I am standing by
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from navyblue12.

This isn’t how things were supposed to be this year for the Temple Owls.

As Temple followers see things, they have all the pieces they need for a football renaissance falling into place. No longer do the Owls languish in the Big East, nor do they fight the uncertainty of being independent. No, Temple football is in its second season as a member of the MAC, a conference that they feel gives them a better chance to win. And why not? The competition isn’t as difficult as what they faced in the Big East. Philadelphia offers a big-city experience that’s unique in the conference. The team plays at Lincoln Financial Field, a facility that is not on campus, but is still the finest in the MAC. They have advantages now. To maximize these recruiting advantages, Temple went out and hired a young, energetic head coach in Virginia defensive coordinator Al Golden.

Depending on how much stock you put into recruiting rankings, Golden’s efforts on the recruiting trail have paid off. This is his third campaign with Temple, and after two years of bringing in some of the MAC’s most impressive (supposedly) recruiting classes, this is when it was all supposed to start paying off. Temple was 1-11 in their last year as an independent, but last year’s team went 4-4 in the MAC. Twenty-one starters return from that team, and the roster includes 26 juniors and 20 seniors. The time to realize their great potential has arrived!!!

…or not. Things haven’t turned out quite as expected. After going on the road and beating Army to start the season, Temple lost four straight. Now sitting at 3-5, the Owls have little room for error if they want to fight their way back to at least .500. How did it come to this? Having the country’s 118th-ranked offense sure doesn’t help. The Owls average only 251 yards per game of total offense. They have failed to gain 200 total yards in three games this year. Part of Temple’s offensive misery can be attributed to the loss of starting quarterback Adam DiMichele. After missing the last 5 games of 2007 due to injury, the hard-luck story for DiMichele has spilled into 2008. DiMichele had one of the finest performances of his career against Buffalo, throwing for 285 yards and 3 touchdowns while adding another 51 yards on the ground. But the senior didn’t have a chance to follow up that performance; on the first series of Temple’s next game, DiMichele was sacked by Penn State DE Aaron Maybin and suffered a shoulder injury that sidelined him for the next three weeks. Redshirt freshman Chester Stewart struggled to replace him, throwing seven interceptions in four games.

But let’s not deify DiMichele; Temple hasn’t exactly set the world on fire when he’s started, either. Despite having senior leaders in DiMichele and wide receiver Bruce Francis, the Owls can’t move the ball. The revolving door at running back seems to have stopped on freshman Kee-ayre Griffin, who has taken the bulk of the team’s carries over the last three weeks. Griffin had 22 carries for 85 yards and a TD last week against Ohio; easily the best rushing performance for any Temple RB this year, which should tell you something. The offensive line is anchored by as good a center as Navy will see this season, Alex Derenthal. The rest of the line hasn’t played as well. The Owls start two freshmen and a sophomore up front, and while they are definitely huge– Derenthal is the smallest starter at 298 pounds– they haven’t created many holes to run through. They also give up more than two and a half sacks per game. After a dominant performance last week, Nate, Matt, and Jabaree look like they’ll have some favorable matchups again tomorrow.

Even though Temple’s offense has been terrible, they still have a lot to play for. The best teams in the MAC– Ball State, Central Michigan, a rebounding Northern Illinois, and Western Michigan– are all in the West Division. At 2-3, Temple is still right in the thick of things in the East, trailing division-leading Akron by one game in the loss column. A berth in the MAC title game is still a very realistic goal. If Temple gets there, it’ll be on the back of its defense and special teams. The Owls’ scoring defense is ranked in the top 25 nationally, allowing only 18 points per game. Temple leads the country with 29 yards per kickoff return, and ran one back for a touchdown in the season opener against Army. How good are these units? As bad as their offense has been, the amazing thing is that Temple could easily be 5-3 right now. Buffalo needed a hail mary as time expired to steal a 30-28 win over the Owls. Temple took UConn to overtime, losing 12-9 in a game with questionable officiating that was played in a monsoon. At 3-5, people think “same ol’ Temple.” If they were 5-3, perceptions about this team and this defense would be completely different, and Temple football would be hailed as a cinderella story. What a difference two plays makes.

