I was a guest on a podcast over the summer, where the host discussed the upcoming American Athletic Conference football season. He started going through Navy's schedule and was pretty optimistic. He was dismissive of Temple, putting them in the win column without any discussion. At that point, I had to step in and say something. While I shared his optimism, I also remember the last time I felt optimistic about Navy: right before last year's Temple game.

The Mids had just come off an excruciating loss to Air Force to fall to 3-4 on the season, but all hope was not lost. The Mids had a stretch of three winnable games in front of them. If Navy could have won those, they would have clinched a bowl game and taken a significant step forward as a program. Xavier Arline was ready to take over at quarterback, so there was a reason to believe that things might turn around. They did not. Quarterback E.J. Warner threw for 402 yards while five of Navy's first seven drives were three-and-outs, and the Owls defeated the Mids, 32-18, for their only conference win. It was a must-win game for Navy. They lost, and ultimately fell one win shy of bowl eligibility.

This year's Temple game has a similar must-win feel to it. It's a little ridiculous to frame any September game as a "must-win," but the way Navy's schedule is set up, it is. Navy is playing three straight home games to open the season. Between September 28th and November 30th, the Mids will play in Annapolis only twice. With so much of the back end of the schedule coming on the road, Navy needs to get off to a hot start. The Bucknell game was encouraging, but this is the team's first real opportunity to showcase the true potential of the new offense. If the Mids want to show that things have changed, now is the time.

Navy isn't the only squad in this matchup undergoing changes. While the Temple program that Navy faced last year is the same, the Temple team is very different.

The farther we get from the Al Golden and Matt Rhule years, the more impressive those coaches' accomplishments at Temple appear. They were able to recruit and retain talent in a way that no coach, before or since, has replicated. Temple never came close to a winning record in the old Big East, partly because recruiting there was so difficult. Bobby Wallace, the Owls' head coach, became heavily dependent on junior college transfers over the last seven years of their Big East run. He brought in some talented players; there was a time when Temple was a factory for NFL offensive linemen. But these were two or three bright spots per year on an otherwise unsettled roster. The Owls never won more than two conference games in Wallace's tenure.

That history seems to be repeating itself. As the transfer portal has become a cornerstone in college football recruiting, Temple has suffered. Retaining talent has been a sore spot in head coach Stan Drayton's tenure, and this year has been the worst of all. The Owls were dealt a considerable blow when Warner left for Rice, but he wasn't alone. The leading rusher against Navy in last year's game, Edward Saydee, is now at Gardner-Webb. Starting right tackle Victor Stoffel left for Cal. Cornerbacks Jalen McMurray and Dominick Hill transferred to Tennessee and Liberty, respectively. Temple has only 58 returning players on the roster, the second-fewest in all of FBS. As a result, they've had to find ways to patch those roster holes. They have 16 junior college transfers on the roster. Last year, they brought in 35 players from the transfer portal. Between the portal and their incoming recruiting class this year, Temple has 43 new scholarship players, the fourth-most in FBS.

When Temple was at its best under Rhule, they were a developmental program. In Rhule's last two seasons in Philadelphia, the Owls had back-to-back ten-win seasons, finished in the top 25 both years, and won the 2016 American Athletic Conference championship. They did it with guys like Quincy Roche and Tyler Matakevich— unheralded recruits developed into all-American-caliber players. I think that's the direction Drayton wants to go based on who he chose to be on his staff. Offensive coordinator Danny Langsdorf has 27 years of coaching under his belt. He's coached quarterbacks at five FBS schools, including Colorado, Nebraska, and Oregon State. He's coached quarterbacks and wide receivers at the professional level as well. Defensive coordinator Everett Withers has 36 years of coaching experience, including three Division I head coaching stints. He was the defensive coordinator for Urban Meyer's undefeated 2012 Ohio State team and has coached defensive backs everywhere from Texas to the Tennessee Titans. These are the guys you want if your goal is to develop players into the best they can be over four years.

But you can't develop a roster if half of them are gone by their junior year. Instead, you end up with what Temple has now: a mishmash of transfers and younger guys probably getting more playing time than you'd want. The Owls have 11 freshmen or sophomores listed on their offensive depth chart. They have 14 on defense. They have redshirt freshmen at both tackles and a transfer sophomore at center. It's not that they don't have talent; quite the opposite. But being both young and transfer-heavy is a bad combination. Teams not used to playing together are prone to making mistakes, especially early in the season.

