Temple Football

The question was posed to a young Bernard Pierce in the locker room at Lincoln Financial Field a couple of weeks ago.

"Dude, do you realize you have a chance to break Paul Palmer's records?"

"Who's Paul Palmer?" Pierce said.

What some longtime Temple fans might see as blasphemy was really an innocent remark that illustrated, more than anything else, how young Bernard Pierce is.

The true freshman wasn't even born yet when the kid known as Boo-Boo was in a heated battle with Miami quarterback Vinny Testaverde for the 1986 Heisman Trophy (he finished second in the balloting).

Chances are, Pierce will get to know Boo-Boo well in the coming months and years as each record Palmer set falls.  Boo-Boo played with a terrific quarterback named Lee Saltz and a dynamite blocking fullback named Shelley Poole, whose play complemented Palmer's shifty abilities.

Pierce has far less help, particularly at those positions, but his impact has been spectacular.

Six straight starts. Six straight wins.

Temple beats Villanova by AT LEAST 20 points with this sure-handed young superstar getting 20 or more carries, rather than the six he had in the opener.

You'd have to be Stevie Wonder not to see that.

Saturday, Pierce rushed for 267 yards and two spectacular touchdowns as the Owls overcame an anemic passing attack to beat Navy, 27-24, otherwise known as the best team on their schedule not named Penn State. He did a good impersonation of Paul Palmer on Halloween, becoming the first Owl runner since Boo-Boo to rush for over 200 yards in consecutive games.

The fact that the Owls could not throw the ball and hit open receivers (check the film, they were running open through the Navy secondary all day) only makes what Pierce did all that more impressive.

As the game went on, Navy's defense loaded up in the box to stop Pierce.

Didn't matter.

He was too quick, too strong, too fast.

The Owls' offensive line, which averages 310 pounds across the front, also deserves a lot of credit. They knocked Navy off the ball like bowling pins. There is a photo accompanying this story that shows Pierce running through a hole and the Temple line knocking Navy off the ball in the background.

There is still much work to be done for this Owls' team to reach its potential.

The passing game, which really has alternated between bad and worse (today was worse), needs to be fixed.

You've got to be able to get someone in there who can throw the ball effectively.
Some hard decisions about personnel are going to have to be made at that position.
To win the championship, the Owls need to make Pierce more of a weapon fixing the firing mechanism.

Who's Paul Palmer, yes, but another question could be:

Where's Lee Saltz?

Nothing could be more fitting this year than Temple playing at Navy on Halloween.

Navy played a trick on Temple, and it could turn out to be an unexpected treat for the Owls come Saturday.

This year would have been the fourth year of a home-and-home contract with Temple.

Navy and Temple, both in good faith, signed a contract to honor two home and two away games.

Temple honored the final part of its road commitment with a trip to Navy last season.

Then the Owls threw a scare into Navy last season, leading 27-7 in the fourth quarter before losing 33-27 in overtime.

Navy's brass probably thought for a minute about the possibility of playing Temple in hostile Philadelphia in 2009 and then placed a phone call to Temple.

The conversation, loosely translated, went something like this:

"Err, you know that game we promised you? We're not coming."

Navy tore up the contract and would have paid Temple a hefty fee for breaking it, but that left the Owls in a bind. They had no team to replace Navy, only a couple of FCS prospects, and that was no good because the Owls already had FCS Villanova on the schedule.

So Temple athletic director Bill Bradshaw did the only thing he could do with an 18-inch battleship gun pointed squarely at his head:

He offered to play the game in Annapolis.

So that's how Navy flipped a game that was originally scheduled to be in Philadelphia, getting Temple to "sell" its home game to Navy.

Navy has a distinct advantage at home. Yet there is irony in this situation this year.

The irony is that Navy might have done Temple an inadvertent favor.

I mean, did Navy know the World Series would be played in Philadelphia that day?

No.

The Phillies are playing that day in Philadelphia, and the city is crazed right now.

Everything else in sports is an afterthought, even the Eagles.

All of the parking lots around both stadiums will be all Phillies red all day long.

Getting the Owls out of here at this time can only help them do what they need to do—focus on the task at hand. This is an important game between two teams who have won five straight games. The winner, especially if it's Temple, will get sorely needed recognition on a national scale.

It was a trick Navy played, no doubt.

If it helps keep the Owls' minds focused on football enough to get a win, though, it will be a delicious treat, and the trick will be on the Midshipmen.

