Army leaves Temple short on time in 14-13 win over the Owls
WEST POINT, N.Y. – Two weeks ago, Temple was coming off a road overtime victory and looking at a great chance at bowl eligibility, needing just one win in its remaining four games.
Two weeks later, those bowl-eligibility visions are in danger of fading fast.
After a futile offensive series that turned out to be its last, Temple watched Army chew nearly 10 minutes off the clock in the fourth quarter. The Owls never got the ball back and had to swallow a 14-13 loss to the Black Knights Saturday afternoon at West Point’s Michie Stadium.
Temple’s second loss in a row leaves it with a 5-5 overall record and a 3-3 mark in American Conference play. Following a bye week, the Owls on Nov. 22 will host a 7-2 Tulane team that just knocked off Memphis on the road Friday night, and then they’ll travel six days later to play at 8-1 North Texas, a team that sits a half-game behind Navy in the American Conference standings.
To get that elusive sixth win, Temple will have to win one of those two games in which they are likely to be double-digit underdogs.
Owls quarterback Evan Simon, who threw for 157 yards and a touchdown on 15-of-25 passing, said he hadn’t yet addressed that subject with the team. Defensive tackle Allan Haye, a fellow single-digit team captain, offered a glimpse of what his message to the defense would be Sunday.
“Pretty much the message I have for them is just keep moving forward,” said Haye, who tallied four tackles on the afternoon. “It’s over. We got 24 hours to feel this and understand that we lost and what we did wrong, look over the tape and stuff like that. But after that, we don’t have time next week. We have to get our bodies back and start getting into our next opponent so we can be able to be prepared for next week and get a dub.”
Army (5-4, 3-3) won despite posting just 250 yards of total offense but came away with the victory by wearing down Temple when it mattered, going 4-for-5 on fourth downs, including a late conversion following the 2-minute timeout that put the game away.
The game essentially came down to two series.
After Temple took a 10-7 lead into halftime, Army – which won the toss and deferred to the second half – unwrapped a 14-play, 75-yard drive that took 8:21 off the clock and culminated in a 3-yard touchdown run by quarterback Cale Hellums that put the Black Knights ahead by 14-10 with 6:39 left in the third quarter. Hellums, who toted the ball 36 times for 118 yards Saturday, kept the drive alive with a 26-yard, fourth-and-1 pass to Parker Poloskey, who got behind Temple linebacker Curly Ordonez.
It was Hellums’ only completion of the day on three attempts, but it proved to be a dagger, as it allowed him to score what proved to be the game-winning touchdown six plays later.
“In the first half, we had them backed up, and they were cutting us,” Haye said. “And then during the second half, they kind of like waited for, I guess, our secondary to fall asleep, kept trying to run the ball, and they needed a play, so they took a shot.”
And they hit on it.
Then in the fourth quarter, Army squeezed the life out of Temple’s defense on that last drive. But before that, the Owls hurt themselves.
Trailing 14-13 following a 31-yard Carl Hardin field goal with 22 seconds left in the third quarter, Temple forced Army into its first punt of the day on the ensuing series and got the ball back at its own 8-yard line after a Colin Chase fair catch with 11:22 left to play.
From there, offensive coordinator Tyler Walker elected to put Hunter Smith in at running back, and Smith got just one yard on first down. On second down, Walker called a trick play that sent third-string quarterback Tyler Douglas on the field. Simon threw the ball to Douglas to his left, and Chase looked to be his target, but the route looked like a miscommunication at best. Douglas never got the pass off and took a 1-yard loss. Simon threw incomplete on third down, which brought out Dante Atton for a 50-yard punt.
Simon did his best to admirably take responsibility for not getting the team more yards on first down, but putting the third-string quarterback in that position at that critical juncture of the game turned out to be a gamble that backfired.
“I think at the very end, they saw that (Douglas coming onto the field),” Keeler said when asked about the play call, “and so you kind of felt like at the end, maybe it was a wasted play. That was the one play that you wish you had back. … I thought we were pretty good in trying to get him on late and kind of just didn’t make a big deal about [getting Douglas] in there, then late they saw him, and we didn’t have time to get out of it. But I think we’re just trying to make a play, and unfortunately, that one didn’t work. Not getting any momentum there really killed us. That was our opportunity to get the ball back and get back in the thing.”
Asked if Douglas had the opportunity to get the ball to Chase, who seemed to cut his route short, Keeler said, “I think Colin pulled up on it because he saw they played really deep on him, and so possibly kind of readjusting his route. But that one … that one hurt us.”
It certainly did.
From there, Army ran 18 plays that produced 53 yards en route to running out the clock. Temple tried letting Hellums score late, with safety Javier Morton even doing his best to signal a touchdown. But Hellums didn’t take the bait on a third-and-1 carry from the 4-yard line, leaving the ball at the goal line before two kneel-downs ended the game.
Linebacker Jayvant Brown came up with arguably the biggest play of the first half for Temple late in the second quarter when he shot through the B gap and stopped Hellums for a three-yard loss on fourth down, giving the Owls the football at their 47 with 26 seconds to go before halftime and three timeouts.
From there, Simon reeled off completions of five, 17, four and 21 yards, with the last toss to wideout JoJo Bermudez getting Temple to the Army 7-yard line with six seconds left in the half. The Owls tried once more for a touchdown, but Simon missed tight end Peter Clarke and overthrew him in the back of the end zone.
Army head coach Jeff Monken tried an unsuccessful challenge, hoping that time had expired, and Hardin trotted out to hit a 24-yard field goal after missing earlier from 45 yards in the first quarter. His 24-yard make gave Temple a 10-7 lead at halftime.
That late sequence capped a first half that saw Temple gain 12 first downs, one more than it did all of last week against East Carolina. The Owls moved the ball without much trouble but had just those 10 points to show for it. Temple averaged 6.3 yards per play and outgained Army, 200-106. The Owls’ first two possessions resulted in a punt – after they had moved the ball 49 yards – and Hardin’s missed field goal.
Army took the game’s first lead with the help of fullback Jake Rendina’s 7-yard rushing touchdown at the 11:19 mark of the second quarter, and Temple responded a little more than seven minutes later when Simon hit Chase on a 2-yard toss on fourth down. Chase lined up tight to the formation on the play and dropped the football just past Army free safety Colin Matteson.
Then the second half unfolded in painstaking fashion for the Owls as they lament missed opportunities.
Simon, who has thrown for just 242 yards over the last two weeks, presided over an offense that went just 2-for-8 on third down. He pointed to his missed throw to Clarke in the back of the end zone late in the first half as a throw he would like to have back.
“I threw it too soon,” a hoarse Simon said after the game. “It was the right (read). It didn’t need to be that high, but I just threw it too soon. It’s literally that simple.”
Army that won the time-of-possession battle by 37:38 to 22:22 and kept Temple to just two second-half possessions. In the process, the Black Knights produced some interesting numbers that further explain how the Owls lost Saturday.
Simon was asked how a team game plans offensively for a team like Army that likes to possess the ball and wear teams down by keeping the opposing offense off the field.
“You have to be efficient,” Simon said. “You can’t be third-and-8. You have to be efficient, keep our got our defense off the field, and you can’t win off field goals. You can’t win off field goals against I don’t care who it is. Could be Howard, it could be Ohio State. You can’t win off field goals. You’ve got to score sixes.”
Listen to Saturday’s postgame audio here.