Temple’s defense is good, but if you asked me if they were better than, say, Wake Forest’s, the answer would be no. However, they did do some interesting things against Navy last year.

Determining who the quarterback reads in the triple option isn’t rocket science. If you & I can figure it out, don’t you think that defensive coaches can? And knowing that, shouldn’t they be able to find a way to confuse the quarterback? Well, they do. On a triple option play, the quarterback’s give key is the first player on the line of scrimmage lined up over or outside the B gap; usually a defensive end. The quarterback’s pitch key is the first player lined up either outside the give key, or within 5 yards behind him; usually a linebacker. Since they’re keys for the quarterback to read, both players go unblocked. So what if a defensive coordinator, knowing that both players wouldn’t be blocked, decided to switch things up? What if he sent the linebacker in to take the fullback, and had the defensive end take the quarterback? That’s called a cross charge, and it’s how Al Golden approached the option last year:

Both the playside and middle linebackers are focused on the fullback. The playside tackle’s assignment is the middle linebacker. If the MLB bites on the dive, then the tackle moves on to the next level to block a safety. The defensive end steps out and plays the quarterback. Kaipo reads the DE and pitches to Shun, who rolls for a 20-yard gain. If you’re thinking to yourself that there’s no way a defensive end would be fast enough to cover Kaipo or an A-back, you’re right. Shun averaged 15 yards per carry and led the team with 122 yards. Kaipo added 102 yards and a touchdown. The Mids ran for 361 yards, 268 of them coming from the quarterback and the slotbacks. With the change of assignments, the cross-charge is one of the more difficult reads for the quarterback to make. It’s what Ball State used to stop Jarod Bryant earlier this year. There’s no guarantee that Temple will do the same thing this year, but if they do then it’s a good time for Kaipo to come back to the starting lineup.

(Maybe the interesting thing is not that Temple used the cross charge, but that they never adjusted away from it.)

One thing about the cross charge is that the defensive end had better be disciplined. It’s hard to go unblocked and not charge into the mesh or take the fullback. But when he does that:

With nobody to take the quarterback, Kaipo runs free. It’s almost exactly like Kaipo’s long run in the Air Force game later in the season.

On what has to be the earlist Senior Day in years, everyone is eagerly anticipating Kaipo’s return. Can he run at full speed? Will he be in good enough shape to finish the game? Who knows. But it’s nice to have the team finally back at something reasonably close to full strength for the first time since the beginning of the Wake Forest game. We’re still waiting to see what they’re capable of.

Well, it looks like you guys like your Fieldturf. After Saturday, we can all see why.

This week, it’s simple. Army-Navy is being moved to the second weekend of December. What say you?

Ricky Dobbs stepped up in relief of an injured Jarod Bryant and ran for 224 (!) yards on 42 (!) carries on Saturday as Navy topped SMU, 34-7. Jarod Bryant ran for 50 yards before leaving the game with a shoulder injury. SMU was held to 157 passing yards and -13 yards on the ground.

Conventional wisdom says that Navy doesn’t get the country’s most coveted recruits. But on Saturday, one 5-star recruit– THE HAND OF ALMIGHTY GOD– played his finest game of the season. The weather was Navy’s best weapon on defense, especially the wind. SMU’s biggest threat– the deep ball– was made virtually impossible to execute thanks to 30-35 mph gusts that kept the flags at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium taut and TV cameras shaking. To give you an idea of how big of an effect this had on SMU’s offense, think of Navy’s struggles earlier in the season. When Kaipo went out, Jarod Bryant struggled running the triple option. Without the ability to capitalize on all three options, Navy’s offense wasn’t effective. The same is true in the run & shoot. A receiver runs deep on almost every play, but if the quarterback’s key told him to throw deep, he wasn’t able to take advantage. That meant a lot of short-yardage, pre-determined routes; plays that aren’t the real run & shoot and take SMU’s offense out of its element.

Deep passes weren’t the only thing affected by the wind, either; Bo Levi Mitchell’s shorter throws were also getting knocked down. SMU’s punts were even worse. The Mustangs won the coin toss and decided to take the ball to start the game; they probably should have chosen to defer. Navy made them drive into the wind, and after the Mustangs couldn’t get those drives going, their punts went nowhere and gave Navy fantastic field position for its first three drives. Navy took a 20-0 lead in the first quarter on touchdown drives that had an average starting position of the SMU 39 yard line. The game was over by the second quarter.

