Temple Focusing On Building Culture After Stunning Loss at Toledo

Team culture isn’t built in a day, and it takes even more time to build in the era of the transfer portal, when even the best programs struggle to retain players for a full four years.

Temple Football suffered a crushing loss at Toledo on Saturday, Sept. 19, falling 49-48 in overtime after squandering a 14-point lead with less than two minutes to play. During his weekly press conference on Monday, Sept. 21, head coach K.C. Keeler spoke for more than 30 minutes about how he’ll use the loss to make Temple’s culture stronger moving forward.

Keeler alluded to finger-pointing from some of his players after the loss, and said he nipped that in the bud because of his spot atop the chain of command.

Starting at the Top

“We can’t let it linger on us. I started off my team meeting Sunday morning with ‘ hired everybody in this building. I’m the one who okayed every scholarship,’” Keeler said. “‘I approved every walk-on, so ultimately this is on my shoulders first… That’s what grown men do. Grown men take responsibility.”

Keeler said he’d rather lose doing things the right way than sacrifice his values, and traced the Owls’ collapse to their trying to do too much instead of trusting their prescribed roles.

“Do your 1/11th, and you have to trust that everyone else is going to do their 1/11th,” Keeler said. “When you have a lot of new players, it takes some time for trust. I think some of our guys were trying to go win a game. [Just] do your job.”

Fifth year linebacker Eric Stuart said that while the blown lead drew the most attention, the defense didn’t unravel: they were never on the same page to begin with, given that they allowed more than 500 yards.When the game ended, Keeler focused on losing with dignity, describing a teaching moment as his players came to grips with the loss.

“I had four players who didn’t shake hands,” Keeler said. “That’s a dealbreaker. That will never happen again.”

Previewing Army

Keeler went on to praise those players for taking accountability in the hours that followed, and said he thinks that the short week ahead — Temple will host the always-dangerous Army Black Knights at 4 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 25, and that will help through forcing them to turn the page.

Keeler expects to rely on quarterback Ajani Sheppard against Army. Sheppard got the majority of snaps against Toledo after Jaxon Smolik went down with an injury and, while Smolik will be available on Friday, he’ll likely only deploy him in certain situations. 

Stuart said discipline and physicality will be key against Army’s triple option offense, and that Temple’s depth along the defensive line bodes well in that matchup. Penalties were a problem in the Owls’ first two games, but they managed to clean up significantly on that front against Toledo… until a fourth quarter holding call wiped out a long touchdown run from Sheppard that could’ve sealed the game.