Temple focuses on ‘mental reps’ in Week 2 of football training camp
Coach K.C. Keeler has sharpened his focus on how the Owls are preparing off the field as much as they are improving on it. He says quarterback remains "a wide-open battle."
During Temple’s first week of football training camp, newly hired coach K.C. Keeler was unimpressed. While the Owls showed flashes on both sides of the ball, they lacked the consistency that he was looking for.
But the Owls showed Keeler the improvement he sought Monday in practice at Edberg-Olson Hall. It was the first thing he mentioned after the two-hour session, which was the third practice open to the media before Temple’s season opener against Massachusetts on Aug. 30 (3:30 p.m., ESPN+).
“I’ve been really pushing the players in terms of the mental part of the game, and I just don’t think we played clean enough,” Keeler said. “We’re pushing them to get that extra work in ... making sure they’re getting the mental reps on the field, getting extra video time on their own outside the building. So it looked a lot better today.”
Keeler has said the competition between incumbent quarterback Evan Simon and Texas State transfer Gevani McCoy is far from being resolved, but that the two have made each other better. The two quarterbacks traded places in 11-on-11 and seven-on-seven drills.
“There’s a reason why we brought Gevani in. He’s super-talented, ” Keeler said. “Evan [is] the kind of guy that you might in theory say, ‘He doesn’t need competition.’ Everyone needs competition. By saying he doesn’t need competition is [saying] he’s such a great kid, he’s going to push himself. I don’t care how great they are, they need to be pushed with someone else there [who] could take their job. So it’s a wide-open battle.”
Temple made it a point to focus on the wide receiver position in the spring transfer portal window. Dante Wright led the team with 792 receiving yards last season, but he graduated. The Owls also lost their other top three pass catchers: Ashton Allen, John Adams, and tight end Landon Morris.
Delaware transfer wideout JoJo Bermudez showed off his connection with the quarterbacks last week, and Monday was more of the same. He hauled in a deep ball from Simon on the second play of practice and showed off his speed. The Egg Harbor, N.J., product had 216 receiving yards on 25 catches for the Blue Hens last season and is expected to fill some of the gap left by Wright and Allen.
However, it was St. Thomas (Minn.) transfer Colin Chase who stole the show. The receiver displayed his impressive route running, and toward the end of practice, he became security for McCoy, who was scrambling but found him in stride.
“I do think it was smart for us to be patient when we first got here,” Keeler said. “I didn’t want to fill a roster full of guys that first of all we didn’t know, and second, we didn’t even know what we needed. I think after spring ball, we’re like, ‘OK, we have a better idea of what we need.’”
Monday’s practice showed growth as the players fight to earn roles in Keeler’s first season.
“The last 10 days before the first game, we will really be narrowing down to figure out who’s going to be starting,” Keeler said. “I think we have a lot of guys who can play. I think we’re a little deeper than a lot of people thought we would be, and I think we’ve been in a lot of close games. I keep on emphasizing to them, ‘We’ve got to win conditioning-wise, we’ve got to win on special teams, and we’ve got to play clean.’ Thankfully, we played cleaner today. I wasn’t happy the last two days, but we played cleaner today.”