Temple drops 32-31 heartbreaker to Navy
K.C. Keeler strode to the dais at Temple’s postgame press conference, exhaled, sank into his chair and said, “I was hoping to meet here under different circumstances.”
Evan Simon, fresh off composing a 345-yard passing performance and playing arguably the best game of his college career, said he might have to amend the 24-hour rule of flushing a tough game and moving on.
“Boy, it’s tough,” Simon said. “This one’s gonna hurt for a little bit. But like I said, we’ve got 24 hours – and it might be 48 – to put this one to bed and bring it to Charlotte.”
The game at Charlotte is next Saturday. For now, these moments were the early stages of grief for Keeler and Simon in processing Saturday night’s 32-31 loss to Navy, a game Temple led by seven with just 1 minute, 16 seconds to go before a Blake Horvath 51-yard touchdown run on fourth down and an ensuing two-point conversion pass from Horvath to Alex Tecza with 39 seconds left stunned the Owls and left them just shy of knocking off the undefeated Midshipmen.
Temple (3-3), which jumped out to a 17-7 halftime lead, watched Navy (6-0) get into a much better offensive rhythm in the second half, one that allowed the Midshipmen to eventually tie the game at 24-24 on Nathan Kirkwood’s career-long 48-yard field goal with 6:34 left to play.
The Owls responded with what became an 11-play, 75-yard drive that chewed 5:18 off the game clock, but Keeler answered his fair share of questions about why the drive didn’t last a little longer to potentially put Navy in a tougher spot on its final drive.
On second-and-8 from the Navy 23, with Midshipmen head coach Brian Newberry having just used his first timeout with 1:23 left, Simon threw a perfect ball to wide receiver Kajiya Hollawayne, who fought off a pass interference penalty from Navy cornerback Ira Oniha and hauled in the pass before falling out of bounds at the 1-yard line with 1:19 to go and stopping the clock. Hollawayne very nearly scored a touchdown right then and there and just missed clipping the pylon in bounds with his left foot.
From there, it’s fair to question whether Keeler and offensive coordinator Tyler Walker should have had Simon take a knee on first and second down and force Navy to burn its second and last timeout each time. Another kneel on third down could have potentially allowed Temple to take the game clock down to around 30 seconds and have Carl Hardin attempt what would have been a very makeable field goal.
If Hardin made the kick, Navy would have been out of timeouts and needed 44 yards to get to where Newberry had earlier hit his career-long field goal.
Instead, Walker called for a handoff to running back Jay Ducker, who did his job and scored from a yard out to help put Temple ahead by 31-24 with 1:16 left.
Keeler started to get ahead of the line of questioning about running down the clock in his opening statement.
“Talk at the end about running the clock down,” Keeler said. “But we had a chance to take a shot. We knew what we could get him in. We loved the matchup that we were going to get, and they had timeouts on the board. We weren’t going to take a knee, take a knee and see how many times we could possibly fumble the ball. So it’s just those things where it sounds a lot better than it really is. You just got to put the ball in the end zone eventually. And so that was a decision. Tyler and I talked about it.”
Two questions in, Keeler was asked about his decision-making before Ducker’s touchdown and seemed to be of the mentality that the goal was to score a touchdown instead of kicking a field goal.
“Does it make sense for us to try to take a knee on the half (-yard line)? I mean, you’re playing with fire,” Keeler reasoned, “and we’re not great where we just line up and just knock you off the ball for a yard. So there’s no guarantee we’re going to get it in. So you put the ball in the end zone. And Tyler and I talked about it, and like I said, we were uncomfortable trying to take a knee two times to take away their timeouts. So it wasn’t like I could get the clock to run. It was taking away a couple timeouts. So that was the decision.”
Navy got the ball back with 1:16 to go after Hardin put the ensuing kickoff into the end zone for a touchback. A Ben Osueke pass interference call on the drive’s second play put the Midshipmen at first-and-10 at their 40 before Horvath threw incomplete on first down and second down before connecting on a 9-yard pass to Tecza on third down, setting up the fourth-and-1 from the Navy 49 before Newberry used a timeout.
Then came Horvath’s gutting, 51-yard touchdown run.
To Horvath’s right before the snap, Temple had safety Jamere Jones lined up closer to the line at his Viper position with linebacker Curly Ordonez stacked behind him. Strong safety Avery Powell was lined up to Ordonez’ left and sat on the play and didn’t step to his right as Horvath ran up the middle. Left guard Ben Purvis pulled to block Eric Stuart, and Horvath went untouched into the end zone.
Then as Navy began to line up for the extra point, the Midshipmen called a timeout first. Following the break, Horvath came back out onto the field and shifted his five linemen and slotback Eli Heidenreich to the left. None of them got set, but it successfully baited Temple into calling its last timeout, one the Owls certainly could have used moments later.
