Positive signs for Owls amid the mistakes

SOUTH BEND, Ind. - It was a coup for Temple to get this game on its schedule, but Saturday's season opener quickly had the look of a vintage Owls debacle.

The Golden Dome across campus and Touchdown Jesus overlooking one end zone, all the history packaged with any football game inside Notre Dame Stadium, all that comes into play.

Because of jangly Temple nerves or not, Notre Dame's first two drives raised the question: Were the Owls even going to show up?

"The very first play, the safeties went the wrong way," said Temple coach Matt Rhule, making his head-coaching debut. "We blitzed on one side and they spun the other way."

As it turned out, those two drives shaped the afternoon - Notre Dame scored more in its first 21/2 minutes of possession than Temple did all day - but, to the Owls' real credit, the early scores did not fully define the day.

Soon enough, this turned into a different variation of a Temple loss. Call it a "if this and this and this hadn't happened" kind of loss.

The Owls still lost, 28-6, and you never seriously thought the Irish were in danger. Needing to be close to perfect, Temple wasn't even close. And Notre Dame's quarterback, Tommy Rees, probably enjoyed his day.

For Temple, a veteran cornerback got beaten twice, for those two early Notre Dame layup touchdowns. A freshman kicker missed two field goals wide right, then had an extra point blocked. Just after the Owls scored, quieting the stadium, they missed a coverage and a tackle, making for a one-drive Irish score, effectively ending the game just before halftime.

The misplays were front and center on national television. Temple also showed, however, that it could move the football against the most vaunted defense on its schedule. The Owls have a quarterback with plenty of pocket awareness, and an offensive line to protect him.

"I think our guys realize they can play at that level," Rhule said after his debut as a head coach. "We can't play a good team and give plays away, but they can play at that level."

Rhule said that at halftime, he told his coaches what to emphasize. Not to ignore the mistakes, but not to go crazy.

"We had to show our players what poise looked like and confidence looked like," Rhule said.

Notre Dame wasn't going to ignore Temple. No chance. Since the Irish had last played at Notre Dame Stadium, they had been embarrassed by Alabama and an invisible girlfriend. This game wasn't just an opener, but a reset, a chance to remind themselves they can play this game after the national-title game debacle.

"Our defense does not surrender big plays and keeps the points down and really makes you work to sustain drives and to get into the end zone," said Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly.

But Temple quarterback Connor Reilly wasn't running for his life. The Owls showed a ground game, averaging 4.6 yards a rush. They did not turn the ball over. They converted third downs at roughly the same rate as the Irish. In one stretch, they got inside ND's 30 four out of five drives.

Forget moral victories, and covering the spread. There were actual X and O reasons to believe this wasn't a lost afternoon.

Credit to Jim Cooper, Temple's kicker, for standing outside the locker room and taking questions.

"You really only have one of two directions to go," Cooper said. "You can fold, you can let it get to you, or, you know, we have a week of practice. Make it a good week, try to build from it."

(Notre Dame missed two field goals of its own. You ever see a Division I game where the two teams were a combined 0-for-4?)

Cooper, a high school all-American, said his coaches never lost faith in him, but, in fact, Temple did go for it on fourth and goal from the 6 on the opening drive of the third quarter.

"I hated for him to miss those kicks because he's going to be a great kicker for a long time," Rhule said. "That is unfair for a freshman to have to deal with that in that environment. I thought his teammates rallied around him. . . . Hopefully next week he'll get himself righted up."

Getting righted up was a theme of the day.

"A few kids were nervous - everyone was," said Temple linebacker Tyler Matakevich, a captain of those early problems. "Just getting the jitters out. Once we did, we certainly calmed down. We played football that we were capable of playing."

That may have been the most important message, inside the visiting locker room. The outside world may look at 28-6 and shrug. But climbing the ladder of respectability requires that you don't fall back to the ground in places like this.

The next rung?

"You can't have 65 good plays and five bad ones," Temple's new head coach said.