Temple's 37-13 loss to No. 24 Tulane leaves bowl hopes on thin ice
PHILADELPHIA — The storylines and talking points have become familiar over the last month.
The players and coaches discuss self-inflicted wounds, injuries, missed opportunities, the plays they’d like to have back and just about anything else that could describe the three-game losing streak that has turned Temple’s football season in the wrong direction.
Saturday’s loss, a 37-13 setback to No. 24 Tulane before a sparse crowd of 13,366 fans at Lincoln Financial Field, featured a little bit of all that stuff.
The Owls entered the game as 8.5-point underdogs to a better and more talented – but beatable – Tulane team that had its own hiccups this season. Temple needed to move the ball on a mediocre defense and contain an offense that was missing its top receiver in injured Bryce Bohanon but couldn’t do either. On top of that, the Owls played poorly on special teams and committed too many costly penalties to keep up.
Twenty-eight days ago, Temple was a 5-3 football team riding the momentum of a 38-37 overtime win at Tulsa. From there, the Owls needed to win just one of their remaining four games to become bowl-eligible for the first time in six seasons.
Twenty-eight days and three losses later, here they are.
Unless Temple can upset No. 22 North Texas next Friday on five days’ rest, the program will have to look to next season to take another crack at that goal.
“We lost two games by a total of two points,” quarterback Evan Simon said, referring to the Oct. 11 32-31 loss to Navy and the 14-13 loss at Army two weeks ago. “But that’s in the past, and we had such a great opportunity to be a ranked opponent who … they’re not the No. 1 team in the country, but they played well today, respect. So it’s just tough, frustrating in a sense. But we have a short week, and the coaches told us we’re in this together. We win together, lose together, we tie together. And (on a) short week, you got to find a way to flush it.”
Against a Tulane defense that came to South Philadelphia ranked 80th nationally in scoring defense at 26 points allowed per game and 110th nationally in total defense at 412.3 yards allowed per contest, Temple’s offense mustered just 13 points, allowed four sacks and rarely provided a clean pocket for Simon, who managed two touchdown passes but also just 131 yards. Those two touchdown passes, albeit in a disappointing loss, put Simon atop the program’s all-time list for most touchdown passes in a single season.
Keeler said center Grayson Mains “turned an ankle” later in the week and that right tackle Diego Barajas had battled the flu. Chris Smith got the start at center before Mains replaced him, and Luke Watson spelled Barajas for a series. Regardless of the combinations, the line played poorly.
The rushing attack was virtually nonexistent. Temple mustered just 20 net rushing yards on 20 attempts. Some of that number was affected by the 23 yards lost on the four sacks, but it was still an unsightly number, nonetheless. Tulane outgained Temple 406-167 despite going just 3-for-12 on third down.
“They’re a good football team that’s done this for a while, and they have some cohesiveness,” Temple head coach K.C. Keeler said. “I just think we played against a very good opponent that’s very motivated. When you look at the potential, they have a chance to get in the final 12 (college football playoff if the Green Wave can win the American Conference championship), and they’re right there right now. So, I think we hit a team that is pretty talented that, you take that into consideration, you need to out-execute those kind of teams. We did not out-execute that team.”
The Owls certainly did not, even against a Tulane defense that had allowed 34.7 points and 476.7 yards per game over their last three games prior to Saturday. The Green Wave had also given up 48 plays of 20-plus yards, representing the fourth-worst mark in The American and the 96th-worst number nationally.
Temple’s first half featured a dash of bad luck, a brief sign of life, but a lot of self-sabotage.
After Tulane won the toss and deferred, Temple running back Jay Ducker appeared on the Owls’ first series to have clearly picked up first-down yardage on a second-and-6 carry from Temple’s 29, but the officiating crew marked him a half-yard short instead. Ducker on the next play picked up five yards, but Kajiya Hollawayne was flagged for illegal motion before the play started. Simon threw incomplete on third-and-six, forcing a Dante Atton punt.
Just two plays later, Tulane quarterback Jake Retzlaff connected with Shazz Preston on a 69-yard touchdown pass, with Preston shrugging off Temple cornerback Jalen Castleberry down the middle of the field. The Green Wave later bumped their lead to 10-0 on a 50-yard Patrick Durkin field goal with 4:30 left in the first quarter.
The lone bright spot of the first half was the Owls’ response, an 8-play, 75-yard drive that culminated with a 3-yard touchdown pass on third-and-goal from Simon to tight end Peter Clarke, who worked past Tulane corner Jaheim Johnson in the back of the end zone to make the catch. Carl Hardin‘s extra point made it a 10-7 game with 27 seconds left in the first quarter.