Mark Beier and the Toledo radio broadcast team threw many bouquets in Temple's direction Saturday night, you didn't know which ones to catch, and which ones to send to the nearest deserving funeral home.

Beier talked about the size and the fierceness of Temple's offensive line and the overall speed of the Temple defense.

Something Beier said in the fourth quarter of Temple's 40-24 win at Toledo really caught my ear, though.

"I haven't seen a running back of this caliber in the Mid-American Conference in a long, long time," said Beier, whose radio call also streams worldwide on a MAC access channel with video.

Color man Tom Duncan agreed.

Beier was, of course, talking about Temple freshman Bernard Pierce, whose amazing recovery from being carried off in a stretcher last week in the Army game is nothing more than Lourdes-like.

Pierce rushed for 212 yards and three touchdowns in the win over Toledo, and now has 766 yards on 135 carries, despite getting only six carries in the opener against Villanova. Pierce now has a team-high nine touchdowns and already has bettered Paul Palmer's records for touchdowns (six) and yards (628) by a freshman.

Oh.

Did we mention Palmer finished as a runnerup to Vinny Testaverde for the 1986 Heisman Trophy?

Thought I'd mention that.

Temple has now won five straight games for the first time since 1979. The Owls (5-2, 4-0) are also in the MAC East driver's seat, affirming predictions by both the New York Times and CBS Sportsline prior to the season.

Meanwhile, the Toledo game was a tale of two stars with bum shoulders.

One could play. One didn't.

"It's doubtful," Temple coach Al Golden said when asked if Pierce would play Wednesday.

Five minutes later, in the same presser, Golden said, "I don't have any doubt Aaron Opelt will be playing quarterback on Saturday night for Toledo."

Well, guess what happened?

Pierce's broken shoulder was fixed and Golden's doubt-meter was broken. Or maybe Al was just playing possum.

Whatever, I don't think Toledo wins that game with Opelt AND Pierce playing. Then again, I don't think Temple wins that game without Pierce. That's how good Pierce was.

When you have a running back like Pierce, you can manage the game off him and that's what Temple quarterback Vaughn Charlton did so well on Saturday night.

Vaughn threw a nice touchdown pass that Michael Campbell caught, another ball that Michael Campbell probably should have caught for six (it would have been a really good catch, though) and another flair that went for another touchdown to Jason Harper, who refuses to be tackled the few times he has gotten a ball this season.

Pierce went out for a blow late in the fourth quarter and they handed the ball to backup Lamar McPherson, who promptly went down on the same kind of play Pierce was falling forward for eight yards a pop.

"You can see the difference between Pierce and everybody else," Beier said.

Whatever they rubbed on his shoulders this week must've worked. I wonder if they got the bottle over-nighted from France.

Whatever, it was the Elixer the Owls needed and just at the right time.

The year was 1985.

The top-rated series on TV was The Cosby Show.

The price of gas in some parts of the country was 69 cents a gallon.

On Oct. 19 of that year, the No. 1 song, "Take on Me," was by a Norwegian group, Ah-Ha.

On that very day, the Temple football team won its fourth straight game, a 45-16 thumping of William and Mary. That came after a 21-7 win at East Carolina, a 28-16 win at Cincinnati, and a 14-13 win over visiting Rutgers.

The Owls would not win four straight again until Saturday, Oct. 17, 2009 with a 27-13 thumping of visiting Army.

Twenty-four years without a four-game winning streak.

Until now.

That's how far Temple football has come in the four-year rebuilding process supervised by head coach Al Golden.

I was struck by something Golden said before all this winning stuff started happening four weeks ago.

"Once we start winning, it's going to continue for a long time," Golden said. "That's the way this thing is built."

It was a telling quote and an unforgettable one.

Four straight wins have now followed and this latest one probably is the most impressive.

Saturday, Temple beat an Army team that beat Vanderbilt, an SEC team, last week.
Army is very well-coached by Rich Ellerson (although you couldn't tell it at times on Saturday) and the Cadets are going to beat a lot of teams.

In fact, I would not be surprised if the Cadets beat Rutgers at beautiful Michie Stadium on Friday night because they play a style of defense that I'd like to see more teams play: blitz, blitz, and more blitz.

They put eight in the box and they come after the quarterback, hoping the reward (turnovers) outweighs any risk.

I can't see Rutgers' quarterback Tom Savage, a true freshman, thriving against that defense at all.

I like the philosophy and the scheme.

