Head Coach: Stan Drayton enters his 3rd year with the Owls with a 6-18 record. Temple was on a pretty impressive run for some time 2019 and prior, they were consistently a conference title contender but dropped off immensely in 2020 and have yet to recover with no more than 3 wins a season. Drayton is the first coach since Matt Rhule to take over this program in a bad spot, but this is a critical year for him to find positive momentum.
Program Outlook: There’s angst beginning to build for Temple. Al Golden, Steve Addazio (to an extent), Matt Rhule, and Geoff Collins all showed you can win here and this program can compete to win their conference, but if this season doesn’t go well it will suddenly be 5 years since their last winning record. Temple is desperate to find positive momentum again to avoid falling into another dark age like they did from 1989-2005.
How does the 2024 Roster look?: It’s not promising, let’s put it this way, the KFord Preseason Ratings have Temple ranked 134th out of 134 FBS teams. The Owls lose more players than just about anybody, that includes starting QB EJ Warner, and even backup D’wan Mathis are both gone. 31 players left in the portal overall. The offensive line might be the biggest question for the offense, Temple has good backs but couldn’t utilize them because there was no space for them to go. Temple’s defense struggled with just about everything and is looking to simply be good at something this year. Temple did bring in some transfers to hopefully make an impact, and maybe they could but there’s way more questions than answers with Temple’s roster at this point.
Screenshot from fbschedules.com1
2024 Schedule Thoughts: This schedule really doesn’t do the Owls a lot of favors. Oklahoma, Coastal Carolina and Utah State are a pretty tough trio of non-conference games, and UConn might be tough as well. The AAC schedule isn’t the worst, they only get 2 of the top 4 contenders and draw several games against other teams who are trying to figure things out. If Temple finds a few solutions on the roster there is a path to bowl eligibility.
Vegas Projection: Temple’s win total is set at 2.5 wins, with only a slight lean in the odds toward the under. It doesn’t paint an optimistic picture, but Temple is only a few answers from hitting that over.
2024 Best Case: Sometimes when a Coach is backed against the wall they find what they need for success. The roster comes together better than expected, Temple captures the nations attention by hanging with Oklahoma for a half, and then follows it up by beating Navy. Temple’s next stretch of games doesn’t turn out as difficult as expected and the Owls go 3-1 before the bye, then sweeps past Tulsa and ECU to reach bowl eligibility. Temple loses the next 3 but beats North Texas to clinch a winning record, they cap it off with a bowl victory and finally the program is back on track.
2024 Worst Case: Temple gets mocked by the nation in their opener as they fall behind 28-0 in the first quarter and trail 49-0 at halftime. It doesn’t get any better for the Owls as they are uncompetitive in the next 5 games for a terrible 0-6 start. The Owls make a change during the bye and finally get close to a win against Tulsa but they collapse in the 4th quarter. That proves to be their only chance for a win as they get blown out the rest of the way on their way to an 0-12 season. It becomes a question of whether Temple can ever recapture the momentum they once had.
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