Evan Simon's six passing TDs spark Temple to 42-10 win at UMass in season opener
AMHERST, Mass. – Evan Simon spent the better part of three weeks sleeping at Temple’s Edberg-Olson Hall football facility as he competed for the Owls’ staring quarterback job.
Even if it meant overnights on an air mattress in a team meeting room, it looks like it was worth it.
Simon tied a single-game program record with six passing touchdowns, and Temple’s defense responded with two turnovers and an opportunistic stop in a 42-10 rout of UMass Saturday that got the K.C. Keeler era off to a good start.
While the Owls are 1-0 with a long way to go and beat a similarly struggling program in UMass, one that hasn’t had a winning season in 15 years, Saturday’s rout was still a big deal. It marked Temple’s first road win since 2021 and its first victory in a road season opener in 11 seasons.
And for Simon, Saturday’s record-tying day was meaningful on an individual level. He’s been in battles for the starting job at both Rutgers and Temple, and he had to re-earn the starting role this summer when Keeler’s staff brought in transfer Gevani McCoy after spring ball.
He shared the anecdote about sleeping in the team facility at the program’s media day nine days ago, and it might continue to get some legs.
“I’m gonna keep doing it,” Simon said to a round of laugher from reporters after the game, one in which he completed 19 of his 25 throws for 248 yards and the six touchdowns that marked a career high and tied marks set by former Temple quarterbacks Adam DiMichele in 2008 and Devin Scott in 1999. “It’s just one of those things where you’re forced to do football, and it’s not so much being forced to do it, because your sole mission is to win here, and I love football.”
Simon got plenty of help from tight ends Peter Clarke and Ryder Kusch, who each caught two touchdowns, and Sam Houston transfer running back Jay Ducker was as good as advertised in his Temple debut, tallying 128 yards on 19 carries, including a 55-yard run that followed a goal-line stop by Temple’s defense and helped set up the Owls’ third touchdown of the day.
A defense that got off to a shaky start with a handful of missed tackles and a pass interference call bowed up with safety Louis Frye’s second-quarter fourth-down stop and cornerback Ben Osueke’s third-quarter interception in the back of the end zone that preserved an 18-point lead that nearly got sliced to 11 with plenty of time to go.
A boisterous Temple locker room rejoiced after the game. Keeler, who won FCS national championships in previous stops at Delaware and Sam Houston State, said he danced with the team but joked that he stayed away from doing any splits.
“These guys want to win. They’re hungry to win,” Keeler said. “And it’s the old ‘Google me.’ They figured out that I’ve won in the past, and they’ve been great. I mean, they’ve been like, ‘OK, Coach, what we doing next?’ They saw the staff I brought in, and I think they felt – from the strength staff to the recruiting staff to the coaches – I think they felt really good that, ‘OK, we’re going to trust these guys.’”
“My whole talk yesterday was about trust. We’ve got to trust each other, and we’re gonna go through some stuff. We’re gonna go through some adversity, because this is football. I mean, it’s never perfect. And so again, at nauseum, we talked about this thing, and the boys responded, which was awesome.”
Listen to Saturday’s postgame audio here:
Turning point
Temple was down 10-7 and its defense was still playing some shaky football as UMass was moving the ball toward midfield on the first series of the second quarter. On second-and-9 from the Minutemen’s 47, quarterback Brandon Rose reeled off a 10-yard run on a keeper before middle linebacker Katin Surprenant hit him and forced a fumble that safety Avery Powell picked up and returned 16 yards to the UMass 41.
Three plays later, Simon put one of his best throws of the day past UMass safety Malcolm Greene and into the hands of wideout Kajiya Hollawayne for a 24-yard touchdown pass that, with Carl Hardin’s extra point, gave Temple a 14-10 lead, one it never relinquished, at the 11:48 mark of the second quarter.
Then the Owls got another big play from their defense before they started to extend their lead.