I also like the fact that the kids who play football for Temple University persevered against it.

Was it a masterpiece?

No.

The Owls have to get better on offense. They have to get better protection for quarterback Vaughn Charlton.

They have to have somebody (whether it be Joey Jones, Lamar McPherson, Kee-ayre Griffin, or even Ahkeem Smith) step up and do a reasonable impersonation of injured superstar running back Bernard Pierce for a game or two.

They have to get a clutch player like Jason Harper more involved and team leaders like him and Steve Manieri are going to have to keep making great plays like they did on Saturday.

The Owls are coming up against a stretch of teams with quarterbacks, like Aaron Opelt of Toledo, who can make plays and put up a whole lot of points.

They are going to get into a track meet (think EMU last year) with one of these teams and the offense must be ready to win a game or two, like the defense has won these last four.

Nobody knows that more than Golden and company, so while you and I can just hope the offense comes around, that'll be the focus this week: tinkering with these great weapons, putting the gunpowder in, and fiddling with the trigger.

It's a process, Golden likes to say, and it's all about getting better every day and having fun, too.

Like former Temple coach Wayne Hardin used to say, the only way to have fun in football is to win.

Temple fans are having fun right now. It looked like the kids on the field were having fun, too.

I don't know where this road leads, but the Owls are concentrating on both enjoying the journey and getting better every step of the way.

The quality of the journey is directly correlated to the getting better part.

As if Temple's football team didn't present the Mid-American Conference with enough problems early in the season, the league has looked up and found a one-headed, two-footed monster coming from Philadelphia.

Bernard Pierce, a six-foot, 212-pound true freshman who wears No. 30, has done something no other running back in the history of Temple football has done—rush for over 100 yards in each of his first three full starts.

Before you dismiss that as a byproduct of a less than stellar football history, that includes a Heisman Trophy runner-up in Paul Palmer (1986), who was also an NFL first-round draft choice.

It includes Todd McNair, a pretty good running back in the NFL who is now an assistant coach at Southern Cal.

It includes a guy, Sherman Myers, from Coatesville, who scored four touchdowns on on the ground in a 1979 Temple 49-17 rout of Syracuse.

It also includes recent NFLers like Stacey Mack (Jacksonville) and Jason McKie (Bears).
There are plenty of good running backs who have played at the school.

None did what Bernard Pierce has done.

But then again, none may be as good when all is said and done.

Pierce is a guy who was Pennsylvania state high school indoor champion in the 60-meter dash and then pulled the impressive double of winning the state 100-meter dash in the spring season.

That's scary enough against track guys.

Against football guys, it translates to one juke and plenty of 40-, 50- and 70-yard touchdown runs coming soon to a stadium near you.
 
Pierce is not a track guy who plays football. He's a football guy with a running back's instincts who happened to dominate in track.
 
There's a difference. He was born to run the ball.

"We thought he could be special," is the understated way Temple coach Al Golden describes it.

The Temple student rooting section, which sometimes numbers in the tens of thousands, has taken to Pierce already.

"SAINT BERN-ARD!" the students chant in unison. "SAINT BERN....ARRRD!"

So the inevitable question arises.

"Who does he remind you of?"

Not really any of the prior Temple backs, I thought. He really doesn't remind me all that much of Paul Palmer. Paul could break tackles, sure, but not as well as Bernard. What Bernard doesn't do as well as Paul is make tacklers miss, with a little juke here and a head fake there, but it's still early.

Hmm. Who?

People who watched Temple practice in the summer came up with one name.

Eric Dickerson.

It's what I thought when I saw Pierce for the first time in the Villanova game.

Dickerson was the kind of guy who would approach the hole, take about a half-second to mull his options against the defense, and then attack the weakest part of it.

So, I thought, that pretty much was Pierce, a modern-day Eric Dickerson.

I thought that I was the only one who felt that way until I heard the Buffalo announcers.

"He kind of reminds you of Eric Dickerson," one of them said during the Owls' 37-13 win three weeks ago.

Then the Eastern Michigan announcer said the same thing.

"He runs like Eric Dickerson," said Matt Shepard, the play-by-play man for Eastern Michigan games that are streamed online. "It's going to be a pleasure to watch this young man develop the next four years."

That's all I needed to know.

We're all in agreement then.

There is a new Eric Dickerson, and he runs the football for Temple University.

That has a nice ring (and a whole lot of truth) to it.

Gotta give Stan Parrish some credit. He's not getting much in Muncie, Ind., these days. There's even a firestanparrish.com Web site.

