AAC Football Week 9: Memphis Stays Alive, Temple Stuns Tulsa
A thrilling slate produced two overtime thrillers, a 600-yard passing game, a dramatic fourth-quarter comeback, and more.
Week nine of the college football season produced one of the most exciting American slates we’ve witnessed all year.
Saturday’s marquee South Florida at Memphis matchup lived up to the hype, delivering a frantic finish that saw the Tigers ride a 14-point fourth quarter into the lead before a catastrophically-timed holding penalty tanked USF’s attempt at a game-tying field goal.
Memphis’ shocking loss to UAB put Ryan Silverfield’s squad in danger of missing not just the College Football Playoff but the American championship game. After (barely) passing perhaps the toughest test of their season, the Tigers remain in postseason contention.
Both Temple and Rice picked up overtime victories over Tulsa and UConn, respectively; at 5-3 (3-1), Temple is enjoying its best season since 2019. In his first year in Philadelphia, Owls head coach K.C. Keeler has instantly transformed the program from a three-win embarrassment to one capable of competing with almost any conference opponent.
Although Temple still has a ways to go before returning to the standard it established under Matt Rhule, the Owls must feel good about rivaling UTSA and Army in SP+ a year after losing to those teams by a combined 52 points. An FCS national championship winner at both Delaware and Sam Houston State, Keeler is one of the most successful coaches in college football history. Over the last few months, he’s shown why.
Even the weekend’s bad games were fun. North Texas and Charlotte fought a battle that, while predictably uncompetitive, featured 74 points and over 1,150 yards, while Navy beat FAU as the two teams combined for just one punt. The Mean Green (7-1, 3-1) and the Midshipmen (7-0, 5-0) are barreling towards a head-to-head matchup in Denton this Saturday, one with significant implications for both the conference title and playoff races.
So what were the week’s defining moments? How did its most important games play out? What did we learn from week nine?
Memphis Finds a Way
For a moment, it looked as though South Florida was going to finish what UAB started.
As the clock ran out on the third quarter, Bulls running back Sam Franklin received a handoff in the backfield, patiently picked his way through a scrum of defenders, and turned on the jets once he reached the second level. 73 yards later, USF’s lead was 31-13.
With Memphis’ highly-touted rushing offense having struggled all day, it seemed unlikely the Tigers were capable of mounting a response. At the beginning of the fourth quarter, ESPN Analytics gave them a five percent chance of victory.
However, quarterback Brendon Lewis — listed as questionable until the day of the game and perhaps still ailing from the injury he suffered against UAB — remained calm and composed; after accumulating just 173 passing yards in the first three quarters, Lewis racked up 148 in the fourth alone. Of Memphis’ three fourth-quarter drives, two resulted in touchdowns, while the other ended in a field goal. Although it’s taken a backseat to the ground game all season, the Tigers’ air attack shined when it mattered most.
It helped that USF had no recourse for the hosts’ onslaught, its offense unable to cross the Memphis 45-yard line from the beginning of the fourth quarter until its final possession of the afternoon.
“I think really the most frustrating piece is just not able to score in the fourth,” USF head coach Alex Golesh said. “We protected well, but I felt like at times we we couldn’t get open. Man, it was frustrating.”
With less than 90 seconds on the clock, Memphis receiver Cortez Braham hauled in a contested touchdown pass to put his team up 32-31.
Moments later, Lewis stretched out for a critical two-point conversion that barred the Bulls from winning the game on a field goal. This forced the visitors to cobble together a frantic drive that achieved forward progress by any available means — passes across the middle, quarterback scrambles, and Memphis penalties alike propelled USF to the Tigers’ 24-yard line.
The Bulls had little chance of defeating Memphis in regulation, but their mad dash set up kicker Nico Gramatica with an opportunity at a game-tying, 42-yard field goal. On the season, Gramatica was nine for nine from inside that range. Overtime seemed inevitable.
The key word being “seemed.” On USF’s final offensive play of the game, an overthrown shot to the end zone, graduate student center Cole Best briefly and illegally wrapped up Memphis defensive back Kamari Wilson from behind. This transgression did not escape the eyes of the officials. Now attempting a kick ten yards further back than he was expecting, Gramatica’s try (which almost certainly would’ve been good from 42) sailed wide left, sealing the Tigers’ crucial victory and prompting fervent celebrations from the Memphis sideline.
USF will be kicking itself over this one for many months. Quarterback Byrum Brown wasn’t perfect, throwing a game-opening interception to former UAB linebacker Everett Roussaw, but he played well enough for the Bulls to win. Brown turned in a solid-enough passing performance while spearheading a USF ground attack that averaged 7.8 yards per carry. Included in his 121 rushing yards was a 44-yard first-quarter touchdown that must be seen to be believed.
