During the year 70 AD, the Roman General Titus besieged Jerusalem and destroyed the 2nd Temple at the height of the Jewish-Roman war. During the year 2023 AD, the Miami Field General Cristobal entered Philadelphia and destroyed Temple University during the ascent and return of The U to national prominence. Miami’s first road business trip of the season was a sweeping success and at 4-0 this Miami team is legitimate because their offensive line is for real and the running game they inspire travels no matter what the environmental conditions are. Miami feels like they are well on their way back because these first four performances have been nothing short of impressive physically. Temple definitely had to feel like an institution under siege and on the verge of destruction after hosting Miami on a rescheduled game from ages ago.
The Miami offensive line was physically dominant and always got a hat on a hat and achieved tremendous push to give Tyler Van Dyke clean pockets and huge craters for the running backs to run through. The three interior linemen forming the law firm of Cooper, Lee, and Cohen always create an almighty push off the line of scrimmage that would make Nagato aka “Pain” jealous. It really is a beautiful phenomenon to witness. We have not seen commanding offensive line play like this at Miami since Larry Coker was patrolling our sidelines. Miami has scored in every single quarter so far this season and that is a testament to their stellar offensive line play not dropping off as the game goes on and the season grows older. When you look and see how Texas A&M’s front 7 got after Auburn’s quarterback on Saturday, it really puts in perspective how good this great wall of Coral Gables can be because they absolutely muted the TAMU pass rush when they went head-to-head.
Reports of Tropical Storm Ophelia’s impacts at Lincoln Financial Field were greatly exaggerated. The real stormy weather was brought on by the Hurricanes of Miami during the actual game. It was a brisk cool 60 degrees Fahrenheit overcast day in Philadelphia with a stiff breeze that kept blowing the ball off the kickoff tee, forcing Te’Cory Couch into impromptu kickoff holder duty when he wasn’t busy intercepting passes. The rain was light and limited to a local drizzle. I don’t want to be dismissive of the effects of Ophelia. There were coastal areas of North Carolina and New Jersey that were damaged and flooded. We join the nation in praying for the quick recovery and repairs of the damaged areas. Thankfully, there were no fatalities as a result of the storm and Ophelia weakened from a Tropical Storm to a Tropical Depression as she moved into coastal Virginia and continued to weaken as she moved further north. However, Philadelphia was spared the worst of it until a Category 5 storm in the name of the Miami Hurricanes showed up.
Offensive Success
The main engines that drove the eye of the football storm through Lincoln Financial Field were Tyler Van Dyke and Henry Parrish. TVD continued his top tier quarterback play with another day where he scored a rating in the 90s. Tyler was 17-24 for 220 yards and 3 touchdowns and that’s in spite of the fact that he had random gusts of wind trying to take his passes all over the place and a poor offensive pass interference call against Colbie Young that robbed him of another touchdown pass. Tyler even contributed 39 rushing yards on 2 carries where he pulled the ball on a zone read that fooled everyone in the stadium including the cameraman.
Don Chaney Jr’s stellar play in all the games so far this season earned him his first start in his career in years. Chaney played well and had 61 yards rushing on a 6.8 yard per carry average, but the star of the show was definitely Henry Parrish Jr! Parrish had 139 yards rushing on 16 carries and 2 touchdowns. Parrish had a dominant day running the rock in a game that Temple’s defense tried to key in to stop the run because the anticipated poor weather conditions meant that Miami would certainly come in with a game plan of pounding the ball on the ground. Parrish and the man in front of him pulling and opening a lot of these inside zone run holes for the backs, Matt Lee, both got injured during the same drive unfortunately. During the 3rd quarter while Miami was up 31-7, Matt Lee had his ankle landed on by an opponent that left him on the ground angry and distraught for several minutes before getting up and running off the field under his own power. Parrish was injured a few plays later after taking a big hit and falling on his shoulder. We hope and pray for speedy recoveries for both Lee and Parrish. Coach Cristobal said that they were both okay in his post game press conference. However, CMC notoriously does not discuss injuries in public, so we will have to wait and see how impactful these injuries will truly be down the line.
Dominant Defense
The Miami defense was absolutely stingy against the run all night. Stingier than your favorite restaurant is when you ask them for more of your favorite sauce. Miami’s offense ran for 323 big yards but conversely, Miami only allowed a measly 11 rushing yards all game. Those numbers seem to have a fictitious disparity but I can assure you, they are very real. The defensive line did a great job of filling their gaps, shedding their blocks, the linebackers were flying around in attack formation, and the safeties were coming downhill all afternoon. It really was a dominant performance by the Miami Hurricane run defense. Corey Flagg, Kiko Mauignoa, Wes Bissainthe, Thomas Gore, and Leonard Taylor all had stand-out performances and made big plays by creating tackles for loss.
Miami’s defense did a great job of not allowing Temple to score points even when they got inside of the scoring zones by forcing turnovers. With that said, the pass defense against Temple left something to be desired and the pass rush without Akheem Mesidor has not been as effective. We must give credit to Temple’s offensive line as they only allowed three official sacks in 39 passing drop backs. However, one of those sacks was a questionable call on a forced fumble by Thomas Gore and another was on a scramble run where Gore came up with the tackle for another sack. E.J. Warner did take some big hits in the pocket, but he stood and delivered with the poise that I am sure his father, NFL great Kurt Warner, helped to coach into him.
The Temple Owls had 268 yards passing and a touchdown. Wide receiver Amad Anderson had a career day with 10 catches for 117 yards. I know that defensive line Coach Jason Taylor will be addressing the pass rush over the next two weeks with the upcoming bye week so that our pass rush will be much improved going into conference play in the ACC. We have to get more pressure on the quarterback with our front four and when we blitz. That aspect of the game can help our pass defense dramatically and will be key against teams like North Carolina, Florida State, Clemson, and Louisville. However, first we have Georgia Tech coming to the Hard Rock for a rendezvous on October 7th. Let’s Go Canes!
