Temple's Last Stand

[NoleAnimal]

August 1st, 2007
-Philadelphia, PA-

Temple University is set to start fall practice with many new things to adjust too. The first and foremost is the miracle that they are playing football at all. Temple was set to shut down it's football program and raffled off it's head coaching position for it's final game of the 2006 season. Scott Kinnebrew won that raffle and the first thing he did was strike a deal with the administration to extended the football program for another year if he could coach the team to victory against Navy. Temple won 71-70 and the new year is upon us.

In the offseason, Coach Kinnebrew engineered another deal to allow Temple to continue to play football indefinitely if the team won five games this year. Talk about motivation. The players are playing to save the football program. And they are going to need that extra motivation says Owl Senior WR, Doug Clark. "Coach told us that Two-a-days will be starting soon. We didn't even know what two-a-days were, I had to ask. Two practices a day once fall practice starts? Man, Coach ain't playin'."

Other new things you will see from Coach Kinnebrew and Temple Owl football this fall is a wide-open, multi-receiver look that is designed to stretch the defense down the field. "We have a quarterback with a strong arm and some decent speed at receiver. This will allow us to take some shots down the field and hopefully give us some room to come back and run the ball as well." says Coach Kinnebrew. "Carl (Barber) has also got a nice set of wheels. We are going to try to get things opened up so he can use his legs as well. Our o-line needs to show some attitude in pushing people around and if they can do that, I think we might have a couple of running backs that can produce some decent yards for us. This is a pass-first offense, but we do that to open up the run. We won't be throwing it all the time unless we get behind."

On the other side of the ball, Temple will employ a more traditional 4-3 style defense. "Typically, if you have a good group of linebackers, you would go to a 3-4; however, we feel like with depth issues at linebacker we have three solid playmakers. What we want to do is have some guys in front of them to take on blockers and allow these three linebackers to get in there and make plays. We will be very aggressive with many blitzes on defense. We want to be disruptive."

One thing is for sure. Coach Kinnebrew may have gotten his job through a gimmick but he is serious about keeping it. This should be fun to watch.