After some nice years in the Mid American Conference, Temple returned to the Big East last season and was welcomed with a two win conference season. Now they are in the American Athletic Conference and the prospects don\u2019t look much better under new coach Matt Rhule. <\/p>\n
Temple Owls<\/strong>
\n Matt Rhule<\/strong>
\n 2012 Record: 4-7<\/strong>
\n Odds of winning BCS Championship: +2000 (Field)<\/strong>
\n[dfads params=’groups=63740&limit=1&return_javascript=0′]<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe wins may be harder to come by this season than last when they finished just 4-7 overall.<\/p>\n
Temple is kind of a sad story. They went through so many years of bad teams but then hit on the hire of coach Al Golden, who led the Owls to their first winning season since 1990 in 2009, which was also their first bowl appearance since 1979.<\/p>\n
Check out our in-house Handicapper!!! Buy Razor Ray’s College Picks in 2013!<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n
This program is in a relatively fertile recruiting ground and really shouldn\u2019t be as bad as it has been over the years.<\/p>\n
When Golden was coach he established that the Owls would be a physical running team. That strategy has remained as Temple was second in the Big East last year with just over 200ypg. This year things are expected to be a great struggle as the Owls have just 4 returning starters on offense. The problem is that only two of those are expected to keep their jobs including returning senior QB Chris Coyer – who is also the leading returning rusher.<\/p>\n
If the Owls have a strength on offense it may be the offensive line with two returning starters – both sophomores. Temple will have a very young offensive line as this duo is joined by new starters that include 1 senior, another soph and 1 freshman. Junior Connor Reilly is expected to starts at QB but he might be running for his life a good chunk of the time. Top recruit Zaire Williams is a name to keep an eye on at the running back position.<\/p>\n
On defense there is more experience returning but it is from a unit that was last in the Big East last season, giving up more than 31ppg. The one area where there is a glimmer of hope is on pass defense. The Owls return their entire linebacking corps and starting corners and both should be tested with the influx of pass happy offenses in the conference from Conference USA this season. The defense may not be very good but it is probably light years ahead of the offense right now. [soliloquy id=”82219″]<\/p>\n
2013-14 Record Projection: 2-10<\/h3>\n
It definitely looks like coach Golden got out at just the right time. Steve Addazio took over and had good success in year 1 but left after last year to take the Boston College job – smart. Hopefully they have hit on the right guy in Matt Rhule, who will have to recruit and coach like crazy to get the program to the level of success it was having when it was a part of the MAC. Not only were they competing to win the conference but they were putting a scare into BCS level opponents like Penn State. Don\u2019t expect anything like that to happen this season. Their non-conference schedule isn\u2019t too bad but I don\u2019t see a win there other than a visit from FCS Fordham. In the conference they have just one winnable road game (@Memphis) and are visited by the top two teams in the conference for me (UCF and Louisville). Hopefully for Owl fans this is rock bottom and the program can build itself back up. I don\u2019t see much reason to consider these guys much throughout the season as a bettor either.<\/p>\n
Owls 2013 Schedule:<\/h3>\n
AUG 31 – @Notre Dame
\nSEP 7 – Houston
\nSEP 14 – Fordham
\nSEP 28 – @Idaho
\nOCT 5 – Louisville
\nOCT 11 – @Cincinnati
\nOCT 19 – Army
\nOCT 26 – @SMU
\nNOV 2 – @ Rutgers
\nNOV 16 – UCF
\nNOV 23 – Connecticut
\nNOV 30 – @Memphis<\/p>\nGRAB OUR BEST Expert CFB Picks for 2013 NCAA FOOTBALL Betting! \u2014\u2013><\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
2013-14 Preview (American Athletic Conference) Temple Owls After some nice years in the Mid American Conference, Temple returned to the Big East last season and was welcomed with a two win conference season. Now they are in the American Athletic Conference and the prospects don\u2019t look much better under new coach Matt Rhule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":64545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[59349,59304,59350,59351,59352,14304,38038,59591,50726,50727,2612,50729],"class_list":["post-63772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ncaa-football","tag-2013-aac-football-previews","tag-2013-bcs-lines","tag-aac-football-predictions","tag-aac-odds","tag-aac-picks","tag-football-season-preview","tag-owls-predictions","tag-temple-football","tag-temple-football-predictions","tag-temple-gambling-odds","tag-temple-owls","tag-temple-schedule"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63772"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64548,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63772\/revisions\/64548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}