The oft-praised Temple defense will take its shot at the nation’s second-most dangerous quarterback on Saturday when the Owls visit Central Michigan. While Florida’s Tim Tebow took home the Heisman Trophy last year, his numbers were barely better than Chippewa signal caller Dan LeFevour.
The Owls have played outstanding defense in four of six games this season, struggling only against still-undefeated Big 10 juggernaut Penn State and MAC rival Buffalo, a game in which injuries forced Temple to lean heavily on third-stringers at defensive end and cornerback and two backup linebackers.
Now healthy, Temple has allowed just 17 points in its last two games. Remarkably, the Owls still haven’t surrendered a point in the first quarter this season, and they’ve shut out everybody except Buffalo and Penn State in the first half.
LeFevour will test that record.
The Chippewas are the defending MAC champion, and most of their key players are back from last season -- though Ball State is currently the slight favorite (and Western Michigan isn’t far behind) in the dominant MAC West. So far this season, the MAC West has won all seven cross-divisional games against the MAC East.
Temple’s hopes of bucking that trend depend on its ability to do something that nobody in the MAC has been able to do – stop LeFevour. Over the past two years, CMU has never scored less than 27 points against a MAC opponent.
Primarily running a spread offense, LeFevour’s yardage numbers from 2007 (3,652 yards passing, 1,122 yards rushing) were in a sense even less impressive than his attempt totals. Last year, he threw 543 passes and ran the ball 188 times. (By comparison, Walter Washington had 332 pass attempts and 222 rushing attempts when he quarterbacked the Owls -- and seemed to get the ball on every play -- in 2004. Washington averaged 50.4 plays per game. LeFevour averaged 52.2 plays per game.)
Most impressive, though, were LeFevour’s 27 touchdown passes, 19 touchdown runs, not to mention one TD reception. At Florida, Tebow had 32 touchdown passes and 23 touchdown runs. Before 2007, nobody in major college football had ever thrown 20 TD passes and scored 20 touchdowns in a single season. Tebow and LeFevour did it last year.
While his numbers hint otherwise, LeFevour obviously doesn’t do it alone. Wide receivers Bryan Anderson and Antonio Brown are the perfect complements for a spread offense. At 6-5, Anderson is a terrific endzone target and a vertical threat. Brown is the shifty speedster underneath. Aside from leading the Chippewas in receptions, Brown is also averaging 25 yards per kickoff return and 15 yards per punt return over the past two years. CMU is one of the few MAC teams that can match the Owls’ overall speed on special teams.
Senior running back Ontario Sneed is CMU’s number two ballcarrier (behind LeFevour), but he’s just as likely to beat you catching the ball out of the backfield. Sneed, in fact, leads all major college running backs with 143 receptions over the past four years. Notably, this year, he’s averaging less than 10 carries per game.
For all of those weapons, the Chippewas are less accomplished than the Owls in certain areas.
Believe it or not, Temple brings the more experienced roster to play on Saturday. The Owls have 24 players who have started at least 10 games at the college level. CMU has 18. And even with a recent influx of freshman starters on the offensive line and redshirt freshman Chester Stewart starting at quarterback, the Owls have more senior starters than the Chippewas (6 to 4). Both teams feature 14 starters who are juniors or seniors. CMU starts seven sophomores and one freshman, while Temple starts four sophomores and four freshmen.
The other advantage for the Owls is their top-rated MAC defense against an improved but still questionable Chippewa defense. Last year, CMU allowed 29.0 points per game against eight MAC opponents. They allowed 47.5 points per game against six non-conference foes.
This season, they’ve won relatively high-scoring games against Ohio (31-28) and Buffalo (27-25) while losing to Georgia (56-17) and Purdue (32-25). They also beat Eastern Illinois (31-12).
So, more than anything else, Saturday’s game will be a true clash in scoring trends.
Here are a few other notable trends: The Chippewas have only scored one first quarter touchdown this season. They fell behind Ohio, 14-0, before dominating the rest of the game, and they traded punches with Buffalo for 60 minutes -- hanging on for victory only when Buffalo kicker A.J. Principe’s 46-yard field goal attempt hit the upright as time expired.
Considering how an injury-plagued Temple squad fared against Buffalo earlier this season, there’s no reason to think CMU will blow the Owls away this weekend.
The question, of course, is how much the Owls will be able to score with Stewart in what might be his final start. Senior quarterback Adam DiMichele is expected back in the lineup for Temple’s next game versus Ohio (Oct. 21).
Big plays played a big role in the Owls scoring 28 points against Miami last Saturday. Stewart also avoided making any big mistakes in that contest. Can he do it again?
Coach Al Golden has to be comfortable putting the game on the shoulders of his defense. This is the kind of game that can solidify their standing as the best in the MAC and one of the best on the East Coast. They failed to impress the last time they faced a supreme challenge at Penn State.
Beating the Chippewas will also require a superb effort on special teams. While both teams have dangerous return threats, CMU has a distinct advantage with placekicker Andrew Aguila, who’s converted 75 percent of his field goal attempts and gotten a touchback on 26 percent of his kickoffs (7 of 27) this season. For Temple, the kicking job is once again a question mark and sophomore Jeff Wathne has no touchbacks (0 for 23) this year.
Just remember this: Parity rules the MAC. As evidenced by Central Michigan’s close win against a likely also-ran (Ohio) and Temple’s close losses against top contenders (Buffalo, Western Michigan), there’s little difference between the top and the bottom of the league. Even last year, on the road to the MAC title, CMU struggled to beat 4-8 Akron and 3-9 Kent State and lost to 4-8 Eastern Michigan.
Temple has covered the pointspread in five of six games this season. Count on that happening again.
Prediction: Central Michigan 20, Temple 17
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