However, the Bulls managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory thanks in large part to a controversial game management decision. Up 24-17 with 5:51 left in the third quarter, USF faced a fourth and 3 at the Memphis 7-yard line; instead of taking the near-automatic points, Golesh went for the jugular with a risky conversion attempt that was promptly blown up Memphis linebacker Sam Brumfield. Although the Bulls’ ugly fourth quarter also played an outsized role in their demise, it’s hard to ignore the fact that USF lost by three points. Would’ve been nice to have that field goal.
On the opposite sideline, the time for playing with fire is over. The day’s positives shouldn’t outweigh the fact that Memphis was all but out of it with 15 minutes left in the game. The Tigers’ remaining schedule includes East Carolina, Rice and Navy and Tulane, the American’s only remaining unbeatens; a loss would essentially eliminate Memphis from conference title contention. As the winner of the American will, in all likelihood, receive the G6 bid to the College Football Playoff, Memphis’ dreams of making a national splash hinge on the next few weeks.
USF is in the same scenario, only it now loses the tiebreaker to Memphis and needs to win out while hoping the Tigers suffer a defeat. With UTSA, Navy, UAB, and Rice left, the Bulls have a more manageable slate than does Memphis, but its November 15th visit to Annapolis will be one of the conference’s games of the season. And who knows? Maybe UAB has something in store for another of the American’s top contenders.
Temple’s K.C. Keeler: AAC Coach of the Year?
For our purposes, the details of Temple’s 38-37 overtime victory over Tulsa are academic.
Despite having won just one FBS game all year (against Oklahoma State, ironically), the Golden Hurricane gave the Owls all they could handle on a dreary Oklahoma afternoon. Tulsa quarterback Baylor Hayes completed several spectacular throws, tight end Brody Foley accounted for three touchdowns, and the home team erased an 11-point deficit to send the game into overtime tied at 31. Temple only escaped after stopping Tulsa on a two-point conversion, breaking up Foley’s wildcat pop pass.
The Owls are 5-3 and 3-1 in the American — the same conference record as North Texas, South Florida, and Memphis — but they play UNT and Tulane in the coming weeks, opponents that will likely deal crippling blows to Temple’s status as a dark horse title contender.
Nevertheless, Temple is 3-1 in the American, a development observers of the 2024 campaign would have a hard time believing. This site’s preview of that season, the last of the doomed Stan Drayton era, read:
Another 3-9 season would put the program in its worst condition since the nadir of the Wallace era. Almost unanimously the worst team in the AAC, the Owls will attempt to claw their way back to relevancy while saddled with a gaping hole at quarterback, a head coach on the hot seat, and the remnants of a historically bad defense.
That team indeed finished 3-9 (2-6), and Drayton was fired before the year ended.
But let’s take a look at the last sentence of that quote and identify what’s different in 2025. The remnants of a historically bad defense? Ranked 98th in SP+, Temple’s defense is by no means great, but it’s much improved from last season’s 125th-ranked unit. A gaping hole at quarterback? Former Rutgers transfer Evan Simon is PFF’s 19th-ranked signal-caller and has thrown 21 touchdowns and no picks; he’s 15 passes away from tying the FBS single-season record for pass attempts without an interception. A head coach on the hot seat? The furthest thing from it.
Hired less than 11 months ago, K.C. Keeler has already done what no Temple coach has been able to do since the pandemic: surpass three wins in a single season. He’s accomplished the feat in impressive fashion, positioning his squad one victory away from bowl eligibility by October. The Owls’ only losses have come against Oklahoma, Georgia Tech, and conference leader Navy; the neck-and-neck Navy game was decided by a two-point conversion Temple couldn’t stop. The Owls’ luck swung the other way against Tulsa, and Temple now has to beat one of East Carolina, Army, UNT, and Tulane to reach six wins for the first time since 2019.
Keeler has been undervalued throughout his long career. Hired in 2002 at Delaware, his alma mater, Keeler was a sensation in Newark, winning the FCS national championship in his second season and posing with bobbleheads bearing his likeness. However, a rough 2012 campaign led to his shock firing; after a year out of coaching, Keeler moved on to Sam Houston, where he posted an 11-win debut season. By the turn of the decade, he had transformed SHSU into a national championship-winning program, becoming the all-time leader in FCS playoffs victories and the only coach in history to capture FCS titles at two different universities.
Keeler’s success continued when the Bearkats jumped up a level in 2023. After a shaky FBS debut, he led SHSU to a 10-3 record and a New Orleans Bowl win last year. However, Keeler told 247Sports, Sam Houston’s administration encouraged him to move on after the campaign, citing the school’s lack of resources.
“We’re not going to be able to give you what you deserve in terms of your salary, in terms of coaches’ salaries, in terms of NIL money,” Keeler said SHSU athletic director Bobby Williams told him.