The second quarter, however, was a dud. Temple’s next three drives produced just 11 yards on 10 plays and used less than five minutes of game clock.
The fourth nearly became a disaster.
With Tulane having built its lead to 20-7 thanks to a 2-yard touchdown run from Retzlaff and then a 36-yard field goal from Durkin with 26 seconds left in the second quarter, Temple tried to scratch out some points before halftime. The Owls moved the ball 11 yards on three plays and still had a second left. From there, offensive coordinator Tyler Walker called a play that amounted to a double hook-and-lateral in which Simon threw to Chase, who lateraled the ball to Ducker, who then lateraled it to Hollawayne.
From there, Hollawayne threw a backwards pass to his left. The Owls had some blockers ahead, but no one there to catch the pass from Hollawayne, who started his career as a quarterback at UCLA. With left tackle Giakoby Hills looking on instead of continuing with the play, Tulane’s Javion White picked up the ball and returned it 37 yards. He would have scored a touchdown if Ducker didn’t bail out his team with a tackle at the 8-yard line.
“Tyler said, ‘Hey, can we bang the time out?’ Just want to make sure everybody is in the right place,” Keeler said in explaining the thought process on the play call. “And we did, and we had someone not go in the right place, actually two guys. So that’s all frustrating, because it’s like attention to detail kind of stuff. And it was set up. We had a caravan, and I think we thought we had to get a little aggressive, because they were going to wear us down. They were going to wear us down if we didn’t make a play. And so I was all on board with Tyler, like, ‘Yeah, let’s just see if we can get this thing.’ And we had it set up. It’s just we didn’t have some guys get to the right spots, and that was all frustrating. We had a couple guys not play their best game in a critical time.”
When the dust had settled there, Temple ran 14 second-quarter plays and lost 24 yards. Simon was sacked twice, and Tulane has outgained Temple by 213-77 in the first half. The Owls wasted a third-down sack by Cam’Ron Stewart that forced a punt with Temple still within striking distance trailing 17-7, but the Owls’ ensuing drive sputtered out after just five plays.
“I’ll tell you, the plays that were called are not hard,” Simon said when asked about the second quarter struggles. “We did not execute at a high level today. Tulane out executed us, and we shot ourselves in the foot way too many times to beat a ranked opponent today. It’s that simple.”
Keeler described the 14-13 loss at Army two weeks ago as “death by a thousand cuts,” and Saturday’s second half felt similar with a larger scar at the end. Tulane built it on its lead with a pair of Durkin field goals of 38 and 42 yards that felt like late-round jabs. The 4-yard touchdown pass from Retzlaff to Justyn Reid and the ensuing two-point conversion was the knockout punch that put the Green Wave ahead by 34-13 with 9:55 to go.
Even when Temple punched back and cut the deficit to 26-13 courtesy of a 2-yard touchdown pass from Simon to wideout Colin Chase (the two-point conversion try failed), the Owls let their guard down by surrendering a 62-yard kickoff return to TJ Smith. The Retzlaff-to-Reid scoring connection came five plays later.
So, yes, Temple does have one more shot at bowl eligibility. The 22nd-ranked Mean Green were 9-1 entering Saturday night’s game against Rice and leading by two touchdowns at halftime.
The Owls are likely to be double-digit underdogs in next Friday’s 3:30 p.m. game that will be televised nationally on ESPN.
The work ahead won’t be easy and starts Sunday morning.
“I told the guys, knowing we have a 24-hour rule, that 24-hour rule doesn’t exist,” Keeler said, “because it’s a short week. We’re in tomorrow, practicing and getting some walkthroughs and kind of cleaning some things up.”
Kromah to have surgery
Temple was hoping to have defensive lineman Sekou Kromah back for Saturday’s game. He dressed in full uniform and went through warm-ups, but he was standing on the sideline in sweats by the time the game started.
It turns out that Kromah was never going to play Saturday and dressed to go through warm-ups with his fellow seniors on senior day. Keeler said Kromah, who had 14 tackles and three sacks this season, could be getting surgery as soon as Monday after fighting through injuries to both shoulders, as well as an oblique.
“Pretty much earlier in the week, we decided we just keep on hitting these brick walls,” Keeler said of Kromah’s injury, “so let’s get some imaging and let’s see what’s in there, and let’s get things moving. So that’s been a real disappointment, because again, you saw the flashes that he had early in the season. And if we could use anything, it’s that pass rusher on the outside, especially against someone like North Texas.”
Postgame audio
Listen to Saturday’s postgame interviews here.
