Temple vs. Navy: Eight Men in a Box

A typical '8 men in box' alignment (left)

By Mike Gibson
Eight Men Out was a movie about the White Sox scandal, starring John Cusack.
Eight Men In is what Temple's football braintrust should be considering for the game at Navy this Saturday (3:30 p.m.).
As in "Eight Men in a Box."

Temple at Navy
Saturday 3:30
Navy-Marine Corps Stadium
Annapolis, Md.
TV: CBS College Sports Network
(Channel 274 on Comcast Phila.)
Radio: 1210 AM WPHT

There's no denying Temple University's football defense, when healthy, has 11 superb athletes manning those positions.
The evidence is pretty convincing. Allowing only 6 regulation points to a UConn team that put up 45 on Virginia, 7 to a good Western Michigan team, 10 to Ohio, 10 to Miami, seven to an Army team that scored 44 on Tulane, etc., etc.
This week, the Owls are relatively healthy.
I respect Navy because it beat Wake Forest and Rutgers.
I don't fear them because they got hammered by a Pitt team that lost to Bowling Green.
Last week, Navy ran for like 11 miles worth of yardage in a 33-7 win over Southern Methodist University and they didn't even try a pass once.
Not complete a pass, mind you.
Attempt a pass.
The week before, Pitt's defense played eight men in a box and "held" Navy to 197 rushing yards.
The Panthers dared Navy to pass. It could not, at least not effectively, and Pitt won, 42-21.

Bring violence
to the football.
Disrupt plays,
put a helmet
on the ball,
get turnovers.

That got me to thinking about what should happen on Saturday afternoon.
Move eight of the Owls superb athletes inside this week. Assign two the pitch man, two more the quarterback. Don't allow them to think. Just tell them to react.
Tell everybody else to flow to the ball. Bring violence to the football. Disrupt plays, put a helmet on the ball, get turnovers.
Making plays. That's what it should be all about this week for Temple's football team, defense, offense and special teams.
On offense, it would be nice to block for quarterback Adam DiMichele and future superstar running back Kee-Ayre Griffin (Kee-Ayre, the future is Saturday). It would be nice to find Bruce Francis more often to open up the running game.
But, on Saturday, it's really all about defense from Temple's perspective.
Leave Dominique Harris, Jamal Schulters and Jaiquawn Jarrett back to break up the trick plays (i.e., forward passes).
Everyone else should be playing the run.
If Al Golden and Mark D'Onofrio are the defensive geniuses I think they are, they'll figure this out long before me and the Owls will have been working on this for 10 days.
Eight in a Box.
If they come out lined up that way at, say, 3:31 p.m., you will know the Owls are ready to win.