I think Temple's game against Oklahoma was a good example of that. The Sooners won in a 51-3 blowout, but the game was more complicated than the final score. The underlying numbers tell an interesting story. As lopsided as the score was, Oklahoma only had 378 yards of offense. To put that in perspective, that's a mere 41 yards more than what Bucknell had against Navy in a much different game. Granted, that number is slightly misleading; the Sooners' average starting field position was the 41-yard line. They still averaged 5.8 yards per play. On the flip side, though, they were only 1-12 on third down and gave up three sacks. Perhaps the most telling stats came from the running game. Oklahoma carried the ball 35 times for 217 yards, a robust 6.2 yards per carry. But those yards weren't distributed evenly. Of those 217 yards, 158 came on only nine carries. The Sooners gained only 59 yards on their other 26 carries (2.3 ypc).

To me, this says something. Athletically, Temple was able to hold their own against Oklahoma, at least defensively. The problems came when a unit that was unaccustomed to playing with each other made mistakes that led to big plays. Those mistakes could be something as obvious as a missed assignment or something as subtle as just being a step too slow to react. Offensively, those mistakes manifested themselves in six turnovers. Temple has the talent to compete, but they will be prone to these errors until they gel as a team.

In that sense, a team like Navy is a bad matchup for the Owls. The Mids might not be Oklahoma, but they have an offense that forces defenders to play their assignments and trust their teammates to play theirs. In other words, they have to play as a team. That's a tall task for a Temple lineup featuring so many new pieces.

Of course, that assumes Navy can execute, which is far from a given. The Mids have sort of the opposite problem. They have a ton of returning offensive talent, especially at the skill positions. However, the offense is entirely new, and we don't even know exactly what it'll look like. The Mids have a lot to learn, too. Temple has problems, but there is no guarantee the Navy offense will be able to capitalize on them.

For Temple, it isn't just the players that are new. The schemes are, too. Withers had been using a 3-4 defense, but this year, he switched to a 4-3 to take advantage of a deep defensive line. Ironically, the Owls lined up in an even front last year against Navy. The secondary would line up within 6-7 yards of the line of scrimmage. The outside linebackers were stacked behind the B gap, inside the tackle box. They would sometimes shift toward the field if the ball was on one of the hash marks. They also shifted based on the offense's formation, but if the formation was balanced, the linebackers were stacked. It was like having three ILBs. After the snap, the "outside" linebackers read the play, and if they saw it going outside, they scraped.

You can see an example of the scraping linebacker here when Navy tried to run the midline triple option:

It will be interesting to see if Withers takes a similar approach this year. If Navy is indeed more of a Wing-T team, asking the linebacker to read and react like that is a recipe for disaster with all the fakes and misdirection that system is known for. But if the linebacker doesn't scrape outside, the option game is greatly simplified for the offense. And if the defense does shift to match the formation, that may open up some of the unique shifting and motion we expect to see from Navy this year.

Temple is also doing different things this year on offense. With Warner at the helm, the Owls' offense operated much like a West Coast Offense. They threw a lot and quickly got the ball out of the quarterback's hands using shorter, high-percentage plays. That's what made Navy's defensive game plan last year so curious. The Mids brought a lot of pressure, but with an offense already designed to get the ball out quickly, they weren't going to reach the quarterback. Warner would just read the blitz and throw into it, like so:

This happened over and over again, especially in the first half. Warner is gone, though, and it appears Danny Langsdorf wants to try something different with new quarterback Forrest Brock. Brock isn't the passer that Warner was, but he does have size and running ability. Against Oklahoma, we saw him rolling out and even running some option. The offense, in general, was more run-heavy than it was a year ago. Temple was the AAC's worst rushing team last year at 95.7 yards per game, but that was partly by choice; they wanted to lean on their best player, Warner. The Owls don't have that same focal point this year, so they will likely distribute the ball a bit more. Eight different players carried the ball last week, including receivers coming in motion on jet sweeps and power reads.

Realistically, you can't draw any more conclusions from Temple-Oklahoma than you can from Navy-Bucknell. Oklahoma would blow out a lot of teams. Generally speaking, though, I think this is a good matchup for the Navy defense. It's better to play transfer-heavy teams earlier in the season because they are more prone to making mistakes. Navy's defense is particularly good at capitalizing on those mistakes; in 2023, they were second in the country in fumble recoveries and fourth in turnover margin. Last week, they picked up where they left off, forcing three fumbles and recovering two. Brock isn't the passer to make Navy pay for bringing numbers in the pass rush like Warner did, so the Mids may feel more comfortable trying to overwhelm a patchwork offensive line.

However, the same uncertainty applies to the Navy offense. It's hard to get a read on this game when there are so many unknowns. I think the matchup ultimately boils down to the Navy offensive line. Navy's scheme can give Temple headaches if they play at a high level. If they don't, Temple's defensive line is good enough to make it a long day for the Mids all on their own.

The Owls might not be the best team Navy faces this year, but that doesn't mean it isn't a test. We'll learn a lot more about the Mids on Saturday.