” Drayton said. “I think he’s earned the right to play and I hope he feels as though he’s earned the right to play. Any time you have a guy that is 6-1, 6-2 and can run the way he does and can put the production in that he does in most practices, then yeah, he should be getting himself ready to play.”
Self-care is the name of the game
Drayton recognized that for all the talk about “vibes” in the locker room, he is the one who will largely control how his program will flow. He acknowledged that he needs to portray a more levelheaded approach with a plan of working out and even relying on meditation to do so.
“I need to be all the way right for everybody in the building,” he said. “That’s going to be something different. I walked [into] the building last year and the priority was everybody else in the building, you know, I forgot about me. And then you realize how worn down I was towards the back end of the season … and when it was time to take a vacation from football, I slept for two days. And it just didn’t feel good.”
A part of getting run down came midway through last season when he missed the Owls’ road game against Navy due to an undisclosed illness. Everett Withers, who was Temple’s chief of staff (now defensive coordinator) at the time, stepped in as acting head coach.
“These players deserve a better me,” Drayton said. “So I have to do a better job of sticking to my routines and holding myself accountable.”
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