Football Wraps Up 2014 Season

Photo by: Steve Dalmado

Football Wraps Up 2014 Season

12.7.14 | Football

PHILADELPHIA – After beating Tulane 10-3 in the season finale, head coach Matt Rhule spoke with the media to wrap up the Owls season, which included a win over a Power 5 and Top 25 team. The Owls finished the season 6-6, 4-4 in the American Athletic Conference.

Below is Coach Rhule's press conference transcription:

Opening Statement:
"I appreciate everyone coming, especially because the Eagles are on and it's a busy day, so we appreciate everyone coming out to follow on the end of the season. I'm appreciative of all of you who come every week, who travel and come see us on the road, or come every Tuesday. We know we wouldn't be able to recruit and service our fans without the job that you do, so we really do appreciate that; we appreciate how well you cover us, and how fair you cover us, so thank you for another great year.

"I can only hope that I can have the same dignity, the same maturity, the same…I can't even find the words; I don't have the words to describe the integrity that our seniors had when they found out that they weren't going to a bowl game today. At a time where I had a hard time talking in front of over 100 guys, Kenny Harper, to talk about what a man looks like, stood up and thanked the team and talked about lessons moving forward from this lack of going to a bowl, so I'll try to wrap up that decision and the season in any way you want. I just hope that I can exemplify maturity like those guys did. I can only thank our seniors for who and what they are, going on two years. I know that when I first got here, the articles that were being written were sometimes about things that were happening off the field and that senior group has helped us and we haven't had off the field issues or academic issues, and we're playing better football. I thank them, each and every one of them; they're great kids and I'm glad that they had the chance to walk off the field as winners in a great college football game that came down to the last play and I'm glad they got to sing "High Hopes" in the locker room, and while they didn't know it would be their last game and it ended up being it, I'm proud of the way they walked off and any future success we have, I hope they take a piece of it.

I'll just say this quickly: we absolutely deserve to go to a bowl game. To play the schedule that we played; to play seven bowl teams, to play in this conference, to play two Power 5 teams, to play a Navy team, shows a commitment to playing football. To go 4-4 in your conference, there are a lot of teams who are going to a bowl game that went 2-6 in their conference, but our kids competed and they won six games in this conference and they deserve to go, but we aren't and we're going to be grown up about it. We're just going to move forward with it, but I want them to know they deserve to go. They did what they had to do to be able to go to a bowl game in this day and age, and with the conference and schedule that we played. To beat an SEC team, that's an accomplishment; to beat a Top 25 team, that's an accomplishment; to win six games, that's an accomplishment, and they did those things and I don't want people to rob them of those. I want them to hold onto those things. I'm starting to hear some things; I want to make things clear that no one selected a team over us to go to a bowl. The conference decides where teams go and they have criteria. Had we won one more game and gone 7-5, we weren't necessarily going to a bowl; it wasn't like people said "hey, I don't know if we want Temple." It wasn't anyone's decision, it was based upon the conference and decisions the conference had to make and it's important that our kids and fans know that.

Here's what I do want people to know: our president, our athletic director and our administration have fought hard for two weeks to fix this and really, we have five bowl tie-ins and there were two secondary tie-ins, and a few plays that went against us in other games filled those bowl tie-ins up, so instead of those seven spots, we only had the five and we were the sixth team, so it is what it is. I know that we checked our phones last night hoping this team lost or this team won, and some freak plays happened over the last two weeks and the bowl tie-ins were there. But this isn't a case of people selecting other teams; our university did everything they could to get us into a bowl game and the spots just weren't there. Our kids have taken that, they've handled it the way they handle everything else, with integrity, and they've moved on from that and that's where we are. I'm proud of this team, they started it 369 days ago and went from two wins to six wins, with the chance to win nine games really, and that's what we'll focus on now is going from a six win team to a better team. We love the seniors; only a few of them were really contributors, so most of this team comes back and this team will get better by developing the guys that we have and helping them get better and at the same time, mixing in the 15 kids that we redshirted, mixing in the kids that we recruit, and we'll just keep trying to get better and better."

Does this at all feel like 2010 or is it a different set of circumstances?
"It's a different set of circumstances in that we kind of hit the conference in a one-year glitch; I think they have seven, eight, or nine bowl tie-ins next year. But, we hit it at the wrong time in that regard. At the same time, sitting there in front of those kids was just as every bit painful as it was the last time. I just wish you could have seen our guys and just be proud to cover them and write about them; I think everyone in the room was teary-eyed, not because we weren't going to a bowl, but for our seniors. And I think that's the level of closeness and commitment that they have. But that's probably the only part of it, the rest of it is where things fell this year with the tie-ins."

