The Temple Owls and Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets share an ugly past; they are the only two teams with the misfortune of having Geoff Collins take up space on their sidelines as head coach. Their only meeting came in Philadelphia in Geoff Collins’s first season at Georgia Tech, just a week after Collins led Georgia Tech to its only loss to an FCS team. He followed that up with another rock-bottom performance against Temple to the tune of 24-2. Only a punt by Presley Harvin III inside the 1-yard line allowed a tackle for loss to keep GT from being shut out for the first time since 1997 against FSU. SPOILER: He’d screw it up before the season was out.
Fortunately for Georgia Tech, the ship seems to be heading in the right direction under Brent Key. Temple, on the other hand, has gone 3-9 overall since 2021. It’s been rough for the Owls in the American Athletic as they’ve only won 5 conference games in that span. Last year, they allowed 35 points per game, while averaging only 20 points with their offense. This season may be addition by subtraction as the Owls have heavy roster turnover and look to the portal to shore up depth issues that have begun to plague the Group of 5 teams.
Evan Simon returns at the QB position after throwing for just over 2000 yards last season, but Temple still felt the need to bring in two other transfer quarterbacks while adding two freshman QBs to the roster. Gevani McCoy comes in from Oregon State with his first three years at Idaho. McCoy had 1300 yards with the Beavers, but threw three touchdowns to six interceptions on the year. Simon was banged up and missed several games last year, so McCoy is probably a solid option to have in case of injury.
Temple does try to balance between running and throwing, but has found little success, gaining on average 93 yards a game on the ground. Leading rusher Terraz Worthy does return with 425 yards last season, but Jay Ducker will be brought in to compete, whose last stop was Sam Houston, where he tallied 745 yards. They do return the bulk of their offensive line and have plenty of guys who have started and have rotated multiple positions.
Receiver is gutted with their top four receivers departing and backfilling with three transfers from the FCS ranks. They do have a few returning backups, but none of them broke 200 yards as QB Evan Simon mainly targeted Dante Wright for the bulk of the passes. He will need to work with the new additions this offseason to become more comfortable than just relying on a single pass catcher.
The defense had little success at any point in the season last year. They allowed opponents to score 50+ on four occasions and generated only 14 sacks on the season. They’ll be relying on new additions to try and create pressure up front as they only have one returning starter among the front seven.
The secondary won’t have much depth to rely on either with every starter departing at both corner and safety positions. They do have young guys who rotated in during the season as backups staying, but it’ll be a very inexperienced group when they head to take on Georgia Tech early in the season.
Tech will be coming off a tough game against Clemson, but Temple also faces Oklahoma at home a week prior. Georgia Tech is by far a more talented and experienced team. Temple brought in a new head coach this year with K.C. Keeler, who had tremendous success and two FCS national titles at Delaware and Sam Houston St., but will be looking to rebuild a Temple team that has struggled to maintain any form of talent and compete even at the G5 level.