For Temple football, ‘last year doesn't exist' as 2016 training camp gets underway

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It was arguably the most successful season in Temple football history.

A five-month journey that featured 10 victories, a win over Penn State for the first time since 1941, a top-25 ranking for the first time in over three decades, a jam-packed ESPN College Gameday broadcast from the historic grounds of Independence Hall, a primetime near-upset of Notre Dame in one of the best games of the year nationwide and an AAC Eastern Division title for the cherry on top.

But as the Owls kicked off a new season’s training camp on Saturday morning, last year is just a figment of imagination as far as head coach Matt Rhule is concerned.

“Our kids have to understand that last year doesn’t exist,” Rhule said following one of the Owls’ split-squad practices on Saturday morning on campus at Edberg-Olson Hall. “For me, I still have people asking me about Notre Dame games and stuff like that. [The players] are out there on the field talking about it. And I’m like, ‘Whoa, timeout.’

“Let’s make sure we can run the gasers and get to practice on time. I’m trying to make sure that they understand there’s a process to winning that involves not even talking about winning. I’m anxious to see if they’re going to buy in to all the details it takes to be great. Based on this morning, I wouldn’t say they understand that yet. So there’s a lot of work to do.”

While it takes time to drill that winning process into the heads of younger players, Temple still has upperclassmen leaders who know what it takes to win and who have risen to success from the ashes of failure. It's not a coincidence the Owls were picked to finish second in the AAC East behind only South Florida in the conference's preseason poll (see story).

Tyler Matakevich, Tavon Young and Matt Ioannidis have moved on to the NFL, but guys who have been through the lean years are still on North Broad Street.

One of those players is senior quarterback Phillip Walker (formerly known as P.J. – more on that in a bit). Entering his final year after manning the starting reigns for the last two and a half seasons, Walker is the program’s all-time leader in touchdown passes (52), completions (601) and total yards of offense (8,237). He’s aiming to become the first quarterback in program history to lead the Owls to bowl games in consecutive seasons.

Walker has earned 18 victories as the Owls’ starter, so he knows what it takes to be successful at this level and shares in Rhule’s message that last year is gone, especially after the sour ending that saw Temple drop the AAC title game to Houston and the Boca Raton Bowl to Toledo.

“I think that’s the reason to forget about last year – we lost those two games,” Walker said. “We don’t want to think about it. We want to start off fresh, start off a whole new year and start winning more games. We finished last year 0-2. “

One of the players who has more responsibility on his plate this season is junior safety Sean Chandler.

Not only has the Camden High School grad made the switch from corner to safety over the offseason, he’s now being counted on as one of the veteran presences on an evolving Temple team to get Rhule’s message across.

“Coach reminds us [last year’s] team is gone,” said Chandler, who returned two of his four interceptions last season for touchdowns. “As you can see, a lot of those guys aren’t around anymore that were here. New guys are filling in their shoes. We just have to go out on the field and do it. No ifs, ands or buts about that.”

While senior running back Jahad Thomas isn’t far behind, it’s fair to say Walker is the prominent face of the program at this point in time. And one of the last sentences he uttered on Saturday summed up the message being preached throughout Edberg-Olson Hall.

“It’s a whole new start, a whole new beginning.”

Splitsville
Rhule has decided to have split-squad practices for the first three days of camp. The more experienced players practiced against one another earlier in the morning and then the younger players went head to head later. It's something the Owls did a little bit of last season, but not for as long as Rhule intends this time around.

"We really want to try and have a focus on developing the young guys, where the coaches were working with them one on one," Rhule explained. "We'll see how the young guys do. ... We just want to make sure everyone has a chance to learn and get the installs and then we'll take it from there."

Injury report
The Owls' injury sheet is relatively clean as camp starts to kick into full gear.

Rhule mentioned redshirt junior DL Julian Taylor, redshirt junior FB Nick Sharga, redshirt sophomore DB Jyquis Thomas and freshman LB Shaun Bradley are limited participants for now.

What’s in a name?
As noted, Walker has requested to be known going forward as Phillip rather than P.J.

Why the change for the quarterback whose full name is Phillip Walker, Jr.?

“It’s just the growth, the older I get, the less I want to be called P.J.,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer earlier this week at AAC Media Day.

After being known as P.J. for so long to everyone, especially teammates, Walker admitted there was a little confusion on the field Saturday morning when his name was being called.

“It was different today, especially when we broke it up into two groups and we had everybody out there,” Walker said.

If Walker plays the way he did last season when he threw for 19 touchdowns and a school-record 2,972 passing yards, it won’t be hard to remember his name.

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