East Carolina damages New Year's bowl hopes with disastrous loss at Temple
Does Marshall now control East Carolina's New Year's bowl hopes?
Entering Saturday, the Pirates, despite a loss to South Carolina, were ahead of the undefeated Thundering Herd in the College Football Playoff Committee's standings. But that may change after East Carolina committed five turnovers – all fumbles – in a 20-10 loss to Temple.
Why is the spot in the standings so important? Well, the highest-ranked conference-winning team outside of a Power-Five conference receives an automatic berth to either the Cotton, Fiesta or Peach Bowl. Marshall's porous strength of schedule put the Thundering Herd behind ECU in the first rankings issued on Tuesday.
But now that ECU has two losses, the advantage could be negated. Plus, there's now five American Athletic Conference teams with a loss. Any advantage ECU had in its conference is now gone.
The Pirates' first fumble of the game turned into points for Temple. RB Breon Allen fumbled in the first quarter and the ball was picked up by Temple's Tavon Young, who sprinted 63 yards for a touchdown.
On ECU's next drive, Allen fumbled again. Yeah, it was ugly. If you had no idea who the team was, you would have taken a look at ECU's drive chart and thought the Pirates were a one or two-win football team. ECU had the ball 13 times and its' first 11 drives included five fumbles, three punts, a turnover on downs, a missed field goal and a made field goal.
ECU's touchdown didn't come until there were two minutes left and the Pirates trailed 20-3.
QB Shane Carden was bottled up throughout the day by Temple's defense. Carden finished 24-of-41 for 217 yards passing and top target Justin Hardy had just four catches for 35 yards. Marshall was off on Saturday. With the Thundering Herd's toughest remaining game being against Western Kentucky, it could be an incredibly costly loss for East Carolina.
- - - - - - -
Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
