PHILADELPHIA, Pa.—Temple (3-6, 1-4 in the American Athletic Conference) quarterback E.J. Warner threw for 402 yards and four touchdowns to lead the Owls to a 32-18 victory over Navy (3-5, 2-3) in front of 13,049 fans at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.
"I'm really disappointed," said Navy head coach
Brian Newberry. "I thought coming out of the bye week we had two good weeks of preparation and I thought our kids were ready to play and we came out extremely flat in the first half and played very uninspired and sloppy football. Same story offensively, we couldn't get anything going, couldn't sustain any drives. I thought we had played three pretty good games of defense (leading into this game) and it was like we had arrived or something. The first half was an embarrassment, penalties, just sloppy all around on both sides of the football."
Temple dominated the first half, outscoring Navy 17-0 and outgaining the MIds 209-63. Navy's longest drive of the first half was 28 yards, while Temple scored the first three times it had the ball with Warner tossing a 22-yard touchdown pass to Joquez Smith and a 24-yard touchdown pass to David Martin-Robinson sandwiched around a 42-yard field goal by Camden Price.
It looked like it would be more of the same in the second half as Navy lost one yard on three plays on its first drive and on Temple's first play Warner hit Amad Anderson with a short pass over the middle and Anderson took it 74 yards down to the Navy 10 before Mbiti Williams hustled from behind and knocked the ball loose. The fumble was recovered by
Luke Pirris and the Mids had averted disaster.
Once again, the offense went three-and-out, but Navy caught another break when Anderson muffed
Riley Riethman's 41-yard punt and the fumble was recovered by
Jayden Umbarger at the Temple 44.
That play seemed to ignite Navy as they drove 44 yards in nine plays with quarterback
Xavier Arline, making his first start of the year, hitting slot back
Eli Heidenreich with a 24-yard touchdown pass on third and 10 to cut the lead to 17-6. Navy went for two and got it when Arline hit Umbarger with the two-point pass to make it 17-8.
On Temple's next possession, cornerback
Dashaun Peele stepped in front of a Warner pass at the Temple 44 and picked him off for the second year in a row and the Mids were back in business.
Arline led a nine-play, 44-yard touchdown drive, capping it off with a two-yard touchdown run on the first play of the fourth quarter and suddenly Navy was down just two at 17-15 with 14:51 left.
Unfortunately for Navy the defense, which had been a bright spot for most of the year, could not deliver. Warner shook off his interception from the previous possession and drove the Owls 81 yards on 12 plays capped off by a 13-yard touchdown pass to Jordan Smith to make the score 24-15.
Navy drove the ball back into Temple territory on the next possession, but had to settle for a 45-yard field goal from
Nathan Kirkwood after slot back
Amin Hassan dropped what would have been a pass that got the ball inside the Temple five.
Once again Navy needed the defense to get a stop and once again it couldn't deliver as Warner led the Owls right back down the field, hitting Dante Wright with a 16-yard touchdown pass to seal the win.
Arline finished the day with 97 yards rushing on 30 carries, while completing six of his 14 pass attempts for 124 yards and one touchdown. Heidenreich led Navy in receiving with two catches for 63 yards and a touchdown.
Zae Baynes had seven catches for 132 yards as the Owls had 10 different receivers catch passes. Navy held the Temple rushing game to 46 yards on 27 carries.
"Today was just not good enough," said Newberry. "Our fans deserve better than that, our supporters deserve better than that and it's on me and I have to do a better job and somehow, I have to get this thing fixed. I thought in the second half we came out and fought, we got a couple of turnovers that gave us a chance, got some things going offensively a little bit. We had chances to go and play good defense and get stops and give our offense another chance and we weren't able to get off the field. Warner is a really good player and he diced us up pretty good. I don't think we did anything well today, certainly not well enough to win."
Navy returns home to play UAB next Saturday at 3:30 PM at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, while Temple travels to USF next Saturday.