I know the season just ended and it wasn't the news that you guys wanted. But, with how close the conference was, and you take a look back at the Memphis and Cincinnati games, how much does that stand out as a reason you might not be going to a bowl game because of the struggles on offense?
"I want to make this very clear; our kids are so close and so bonded, and they understand how we're trying to play, like they understand that we had them backed up and we're just going to keep making them punt so we can get the ball back. In the Memphis game, I think our kids on defense and our defensive coaches were upset that the game was tied and then went down and scored with no time left. You can say 'well, you shut them down all game,' but that's not the way our kids think. And that's why we're trying to build a winner here; to me, our kids and everyone has to think that way. It's not the offense versus the defense; in all those games we struggled on defense last year and the offense never turned on them because we're a team. If we have scored more points in the Cincinnati game and the other game, would we have won? Absolutely. Had we stopped Navy who had 487 rushing, we probably would have won that game. We're a team. Now, we played the three conference champions and we lost to all of them, and two of them were by a score. I keep showing our guys that we have to keep getting better to beat those guys and we will. I think our kids understand that 'we could have done more, I could have done more, and you could have done more.' At the end of last night's game, we dropped a couple of picks and guys were jumping on them saying 'I've got your back,' which is such a far cry from where we were last year. To think that we won that game last night at the end of the game on defense after all those dropped picks and everything that kind of went wrong at the end, and we finally made the play at the end, what a step. I know I went on a tangent, but we have a team of coaches and players that are in this together. We need to find a way to get over the hump a little bit next year to win the games that come down to the end and we have to get our offense back on track; they just haven't looked the way they looked last year, but we have to get it back and I know we will."

As you head into next year, obviously you have Penn State and Notre Dame coming in, are the expectations now that you won't be in this position next year and how do you get the team over that hump? What are the next steps in the progression?
"I think just to do the exact same thing we did from last year to this year, but keep doing it better. Last year, we were kind of asking guys to run on blind faith; you'd say 'I want you to do this' and they'd say 'you want me to do what?' and I'd say 'I want you to do this, and if you do it, we'll be successful.' I had guys today who went from 2-10 to 6-6 and they did those things, and they did them at 70%, because anytime you don't really know, you'll do things at 70%. Next year, will they be satisfied with 6-6? I think not, I think that they've done that already. Even if we went to a bowl game today, they know what 6-6 feels like and once you've done it once, your expectations level changes. I think we'll enter the offseason program instead of 70%, but I'm looking for 100% and hoping to get 90% of it; this is what we do and it works. Look at how much better we got on defense; Avery Williams was the kid that blitzed off the edge last year against UCF and missed Blake Bortles and he rolled out and threw that pass to J.J. Worton and Avery Williams was the one who came off the edge in last night's game and ended the game with the sack. If everyone can make the development that Avery Williams made over a year, I think we'll be good. So I expect our expectation level to be raised significantly."

And you'll have a senior team, with a lot of seniors in leadership positions too.
"We'll have a lot of seniors that play. We had some great seniors this year, and some of them played a great bit. But you look at that defense next year, with [DT] Hershey Walton, [DT] Matt Ioannidis, possibly [DE] Praise Martin-Oguike, [LB] Tyler Matakevich, [LB] Nate D. Smith, [CB] Tavon Young, [S] Alex Wells, and [S] Will Hayes, those guys [will all be] seniors. We expect that when you hit your senior year, you're playing at your highest level and even more importantly than next year, it's now; it's the winter program and I think they'll take that and run with it. And the younger guys we'll recruit and will come in, they'll see how hard those guys work and see that's how we work at Temple, and to me that's how you build a program as opposed to just a team."

Earlier on in the season, WR Jalen Fitzpatrick caught a touchdown pass in almost every game, you said senior players have to do two things: they either start focusing on the next level or they give it all their senior year. I know you mentioned Kenny Harper, but what about Jalen?
"I think Jalen has been great. It's sad for me because he said to me last night 'I'm so glad we won this game because I didn't play well enough tonight and I want one more game to play great again.' But, you know what? Jalen played great all year, he played hard and he played injured; I'll always go back to that Penn State game and how well he played on an ankle that most guys wouldn't play with, and you talk about the Memphis game where he played so well but he got hurt, and he played well against Cincinnati where he was catching those over-routes. Jalen Fitzpatrick is guy who made such a huge step this year and I hope he plays at the next level because he's a good kid, a good student, he's a good teammate, and he really stepped into his own and that's what a lot of guys are going to have to do next year; they're going to have to step into their own the way he did this year."