After that timeout, Navy stuck with its decision to go for two, with Brandon Chatman and Tecza in the backfield. In a game of pivotal moments, linebacker Ty Davis nearly got enough of Horvath to disrupt his throw as he rolled to his right, but Horvath got the pass off and past Osueke to Tecza, who had slipped out of the backfield and into the right corner of the end zone to snag the 2-point conversion and put Navy ahead with 39 seconds to go and Temple out of timeouts.
Once Temple got the ball back after fair catching the kickoff, four short completions from Simon to Peter Clarke and Hollawayne got the Owls to the Navy 40 before the clock ran out without a timeout to use along the way. Simon’s last pass attempt landed way short of the end zone.
The Owls used the third before Navy’s successful two-point conversion. They used their second with 6:39 to go just before Kirkwood hit his 48-yard field goal to tie the game.
“One of our guys’ helmets came off, and he’s on the field goal block team,” Keeler said when asked why he called that timeout. “And all of a sudden, he couldn’t go back in. And all of a sudden, we had a numbers issue, so that’s why.”
Asked about the decision to score right away a third and final time near the end of his postgame session, Keeler acknowledged the possibility of a field goal.
“So many times you snap the ball, they knock you back,” Keeler said. “This isn’t take a knee at the end of the end of a game because you’re up by 40. This is still real football taking place. And so all of a sudden, guys are getting jacked back into to your quarterback. And again, I’ve seen too many balls squirt out. And so the decision was, we’re not great at just running the ball at you. If we get it in the first time, we get in the first time.”
And that’s what happened with Ducker.
“But again,” Keeler continued, “it was different than, OK, they have no timeouts. Let’s just take this thing down. This was like, they can bang some timeouts, and we’re going to be taking a knee and take a knee and now we’re going to put ourselves in a situation where, if we don’t get in, we’re going to be trying to hit the hit the field goal. So we just felt that, let’s get the ball in the end zone. And again, you can second guess it. That’s easy because it didn’t work. But I think our mindset was, they don’t have a sophisticated passing game. Let’s go play defense.”
By that logic, Navy not having a sophisticated passing game – at least in Keeler’s eyes – would have put the Midshipmen in potentially much tougher territory if they were starting at their own 25 with no timeouts.
“It’s easy to second guess that play, because it didn’t work,” Keeler added. “I get it. I get it.”
Asked about weighing the decision of punching it in or waiting to take time off the clock before a potential game-winning field goal, Simon said, “It’s a great point.”
“At the end of the day,” Simon added, “we trust the staff, and we’re in the huddle and we’re saying, we’re going to take a shot, we’re going to go win this game, and we made it count. And … ball game.”
Stat stuff
Simon completed 25 of his 36 passes for a career-high 345 yards and a touchdown, a nicely-thrown, 26-yard toss to wide receiver JoJo Bermudez that helped Temple take a 24-14 lead with 6:37 left in the third quarter. Hollawayne’s nine catches and 146 receiving yards were both career-highs for the redshirt senior who started his college career back in 2021 as a quarterback at UCLA.
Ducker toted the ball 24 times for 97 yards and his two touchdowns, his first being a 1-yarder with just 25 seconds left in the second quarter that helped Temple take a 17-7 lead into the locker room.
Horvath (6-for-16, 141 yards) and Heidenreich (three catches for 72 yards) didn’t produce the gaudy passing game numbers they posted a week ago in their win over Air Force, but Horvath’s 155 yards and two second-half touchdown runs did the most damage.
Defensively, Powell and Ordonez had eight tackles apiece for a Temple defense that dressed but ultimately did not play safeties Javier Morton and Louis Frye and defensive tackle Sekou Kromah, all of whom Keeler said he expected to play when he spoke with reporters back on Monday.
The streak is over
Temple no longer can say it’s the only FBS to have not committed a turnover.
With Simon dropping back to pass on third-and-10 from the Navy 17 in the second quarter, linebacker Adam Klenk beat Owls left tackle Giakoby Hills off the edge, sacked Simon and forced a fumble that linebacker Job Grant recovered at the Navy 27.
Although the Mids went three-and-out on the ensuing possession and didn’t convert the turnover to points, it likely cost the Owls at least three points. And those three points, of course, would have come in handy later in the game.
Up next
After implementing its 24-to-48-hour rule in shaking off the Navy loss, Temple will play at Charlotte next Saturday at 3:30 p.m. on ESPN+. The 49ers have lost three in a row and sit at 1-5 after Saturday’s 24-7 loss at Army.
Postgame audio
Listen to Saturday’s postgame interviews with K.C. Keeler, Evan Simon and Allan Haye here.
OwlScoop.com staff reporter Amaree Womack contributed reporting to this story.
