By: Marc Narducci

PHILADELPHIA –  Stay Drayton had just completed his first recruiting day press conference as Temple’s head football coach and there were no surprises in his initial assessment.

Drayton was happy with the players the Owls recruited.

Come on?

Try naming a coach on recruiting day who isn’t publicly ecstatic about the new players coming in.

It might be easier to beat Alabama with a Pop Warner team.

None of this is Drayton’s fault, but he takes over a team that was 1-6 during a COVID-shortened 2020 and then 3-9 last season, losing the final six games by a staggering average of 40.3 points.

So bringing in players is slightly more challenging then when Temple was putting together back-to-back double-digit wins at the end of the four-year Matt Rhule era.

A coach in Drayton’s unenviable situation must convince recruits that the program’s previous miscues are a thing of the past.

Some coaches might suggest to recruits that playing time is there for the taking after two consecutive lackluster seasons.

For Drayton, however, he used a better strategy. He ignored the recent hiccups and focused on the present.

“I didn’t have to bring up last year at all,” Drayton said during his press conference. “It was all about a new beginning and selling a vision, where this program is moving forward and the type of mindset we’re trying to build this foundation around.”

Warner is not looked on as a savior – at least from this vantage point. After all, Temple returns 6-6, 205-pound sophomore quarterback D’Wan Mathis, who through an injury-plagued year, threw for 1,223 yards and six touchdowns.

Mathis will presumably be the starter, but nothing should be assumed with a new coaching staff.

Everything will be earned.

Drayton even suggested that another quarterback will likely be added. That transfer portal never takes a day off. 

“There are some things that show up on film that were concerning, you know, the fact that they didn’t show up necessarily to play at a high level, at a Temple level, every game last year, so that sticks in my head,” Drayton said. 

That is not an endearing image for sure.

Drayton then said that he has seen improvement. Then again how could it have gotten much worse?

It must be noted when a program is falling off the cliff the way Temple was in the end under Rod Carey, it wasn't easy to keep buying into something that wasn’t working.

That said, Drayton is looking for positives and insists he has seen them.

“What they have shown me thus far in our winter conditioning, which is not a whole lot yet, they are willing to change, they are willing to learn, they are willing to buy into what we’re preaching,” he said.

Drayton, who had been the running backs coach and assistant head coach at Texas, waited 28 years to be a head coach so he is an optimistic person, but he also is realistic.

This is a massive do-over at Temple.

The new coach can only hope that next February on signing day, he won’t be talking about the 2022 Temple football film being extremely difficult to watch.