In the midst of all this fan uprise in Indiana surrounding his future, he took time to notice the guys on the other side of the ball and that's why he deserves credit for this quote today, though:

"If that's not the best defense, especially physically, we've played since I've been at Ball State, it's right up there."

Impressive words, but not more than these by Peanut Joseph:

"We have some goals, but we're nowhere close to them," the Owls' linebacker said after a 24-19 win over Ball State.

Nowhere, but one small step. There are seven, maybe eight, more steps just like these.

Joseph is right.

Let's face it. The defense won this game. They deserve 11 game balls.
Then there's the flip side.

If the Owls keep playing like this on offense and special teams, they will be nowhere near close to getting those goals.

The good thing is that the problems, as Head Coach Al Golden says, are fixable.

Temple hasn't shown in the past that it has trouble snapping or protecting.

Special teams Coach Al Golden (yes, the same guy) is going to have to put in a whole new scheme of punt protection, and maybe even a new snapper, in the next few days before the Army game.

Ball State evidently saw something in Temple's protection that dictated the Cardinals go after every punt.

That entire scheme must change because the Army coaches will see it, too. One way to change it is not to have to punt at all.

Temple has to develop a viable passing game to complement Bernard "The Franchise" Pierce. Pierce became the first freshman in Owl history to rush for over 100 yards in three straight games, getting a buck 25 and two touchdowns.

If the Owls can develop a passing game opponents respect, and it might include changing the passer or the receivers or both, look for Pierce to turn a few of those twisting and turning eight, nine, and 10-yard runs into 70-yard touchdowns.

This is a team with too many weapons to be scoring in the low 20s every game. Temple coaches must view the film and determine what the problem is and correct it.

If it requires a change in scheme or a change in personnel, so be it. This is big-time college football and they should not be afraid to hurt anyone's feelings.

Winning ugly is still winning, but Saturday is Homecoming and a good Army team is coming to town before an expected Temple crowd of 25,000 plus.

Winning "beautiful" is the next goal, and that means for all three phases to show up, not just the defense.

That would be the next step and it must be forward, not backward.

It's got be good to be Temple quarterback Vaughn Charlton right now.

He's got more weapons than an F-15 fighter pilot and the plane hasn't even gotten out of the hanger yet.

That's what they've been working on all week in the command center of Temple football, otherwise known as the Edberg-Olson Practice Complex, shining that Stealth jet and moving it out of the hanger for the final seven games of the season.

At least that's the drift I get from reading head coach Al Golden's Twitter page yesterday.

"Today was a learning day for the team," Golden tweeted. "We must get better at what we do."

Golden has to feel that Temple has too much talent to go 6-for-17 for only 95 yards in the passing game against Buffalo. The offensive scheme, to me, has been all out of whack so far.

The weapons are there and every bit as deadly, from a football sense, as a cruise missile.

Bernard Pierce

Last week, ran for 180 yards on 25 carries in a 24-12 win at Eastern Michigan. Keep feeding the franchise the ball, but not on obvious running downs. Mix it up a little bit. Run him on second-and-longs sometimes, pass on first down other times.

Pierce was the Pennsylvania state champion indoor in the 60-meter dash and also outdoor in the 100-meter dash last year in high school. That's fast.

James Nixon

The guy regularly gets behind defenses. Don't throw him the play-action bomb once a game. Throw him the bomb at least five times a game. Nothing will loosen up the middle for Bernard Pierce runs more than the threat of throwing the play-action bomb to James Nixon.

He runs a 4.3 40-yard dash. "I've been around coaching for 21 years and I've never seen anybody that fast," Golden said.

Evan Rodriguez

Should get the ball five to 10 times a game, 10 to 15 yards down the field where he can use his athletic ability for some impressive RAC (run after catch) yardage? How many tight ends in Division I ball today were terrific punt returners for his high school team?

I know only of Evan Rodriguez. I love to see him with the ball in the open field and not these five-yard out patterns they throw him.

Jason Harper

Was the Bergen County (N.J.) Player of the Year as a high school senior running back, runs fast and hard and has a good set of hands...use him. He was a running back good enough to get more than 100 yards against bowl-bound UConn two years ago and he would cause defenses major headaches in the short passing game, bubble screens, and the like.

Try those plays with him. Give him a head of steam. He's still one of the fastest guys on the team. Harper can also go deep as he proved last year against Kent State and Eastern Michigan.

