AT LEAST THAT’S A NICE ROLLOUT, OWLS

Temple lost a lot of talent from their 2016 squad, their young, dynamic head coach, and wasn’t going to go through 2017 without some serious bumps on the way towards enlightenment. Everyone needs to acknowledge that, because there are young men out there trying real hard to play good football, and no one wants to laugh at them too hard before granting them that. Football is hard, even when it looks easy. (Maybe especially when it’s made to look easy.)

When it looks hard, it looks like this.

Bad special teams plays are the infomercial struggle GIFs of football. They usually involve seemingly routine and uninteresting things going spectacularly and excessively wrong. They involve people who look like normal people, i.e. a lot of kickers and punters, people who when presented with the sudden opportunity to carry the ball react a lot like you might: With horror, fright, and a quick realization that getting hit by an onrushing 265 pound reserve defensive end will be worse than they even previously imagined.

With all that granted, they are also extremely funny. This is about a six out of ten, maybe a seven if one notices that there don’t appear to be any receivers in the pattern for the poor holder, who rolls out to find absolutely nothing but USF defenders in front of him. To his credit, though? That was a confident roll-out, like, a positively swanky roll-out with real swagger about it. We might give Temple a half-point just for style there.

This, sadly, is probably this entire year for Temple. The Owls were -4 on the night. That will get you fifth place at the U.S. Open in golf, and in rushing yardage that will get you hideously blown out by a USF team that barely needed to try to get good field position for their offense.

Temple is going to have to live with two things this year. One: That this is a learning experience, and as painful as those are, they can lead to good things down the road. Two: That their Fake field goal, as bad as it was, is nowhere near the best worst special teams fake of all time.

P.S. Someone will mention the Arkansas State heart attack fake as a spectacular failure. They will be wrong because this is one of the best special Teams Fakes ever, and even in failure deserves respect for creativity, audacity, and did we mention HAVING A PLAYER FAKE A HEART ATTACK ON THE FIELD??? Everyone should mention that, all the time.