Temple Football: Daniel Jones embarrasses Owls during Independence Bowl

The Temple Owls football team received a major wake-up call during the Independence Bowl by allowing Duke star Daniel Jones to have a monster game.

Based off the first two quarters of action, the Temple football team seemed like the were going to earn a key win over the Duke Blue Devils during this year’s Independence Bowl.

Hanging on to a 27-21 lead at halftime, the Owls appeared to be on their way to a huge statement win with Ed Foley as their interim head coach.

Unfortunately, it all went downhill after halftime for Temple when seeing how they failed to score a single point in the second half while Duke put up another 35 points on their own to pull out the 56-27 victory.

All season, the Owls were one of the most underrated teams to talk about when seeing some of the impressive outings the team had put together, but Temple didn’t exactly look like a Bowl-worthy team on Thursday.

Numerous factors stood out behind the loss, but without question, it was the Owls’ defense having zero answers to stop the Blue Devils quarterback Daniel Jones that ranks near the top of the list.

Over the months, Jones has drawn plenty of speculation when it comes to potentially being one of the top quarterbacks from the 2019 NFL Draft class. And when seeing how he torched the Owls for five touchdown passes during the Independence Bowl while throwing for 423 yards, it’s easy to understand why there’s so much hype surrounding Jones when it comes to the NFL.

There are plenty of teams that will be looking for a potential quarterback to build the franchise around once the spring rolls around, and after watching Jones take down the Owls the way he did, there’s no question his draft stock is going to skyrocket after this one.

Temple knew this battle in the Independence Bowl was going to be far from a walk in the park, but even they didn’t think Jones and the rest of Duke were going to defeat them this bad.

On a positive note, maybe the Owls can use what took place this year as a learning experience since this team has come a long way when compared to a few years ago when they were always viewed as a laughing stock to the college football world.

Losing Geoff Collins to Georgia Tech was rough, but when seeing all that Temple was able to accomplish this year, despite losing in the Independence Bowl the way they did to Jones the Blue Devils, the Owls should be exciting to watch once again in 2019.