Obviously, QB P.J. Walker took a step back from last year, where is your confidence level with him going into the offseason and next year as well?
"I have a tremendous amount of confidence in P.J. I understand, and you have to be realistic, I've said that he's not playing well enough, but last year, it was kind of just fun and gun for him; we weren't stopping anybody so just throw it every play and hope for the best and he was kind of throwing balls up that guys would just run and get for him. This year, he's had to operate on a different deal; he's had to make significantly different plays, he had to make a lot of plays. If you watched that game last night, especially if you were on the field, you saw how many times he got hit and how many times he had to run the ball and got hit, wouldn't go down, and just got up and kept spinning, you'd say to yourself 'okay, we have a winner there.' Now what we need to do is this: we need to get our offensive line better and I love those guys, but they need get stronger, bigger, and better. The three kids that we're redshirting right now, they need to [develop] and we need to get better up front and run the football, take some pressure off, and protect our quarterback better. We need to develop some playmakers outside, whether it's the guys we have or the ones that we're recruiting so we can throw the ball up and go make a play and we can do some of the things we did last year that changed games for us; I think if we do those two things and P.J. plays at a better level, then our offense will get back on track. I don't want to take away that in his sophomore year, he has done something that very few Temple quarterbacks have done by taking his team to bowl eligibility and having some big wins, and now we just take a step with him just like we do with everyone else and we see where it takes us."

After losing WR Robby Anderson last season and seeing how that affected the offense, now losing Jalen Fitzpatrick for next year, is there a concern finding that playmaker over the top who can kind of pop off the defense?
"Yeah, we have to find that and I can promise you that we've been recruiting that all year. We have a few kids that we redshirted that are going to be really good players; WR Ventell Bryant out of Florida has looked like he was going to be a good player all year and WR Matt Eaton who got hurt, but we really like what Matt will be able to do. The kids that we have that are coming back will continue to develop and I look forward to those two guys helping us. I think offensively, the kids that sat this year out, whether it's RB Zaire Williams, everyone saw what he could do as a true freshman. So having Zaire back now and having RB David Hood, who played early and had some good runs before he got hurt, and with Bryant and Eaton, will give us an infusion of talent, and we're going to go recruit and go get some guys."

With this defense being a young unit and you had some guys you're trying to redshirt like Michael Dogbe and Freddie Booth-Lloyd, how much better can this defense get?
"I think they'll get a lot better, I think competition always makes you better. We'll have some losses at corner; Khiry Lucas broke his leg last night in the game and had surgery this morning, so I'm not sure how long he'll be out and Anthony Davis tore his ACL in the middle of the year, so some of those kids in the secondary that were playing early for us have been out as the year's gone on. I think defensively, we redshirted a good group of kids and we'll recruit more. But the defense has no excuse but to get better because they're all coming back and they'll continue to buy in to what Coach Snow is teaching them."

How much competition are your hoping for or are expecting in the spring at quarterback?
"Well, Frankie Nutile tore his ACL and now he's throwing, but I don't know exactly what he'll be able to do in the spring. Obviously P.J. comes back, Tim DiGiorgio was the third string this year, so he'll be out there, and then Lenny Williams, who we redshirted will have a chance but I don't know what he can do yet because I haven't seen him. And then we have another young man coming in mid-year; I'm not sure I'm allowed to say his name or not, but I think you guys all know his name, but we'll have a mid-year quarterback coming in. So if we can get four quarterbacks during the spring, I think that will be good for us, I think we'll push each other and improve via competition.

Is P.J. entrenched in the starting quarterback position?
"I think so but I'm also the guy that threatened to pull him five times in the middle of the game and yelled at him and everyone else. To me, it's always about competition, but I can understand on that side why it looks that way; I think when you're on this side, you say to yourself 'we got to get some guys to play better around him,' and even last night, if we protect a little bit, there's three or four plays that should be touchdowns and we're just having to jump-throw or we don't even get to that. We've got a good group of kids on offense and we're going to develop them all; we have some kids that we redshirted and we'll bring them along and we'll recruit a couple more and just really push the offense. Just like we did with the defense last year. Last year, it was Tavon Young can't play and now I think he's one of the best corners in the league, and he went from his sophomore year to his junior year and that's a big step. I look for P.J. to make that step and I look for a lot of the guys to make that step. Just going from a freshman to a sophomore, even Zaire Williams, he was every bit as good as a freshman as P.J. probably was in many ways, and he wasn't even able to get to his sophomore year without things getting in the way; injuries and all kinds of things just get in your way. But I think P.J. will make a huge step and Zaire will come back and be a good player, and we'll get the offense going."