Although people in the know understood what Temple was getting, the Owls swiped Keeler over the offseason to relatively little buzz, hiring a man ESPN named one of the 150 greatest coaches in college football history for less than $2 million a year. There’s some buzz now.
Other Notes
Rice’s first season of Scott Abell is going great. Although the Owls are 4-4 and just 1-3 in conference play, that’ll do the trick for a program that hasn’t had a winning season since 2014. In two weeks, UAB will take on the option offense in Houston, a contest that could prove to be crucial in the Blazers’ pursuit of bowl eligibility. More pressingly, Rice defeated UConn, UAB’s next opponent, over the weekend by a double-overtime score of 37-34. The Huskies struggled to establish their running attack and were worn down after facing 78 plays from scrimmage, two things the Blazers are surely happy to hear.
North Texas beat Charlotte 54-20, a score that belies the fact the Mean Green, hampered by turnovers and drive-finishing struggles, led just 27-20 going into the fourth quarter. For the first time this season, Charlotte found itself within seven points of an FBS opponent in the fourth quarter — a wild stat — and thus got aggressive, attempting a fake punt from its own 23-yard line that was snuffed out by UNT special teamer Dalton Carnes. This blunder sent the Mean Green offense into hyperdrive: North Texas immediately scored on the short field before posting three more touchdowns in quick succession. Charlotte recorded a grand total of one more first down.
On the day, UNT quarterback Drew Mestemaker set a school and conference record with 608 passing yards, throwing for four touchdowns and 12.4 yards per attempt. His total is the most by an FBS QB since UCF’s Dillon Gabriel threw for 601 yards against Memphis in 2020. Per The Athletic’s Sam Khan, almost 400 of Mestemaker’s yards came after the catch, a testament to the offense installed by North Texas head coach Eric Morris and offensive coordinator Jordan Davis.
Navy knocked off FAU 42-32, but the Owls were never in it. Like Charlotte, FAU held on during the first half thanks to a Midshipmen fumble and failed fourth-down conversion; however, the Owls suffered turnover troubles of their own and had no answers for Blake Horvath and his clinical service academy offense. Prior to FAU’s garbage time shenanigans, Navy led 42-19, and that’s after going two-for-five on fourth down.
Navy’s real season begins now. The Midshipmen are 7-0 and 5-0 in conference play, but its toughest opponent thus far has been Temple. The next five weeks are absolutely brutal: North Texas, Notre Dame, USF, Memphis, and a game against Army that doesn’t count for the playoff or conference title races. With the Fighting Irish on its schedule, Navy has the potential to shake up not just the G6 CFP picture but the national one. It enters the gauntlet this weekend at Apogee Stadium.
This Week’s Slate
Thursday: UTSA (3-4, 1-2) vs. Tulane (6-1, 3-0)
Friday: Rice (4-4, 1-3) vs. Memphis (7-1, 3-1)
At all costs, the conference’s top contenders must avoid trap game losses to lower-tier opponents, something easier said than done. For Tulane, only about a field goal favorite at the Alamodome, this weekend presents a nerve-wracking challenge. Memphis (-14.5) has more room to breathe, but the Tigers haven’t turned in a wire-to-wire win since October 4th. As we saw two weeks ago, anything can happen in the American.
Saturday: UAB (3-4) at UConn (5-3)
Saturday: Army (3-4) at Air Force (2-5)
Both UAB and Army are battling down the stretch for bowl eligibility. If the Black Knights can get past a bewildering Air Force team that balances a cripplingly bad defense with one of the best offenses in service academy history, they’d have to beat two of Temple, Tulsa, UTSA, and Navy to get to six wins. It’ll be close, but a loss on Saturday would probably doom Army to a losing record.
The Blazers (+11.5) walk a similarly narrow path. Vegas sees UAB as likely to fall at UConn, which would force the Green and Gold to beat both Rice and Tulsa on the road while taking down one of North Texas and USF at home.
Saturday: Temple (5-3, 3-1) vs. ECU (4-3, 2-1)
Bowl eligibility is on the line here for Temple, which hasn’t made the postseason since 2019. Don’t sleep on ECU (-4.5), though, which has only lost to BYU, NC State, and Tulane. If the Pirates win on Saturday, they’ll be 3-1 in conference play with Charlotte, Memphis, UTSA, and FAU ahead. An American record of 6-2 or better is possible in Blake Harrell’s first full season.
Saturday: North Texas (7-1, 3-1) vs. Navy (7-0, 5-0)
Massive title implications in the indisputable game of the week. Already having lost to USF, North Texas desperately needs this one; UAB, Rice, and Temple make up the remainder of UNT’s schedule, and a 7-1 finish is in sight. The high-octane Mean Green welcome another offensive juggernaut in Navy, albeit one that achieves success by much different means. This is not a game to miss.