While the wind was Navy’s MVP, it was still a team effort. It isn’t as if teams haven’t been able to nickel and dime themselves down the field against the Mids in the past. Buddy Green decided to rely on a 3-man rush for most of the game, dropping 8 into coverage. This hasn’t worked too well for Navy in the past, as opposing quarterbacks had all day to find an open receiver. That wasn’t the case on Saturday. Nate Frazier, Jabaree Tuani, and Matt Nechak controlled the line of scrimmage. They didn’t get immediate pressure on Mitchell, but they closed the pocket quickly enough that the freshman quarterback wasn’t able to camp out and wait for someone to get open. To me the most impressive part of the line’s performance was their ability to make plays all over the field. Nechak had the hit of the game, running outside to plant the wide receiver on a screen play. Nate Frazier got his sack by chasing down Mitchell from behind. Tuani might have had the most impressive play, coming in on a pass rush, then turning around and making a tackle on the wide receiver downfield and stopping him on third down. It was a good performance from a group that needed to rebound after the Pitt game.

But let’s be real here; the weather might have been the biggest factor in the game, but the biggest story is Navy’s ongoing quarterback soap opera. Poor Jarod Bryant just can’t catch a break. After struggling over the first half of the season, he seemingly put it together against Pitt, only to see the team around him get manhandled. This week he picked up right where he left off and moved the ball fairly easily against a bad SMU defense. But apparently Jarod had reached his good vibes quota for the week, and a couple of awkward falls onto his shoulder led to him being knocked out of the game. (WHY CAN’T I ENJOY A BLOWOUT FOR ONCE???) In stepped Ricky Dobbs, who runs like Brian Hampton and apparently prefers not to pitch the ball, like Brian Madden. Dobbs ran like a tank, bulldozing his way to 224 yards and 4 touchdowns. But it’s hard to really get a feel for how well he did because SMU’s defense was really, really bad.

To get an idea of how bad, let’s look at Ricky’s longest run of the day, a 38-yard stampede in the second quarter. SMU had brought a safety up to the line of scrimmage who would end up covering the playside slotback and getting run out of the play. Ricky’s pitch key was the linebacker lined up over the B-gap. He showed a pitch read, but the cornerback had blitzed to cover the pitch man:

This play should have been blown up by the defense. Against Pitt, it would have been. But Ricky just sidestepped the linebacker and ran upfield. You could say it was a good move on Ricky’s part, and it was. Ricky also deserves credit for seeing the blitz and not pitching the ball. But better linebackers aren’t going to miss those tackles the way SMU’s were.

One dimension that Ricky brought to the game was that he was essentially a second fullback. Ricky’s hard running inside made things easier on the offensive line. A lot of times you’ll hear about the importance of “establishing the fullback” from media and coaches alike. Being an astute fan, you might find that odd since in a triple option, you take what the defense gives you. But even when it looks like the option is working well outside, you still see the coaches call a couple of designed handoffs to the B-back. The reason is because it makes linebackers easier to block. Last week against Pitt, we saw how the middle linebacker ignored the dive and ran to the quarterback on the triple option. The Mids just couldn’t get enough of a push inside to force Pitt’s defense to respect the dive play. This week, Eric Kettani became a lead blocker for Ricky Dobbs, who attacked the middle of the field. The success they were having meant that the linebackers had to respect that play, and it kept them from running outside on the snap. That hesitation made it easier for the tackle to make the block:

There’s another play that might not have worked the way Pitt was playing, but was a nice little 5-yard gain against SMU. The linebacker went to meet the fullback, but wound up getting blocked by the tackle.

One thing you’ll notice is that both of those plays are triple option plays. That’s a good sign.

At this point we could have three healthy quarterbacks for Temple, or we could be starting our third string. If Ricky has to start, it’s good to have seen him run some of the offense. And we didn’t even use his biggest strength– his arm. Now we wait.

I’d like to enjoy
a win without worrying
about injuries.