Morkeith Brown's leadership skills are on display from this video taken last year at this time. Go to the 4:01 mark on the time display.
My movie viewing habits can be best described as spotty.
I haven't seen a movie in an actual theater in about 22 years.
I usually write down a list of movies in the back of my black book (the one I used to use for dates when I was young and handsome ... well, young) and eventually get around to them in the summertime when they come on my Blue Ridge Cable under the $2.95 movies.
One of them was Invincible and I finally got around to it tonight.
It was a real tear-jerker, probably moreso because they used Temple play-by-play man Harry Donahue instead of the Hall of Famer Merrill Reese (a real Temple grad, who probably would have done the part). After nearly 20 long years of listing to Harry the D do Temple games, I kept thinking he would blurt out: "Papale makes the tackle. There's a fumble. Eagles recover! No check that, the Giants recovered." Or: "Morton throws the ball and it's INTERCEPTED! No, dropped."
Then I realized that the movie was scripted and therefore Harry couldn't make the kind of mistakes we're all too familiar with and ones that Merrill just doesn't make.
There was a scene in the movie where Dick Vermeil is down to cutting "either Papale or Sampson" and passes it around the table to his assistant coaches.
They all say keep Sampson and Vermeil takes that under advisement and keeps Papale.
I thought a lot about that while pouring over the Temple football depth chart tonight.
 |
| Morkeith Brown attracts a crowd at the bowl party. |
To me, he nailed the offensive line. Left tackle Pat Boyle (6-5, 320), left guard Derek Dennis (6-5, 328), center John Palumbo (6-3, 206), right guard Wayne Tribue (6-4, 324) and right tackle Martin Wallace (6-6, 340) have talent and more importantly nastiness to match their sizes.
What has me scratching my head is the "XWR" position that has Deon Miller starting and C.J. Hammond backing up.
To me, if you want explosive plays downfield, like Addazio promised, simply move James Nixon or Joey Jones over to that side to complement Rod Streater, the "ZWR" starter on the other side.
I didn't see a whole lot of explosiveness in Miller or Hammond last year.
Nixon, Jones and Streater have enough explosiveness to blow up the Lincoln Financial Field scoreboard. Add a healthy RB like Bernard Pierce into the mix and they have enough C4 to bring down the place.
At quarterback, Chester Stewart "or" Mike Gerardi are listed as the co-starters, but that whole position is a work in progress.
I'm not concerned.
If there wasn't talent in those first five guys, I'd be concerned.
I'll take the five Temple QBs over the Villanova starter any day of the week.
Practice starts Friday.
My guess is that some positions will be tweaked by Sept. 1.
We'll get to the defense soon enough, but suffice it to say that I'm happy to see Morkeith Brown as the starter at LE.
To me, he's a born leader and, as such, he needs to be out there motivating the troops.
