Toledo's defense beat Temple with three plays. Safety Nicholas Thompson forced a fumble on a sack of Ajani Sheppard early in the fourth quarter. Andrew Zock sacked Sheppard with eight seconds left in regulation to send the game to overtime. Then, with Temple going for the win rather than the tie, Sheppard overthrew tight end Peter Clarke in the back of the end zone and Toledo had a 49-48 win at the Glass Bowl. Three plays, all of them enormous, all of them the difference.
Everything in between was the problem. Temple ran for 261 yards on 49 carries and scored 42 points in regulation. Last year's Toledo defense allowed 254.3 yards a game, second in the FBS, and nobody sane expected that standard to survive nine NFL-bound departures and a new staff.
San Diego State visits at noon ET Saturday on CBS Sports Network, and the matchup is a good early test of whether Toledo's defense has fixed that. Jayden Denegal threw two interceptions against James Madison and the Aztecs were scoreless in the first half of that game. This is not a Temple-style downhill run game daring Toledo to tackle for three hours; it is an offense that keeps stalling early. If Toledo's front and back seven can get off the field on normal downs against a group already struggling to start games, that is a genuinely useful data point. If San Diego State's first two drives go 75 yards anyway, the concern is real and it carries into October.
What should settle nerves is the other side of the ball. Toledo is averaging 44.0 points a game while San Diego State has allowed 20 points to Portland State and 26 to James Madison, and John Alan Richter is the reason. He went 36 of 51 for 429 yards and four touchdowns without an interception against Temple, career highs in yards and touchdowns, in his fourth career start. Toledo can win this game in a shootout. The model gives the Rockets a 73% chance, which is about what a home team with this offense should be. The question is whether they have to.
Watch the special teams too, because that is where the first-year staff showed its fingerprints most clearly. Mike Jacobs, a Maumee native who arrived with a 94-23 record, seven conference championships and no losing seasons in ten years as a head coach, had Toledo out of timeouts and needing the onside kick. Reice Griffith's onside kick bounced, Isaac Prince attacked it, and Toledo recovered; Jacobs said afterward the team works an onside element into every kickoff drill and that "the kick has to be perfect, essentially." A first-year FBS head coach converting a practiced trick play in the one moment it existed for is worth more than any preseason scouting report.
The stakes here are modest and honest. Toledo is 2-1 with an eight-game home winning streak, and this is the last nonconference game before MAC play opens at Ball State on Oct. 3. A win nudges Toledo's odds of reaching the MAC title game from roughly 70% to roughly 74%; the playoff numbers move between 2.4% and 0.5%, which is to say they do not matter.
One more small thing. The programs have met exactly once, in 2022, and San Diego State won 17-14. Not history, but a scoreboard worth correcting.
Full numbers are in the interactive guide, and the methodology explains how the projections are built.