Everett Withers explains his on-again, off-again — and now on-again — roles with Temple football

With all of the movement Everett Withers has done in less than a year, it would be easy to consider Temple’s defensive coordinator a bit of an opportunist.

In reality, Withers’ return to Temple after leaving just nine months earlier was essentially a best-of-both-worlds situation. Withers, who originally joined Temple last year as the chief of staff for its football program, did so to primarily assist Stan Drayton in his first year as the Owls’ new head coach.

It brought Withers, a former head coach at James Madison and Texas State and an assistant at a number of schools, including Ohio State, back inside a locker room — albeit a bit on the periphery. Instead of being a shot caller on the field, he’d be largely in charge of being a support structure to the shot callers on the field.

December arrived with an opportunity to return to the sidelines as a coach with Florida Atlantic University as a member of Owls head coach Tom Herman’s staff. Withers worked alongside Herman at Ohio State during the 2012-13 season. Reportedly hired to be an assistant head coach and passing game coordinator, Withers lasted just a few months at FAU before coming back to Temple, now as a defensive coordinator, with a focus on the linebacker corps.

» READ MORE: Temple’s Everett Withers is set to join football coaching staff at Florida Atlantic University

So why all the movement? In the Owls’ first media call of the season earlier this month, Withers finally took the opportunity to explain.

“You know, I came back not more so for the defensive coordinator position, I came back to be around our kids here,” Withers said. “I really, really have a love for the type of kids that we have here at Temple. And to me, that’s more than the football. More than anything else, just to be around and try to help mentor and then obviously help Stan and the staff here. But really, it’s just to be around the kids.”

What prefaced that response, however, is Withers being an old ball coach and the idea that after the departure of D.J. Eliot to the Eagles as their linebacker coach in March, the door opened once again for Withers to get his “competitive juices” flowing on North Broad, in a program where he already knew the game plan.

“[When I] went back to [FAU] and was pass game coordinator … the more I got into it, the more I got around it, the more the competitive juices started to flow,” said Withers. “It was fun being back on the field for all season and [for] pre-spring ball down there. We were getting ready to start down [at FAU] when D.J. Eliot left and Stan called me and said, ‘Why don’t you, you know, it’d be great if you came back.’ To be honest with you, it wasn’t hard for me to come back.”

» READ MORE: Temple looking for leaders as it develops its football roster

Now that he is back, Withers is in charge of a defensive unit that ranked seventh in the American Athletic Conference last season, giving up 29.3 points per game. However, it’s also a unit with a number of standouts, including senior linebacker Layton Jordan, who was named to the Bronko Nagurski preseason watch list. The award is given to the best defensive player in college football.

Withers’ perspective at first glance?

“There’s a lot of new kids,” he said. “I think overall we have 50-plus new kids on our team. The life of the transfer portal and graduation and all that stuff, man, really change rosters from year to year. [Also], I wasn’t coaching last year, so that piece will be different. It’ll be my first go-around actually coaching these guys.”

Drayton’s core group understands his brand of football, and in a return to the field as a coordinator with a longtime understanding of Drayton’s coaching style, Withers knows what to expect. What will the team look like in year two?

“I just believe that the kids understand the core values of our program better,” Withers said. “For the most part, the older kids coming into the program understand it. The young kids are going to learn it as they move through it — and what the expectations are for our program. And I think that when you go into year two, that’s pretty typical for most teams. And it’s really how most teams can adapt and adjust to that the quickest is where you usually see improvement. So hopefully we can have that improvement.”

Villanova will have another CAA football foe in 2024 as the Coastal Athletic Association announced the addition of Bryant as the 16th member of the conference on Thursday.

Located in Rhode Island, Bryant will play its last season in the Big South. Entering their 25th season as a program, the Bulldogs have an all-time record of 130-120, going 82-78 in the Football Championship Subdivision.

» READ MORE: Stan Drayton enters second season as Temple’s football coach with lessons learned