Temple Football Trying to Get Back to Basics as Conference Play Looms

“When you win you have no problems. You have zero. When you lose, you have a million.” That’s how Temple Football head coach K.C. Keeler began his postgame press conference following the Owls’ Oct. 10 loss to UConn. He opened his weekly media session the following Monday in similar fashion.

“We’re a bad football team right now,” Keeler said. “And when I say a bad football team, it’s like fundamentally pads are too high, eyes are in the wrong places. We’re not executing the way we need to execute on either side of the ball… It’s just bad football.”

Earlier this season, Keeler said that his expectations correlate with the overall talent of the team: over the course of his career, he’s demanded more out of the top teams than he has in rebuilding years. Much of his frustration with this Temple season likely stems from that outlook: the Owls were within a call or two of winning games against Toledo, Army and then UConn that got away from them late.

Taking Things Off the Plate

Keeler said after the UConn game that he’s trying to simplify the game on both sides of the ball, pushing different buttons in a bid to get his players back on track. In getting back to the basics, he hopes to cut down on communication issues and improper alignments that may seem trivial but can turn into the difference between a stop and a major gain.

“Starts with me in terms of what we’re asking these players to do, and I go to the coaches and say ‘okay, do we have too much on the menu?” Keeler said. “What’s too expensive? What do we have to take off?… It was more about us being out of position than them making plays.”

During his Monday press conference, Keeler noted that most of those issues came on the defensive side of the ball; with a flurry of injuries on offense, Temple has already needed to simplify what they’re doing in order to bring younger fill-ins up to speed. He also gave insight to his leadership style, delegating responsibility through each level of the program from himself on down to his coordinators, position coaches and then the players themselves.

Delegating Roles

“I reached out to the coordinators at midnight after the game and I said ‘I want detailed explanations of where you think our strengths are and where you think our weaknesses are. And how are we going to get this corrected?’” Keeler said.

“Because we’re a better football team than 2-4. We are. I’m a guy who looks at myself first, then pushes the assistant coaches to look at themselves, and then the players, we push them to look at themselves. I think it works a lot better that way instead of just pointing the fingers at the players: we’re all in this thing together.”

Keeler said that Temple’s losses have exacerbated his players’ tendency to try to do too much: they’re pressing to make the game-saving play rather than sticking within their assigned roles.

“When you struggle it gets worse because guys try to do more than their responsibility, because they want to be the guy who saves the day,” Keeler said.

“We don’t need anyone saving the day: we have ten good players around you, you just do your job… it’s not an effort thing: in fact, it might be that they’re trying too hard. A lot of times you’re gonna see guys that, in an effort to try really hard to make a play, the pads are too high, they’re a little bit out of their gap. It’s all those little things.”