Duke football: Temple is the perfect opening opponent

Duke and Temple. Both 3-9 last year and ended with seven-game losing streaks. Both with new head coaches. Both want to get off to a good start and put the last few seasons behind them. Both are predicted to finish last in their conference and want to prove everyone wrong. Temple is the perfect opponent to open the season for Duke football.

The two teams have some similarities. While new Blue Devil head coach Mike Elko took over a struggling program, his counterpart at Temple, Stan Drayton, inherited a mess. The Owls had internal issues last year and Drayton had to talk the team’s starting quarterback, D’Wan Mathis, out of transferring in the offseason. Drayton is a longtime assistant at the FBS level and has been around successful programs. He was the running backs coach at Ohio State when they won the national title in 2014 and was responsible for developing Zeke Elliot. Drayton understands what it takes to reach the top levels of college football, but he’s starting almost from scratch with the Owls.

The similarities continue with the defenses. Both were atrocious in 2021. Duke was 127th out of 131 FBS schools in scoring defense-Temple 122nd. Neither could stop anyone from running the ball and each gave up over two hundred yards per game. Drayton has decided to switch the Owls to a 3-4 look and has gotten a lot of transfer help. The strength of their defense is probably the secondary. They’ll provide a good first challenge for Riley Leonard, who is making his debut start at quarterback for the Blue Devils (read my article on him here).

Although both teams struggled to score last year, the offenses aren’t all that similar. The Blue Devils ran the ball very well, but the Owls struggled greatly in this area-their leading rusher had just over 300 yards. Mathis is a veteran dual-threat quarterback, who was never completely healthy last year-Duke is very inexperienced at the position. The Blue Devils return four starters along their underrated offensive line (read about them here)-Temple brings back only two starters. A very telling stat of the troubles the Owls offense had is they converted on an incredibly bad 27.5% on third down. The Blue Devils’ offense wasn’t very good in 2021-Temple’s was horrific.

I think this is the perfect game to kick off the Mike Elko era of Duke football. They’re not playing one of the better Power 5 teams, but they are also not matched against an FCS team they can steamroll. Temple is a member of the best of the Group of 5 conferences (American Athletic Conference) and should provide just enough of a test to allow Elko’s team to get their feet on the ground and everyone running in the right direction.

The Owls flap their way into Wallace Wade Stadium Friday night for a 7:30 kickoff. The game is being carried by the ACC Network. The Blue Devils are currently a seven-point favorite.