After marching from its own 25 all the way down to Temple’s 3-yard line in eight plays, UMass elected to go for it on fourth-and-goal from the Owls’ 2. Rose ran to his right, but Frye stopped him after a yard to snuff out the drive. The Minutemen were called for a facemask penalty on the play that Temple declined to keep points off the board, and Ducker rattled off a 55-yard run on the very next play to give the Owls plenty of breathing room.
Four plays later, Simon hit Clarke over the middle of the field for a 29-yard touchdown pass, their second scoring connection of the day, and Temple had a 21-10 lead.
“That fourth-down stop was big,” said Frye, who finished with three tackles, including the one from his ‘Viper’ safety/linebacker hybrid spot that turned the game around. “Just the guys coming around to the ball. The quarterback took it, so I just had to make that play. Came down and got a big stop for the guys. Just 11 guys getting all hats to the ball. That’s what we really focus on here at Temple. That’s what we raise our defense around.”
The quarterbacks
Keeler said Monday that both quarterbacks would likely play, and they did, but Simon got the start and won’t be relinquishing that starting spot for another week.
McCoy, who established himself as one of the top FCS quarterbacks at Idaho before playing at Oregon State last season and spending the spring at Texas State, did make his Temple debut on the Owls’ first series. He took the snap and then handed it to Simon, who completed an 11-yard pass to wide receiver JoJo Bermudez.
McCoy came in for Temple’s series at the 4:17 mark of the second quarter with the Owls starting at their own 7-yard line. They went three-and-out. McCoy completed 3 of his 4 attempts for 28 yards and also ran for 15 yards on three carries on 19 snaps, but the starting job would appear to very solidly be Simon’s for now.
Simon said he found out Sunday that he would start at UMass, and Keeler told reporters he would not publicly name a starter before the opener, although it certainly looked to be heading in that direction when Simon got all of the first-team reps during Monday’s practice.
Earning the start Saturday was an emotional thing for Simon, a former 3-star recruit out of Manheim Central High School who eventually played in nine games and started two of them in 2022 during his third season at Rutgers, including a win at Temple. He eventually lost the job to Gavin Wimsatt, spent the 2023 season as the Scarlet Knights’ backup and then transferred to Temple, where Forrest Brock first won the job last fall before Simon started week three after a Brock injury at Navy.
He went on to pass for 2,032 yards, 15 touchdowns and nine interceptions last season before having to compete for the job again, this time with McCoy.
“Right away, I called my parents,” Simon said when asked how he felt when he found he was the opening-game starter. “(They were) just fired up for me … pretty cool moment. Called my grandpa. He started crying, so it was pretty cool, really cool.”
A bend but don’t break defense
Temple won the toss, deferred to the second half, and UMass moved the ball easily on the Owls on a nine-play, 75-yard drive capped by a Rocko Griffin 18-yard touchdown run. The Minutemen, with their own new head coach and offensive coordinator, tallied 302 total yards and 18 first downs, and that first drive featured a pass-interference call on cornerback Ben Osueke.
But Osueke and Frye later responded with those big stops that preserved the win.
While Frye’s stop at the 2-yard line helped turn the game around, Osueke’s end zone interception prevented the game from getting interesting again.
UMass had a first-and-goal from the 6-yard line with plenty of time to mount a comeback. If the Minutemen found the end zone there and kicked the extra point, they would have closed the deficit to 11 with a few minutes and another full quarter to play.
Instead, Osueke stuck with Jake McConnachie, UMass’ 6-foot-5, 215-pound redshirt senior wideout, and picked off Rose. Temple took the turnover and responded with a 13-play drive that extended into the fourth quarter, with Simon hitting Kusch on a 3-yard touchdown pass as the freshman tight end outran UMass middle linebacker Tyler Martin to catch Simon’s throw and get past the near right pylon into the end zone.
“It’s just the thing that we’ve worked time and time again in practice,” Osueke said of the interception, “just knowing where you are on the field and knowing you have a defender in the back line of the end zone, and just knowing that they want to hit everything in front of the quarterback. Once he went inside, I kind of knew where I had to be and just in the right spot at the right time. Just great coaching by (Temple cornerbacks) coach (Henry) Baker.