I'm sure Golden didn't like one guy calling for a fair catch when the other guy had a lane to run last week on a punt return.

I'm sure Golden is not enthralled with their pass rush or pass coverage, either.

They must get better in all those phases, not more than an offense which is underachieving considering the sum of its parts.

The old saying is two's company and three's a crowd.

How about 2,000 is company for a really big house party and 3,000 is a crowd for a really bad Homecoming Game in college football?

Well, 3,364 to be exact.

That was the announced crowd at Saturday's 24-12 Temple win at Eastern Michigan, Homecoming for the Eagles. Hmm.

I'm really sensitive about this topic because I'm a Temple fan and we've gotten our, err, stones busted about attendance a lot over the years.

It's up recently. Temple even averaged nearly 30,000 fans in 2007, best in the Mid-American Conference. But all we hear on message boards is cracks about Temple attendance.

"Too bad nobody was there to see it," one MAC poster wrote after a 37-13 win over Buffalo, when actually there were nearly 14,000 people to see it. I never want to hear that again after Saturday.

The hardest things to do is win in big-time college football and draw fans if you don't.

I don't care if you are playing in The Big House in front of 106,000 people against Michigan or in front of 3,364 in The Little House in Ypsilanti. Eastern Michigan couldn't fake the total because the NCAA would be able to review the film and count them in about 10 minutes.

I never want to hear anything about Temple's attendance again.

Compared to Eastern Michigan and Kent State and some of these MAC teams, Temple is like the Red Sox in attracting fans. Temple is in the upper echelon of attendance and will remain so if the system (i.e., consistent winning) remains in place.

After an opening disappointing loss to Villanova, the Temple "softcore" fan base dissipated. The hardcore of about 15,000 fans are still there, though.

Temple expects a good crowd for Saturday against Ball State and an even better one in two weeks against Army.

Sure would have been nice, though, to see what those figures might have been with a 3-1 record and a win over Villanova on the resume.

Two and two is a whole lot better than 0-4 and Saturday was a reminder that attendance numbers have more to do with those the numbers between the hypen than any other factor.

Message boards are a beautiful thing.

You can catch the pulse of a sports fan, or a sports community, by sitting down with a cup of coffee and paging down a list of threads.

Occasionally something will catch your eye, so you will click on it.

So it was with me on the day after Temple's biggest football victory in years, a 37-13 win over defending MAC champion Buffalo.

The thread said something about Temple's game at Eastern Michigan this Saturday being a "trap game."

The coffee spit out of my lips and all over the screen.

After I got the Windex out to clean everything off, I had to laugh.

"Trap game?" I thought, with all of the incredulity Jim Mora Sr. once voiced when someone asked him about playoffs.

It's still a classic response that lives on in a Coors Light commercial.

"Playoffs? Playoffs? Playoffs?" Mora said in three different tones of voice. "We'd be lucky to win a game."

"Trap game?" I thought.

Trap game? This is Temple, a team dying for every shred of respect it can get. Every time Temple steps onto the field, it should treat it like a crusade, not a game.

I still think that.

I always thought the great thing about college football, at least on the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level, was that there were only 12 games, 13 if you are lucky.

Call it the lucky 13th in this case.

Trap games and letdowns should be for some other sport.

Here we are in college football, where you work 365 days a year, lift weights, run, and practice to play in 12 regular season games a year.

You practice and game plan for six days a week just to play that game the seventh.

Letdowns and trap games should not be part of the lexicon. Playing like a mad dog frothing at the mouth should be the norm, not the exception, no matter who is lining up on the other side of the ball.

Especially if you are Temple, a school that the day before it faced Buffalo was ranked in ESPN's Bottom 10.

Those days are supposedly over now. They were supposed to be over prior to the season.

That's why it bodes the Owls well if they pretend they are not headed to the Little House to play Eastern Michigan but instead headed to the Big House down the road to play the real Michigan.

It's that important to Temple and its fanbase to keep that momentum going this week and beat an opponent it is favored to beat.

There's a great photo accompanying this story of Temple's fans watching Steve Manieri catch a pass in traffic against Buffalo, courtesy of Ryan Porter.

It reminds folks how hard it is to win in big-time college football and how hard it is to sustain the winning. That's why the focus should be on Eastern Michigan now.

The Buffalo win was just one game, one of many the Owls have to win from here on out to accomplish their goals.

If they have to pretend they are playing the Wolverines, so be it.

Trap game?

Ha.