Get into DB Sean Chandler, I know he made a lot of plays in the summer and was intercepting P.J. in practice. But since he got a full season this year, how impressed are you with his play?
"It's hard to play that well as a freshman and it's hard to play that well as a freshman at corner. We went out there last night and we were playing man-to-man all over the field versus a good passing offense; they threw for 300 yards in the game before. But, he picked one ball off that was called back and then picked another ball off. I think Sean Chandler has played extremely well and just as importantly, his level of preparation, his work ethic, his intensity and the things that he does has rubbed off on some other guys, including some of the older guys. We have some guys that are really talented that are going into their junior year that he works way harder than. I think for them, they hear what their coaches tell them and they say 'alright coach, alright coach, well I hear you,' and then you see the kid in the building before you're there and when you leave, he's still in the building and he's making plays in practice because he's so prepared that it's helped change the culture of what it means to work hard. Champ's been a great addition."

How do you take what happened and turn it into a positive for the kids who are going to be around next year?
"I think the players have to do it and the only reason I say that is the last time this happened. Al Golden tried to do it, the kids thought we were rubbing their face in it. There's two things that come out of this in my mind; Kenny Harper said it best, take advantage of your opportunities and when you get into the position next year, take advantage of each and every game because you never know what's going to happen. And at the same time, on my end as a coach, you're trying to push guys so you spend so much time telling them 'hey, you're not doing this well' and you're pointing out what they're not doing well, like you're their mirror and it gets hard sometimes. I hope in moments like today, they realize we're all in this together; I hope they see that we're all suffering together and that to me is where you can build a program that's going to withstand time. That might sound whatever, but it's real, and those are the kinds of things that happened today. I didn't walk in and say 'hey guys, you didn't get to a bowl game. If you would have won one more, you would have gotten there.' I said 'guys, we aren't going to a bowl game. We deserve to go to a game and we're not but that is what it is. Here's how we're going to handle it and we're going to be better from it.' You know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. This is a tough group, this is a gritty group. Even in the game last night, this is a tough, gritty, hardnosed group and this will do nothing but make them even tougher and make them even more hardnosed and gritty. I expect them to come out flying from this."

What do you expect out of WR Keith Kirkwood and TE Colin Thompson next year?
"Well, they'll have a full offseason under their belts. Poor Colin, he's out there and he kind of knows but he doesn't know everything, but he's a good player so he's trying to play, and Kirkwood is trying to get it entrenched. But with a full offseason to get their bodies right; our strength staff does a great job, and people want to know how you go from two wins to six wins and a lot of it was Jeremey Scott and his strength and conditioning staff. I think they'll really help their bodies and they'll be solid contributors."

What is K Austin Jones' position going to be in the offseason?
"I mean, I pulled Austin last night; he kicked really well early on and as the year has gone on, but this is a long season. In the NFL, they talk about hitting the rookie wall and this season was 15 weeks; when I played, it was 11 games in 12 weeks, so this was three extra weeks. Over the last couple of weeks, Austin hasn't been kicking the way he wants to and last night was a tough night for him. I expect him to bounce back and be the starter and even as I told him last night, I said 'you're not going to kick anymore, but what you do now and how you handle this determines what kind of player you're going to be.' So I expected him go out there and cheer for Tyler Mayes and let it make him stronger. I expect to see him out there kicking this week, on his own, and making sure that he eliminates those kicks that he didn't have. That's all I want from everybody, coaches included, for all of us to go back and figure out what we did wrong, make it better, and move forward because that's the only way we'll build our program."

It has to be disappointing to know that you won six games, beat a top 25 team, and played that kind of schedule, and yet if the conference had that sixth bowl tie-in, you'd be in. It has to be disappointing knowing that you should be going to a bowl game.
"It is extremely disappointing, and I don't want to minimize that at all. I don't want to use the word heartbreaking, because there are a lot of things in life that are heartbreaking, but it's really disappointing for those kids."

And the American Conference has six bowl games next year?
"I think they go to seven guaranteed spots next year."

Have you had an opportunity to talk to the American Athletic Conference commissioner or somebody from his office about not being selected?
"I didn't talk to anybody, our administration handled all of that. Like I said, they've been handling that for a couple of weeks now, so this was something that our administration has been on top of. At the end of the day, I wouldn't know what to say except talk to them; not our administration, but talk to the conference. I know in this conference, if you win six games in this conference against these guys, I think you should go, and if you play that many bowl eligible teams, you should go, but we're not."

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