Four more Owls will compete for NFL roster spots
Temple saw four of its biggest contributors head off for opportunities at the next level last weekend following the NFL Draft in Pittsburgh, as three players received offers to rookie minicamps while another signed an undrafted free-agent contract.
Outside linebacker Cam’Ron Stewart highlighted the group of Owls who will get chances at NFL camps this summer when he signed a UDFA deal with the Minnesota Vikings.
Stewart, who spent the final two seasons of his college career with Temple, earned second team All-American Conference honors last season during one of the best years of his career, which began with three underwhelming seasons at Rutgers, where he appeared in just 12 games over those three years. Last season, however, he collected five sacks, a team-high 10.5 tackles for loss, a forced fumble and a pass breakup, all of which were career-best totals.
Stewart’s Pro Football Focus numbers, including a 90.4 pass-rushing grade and an 88.0 overall defensive grade, ranked him among the top 20 FBS players in those categories.
Joining Stewart are long snapper Isaiah Hayse, quarterback Evan Simon, and wide receiver Kajiya Hollawayne, who received rookie minicamp invites from the Baltimore Ravens, New York Giants, and Kansas City Chiefs, respectively.
NFL Network reporter Mike Garafolo has since reported that Hollawayne will instead accept an invitation to the Eagles’ rookie camp this weekend and will also camp with the San Francisco 49ers’ next week.
Simon is coming off one of the strongest quarterback seasons from an Owl since EJ Warner’s 2023 campaign, as he beat out Gevani McCoy in fall camp for the starting job before earning the nod against UMass in Temple’s 42-10 Week 1 victory. Simon threw for 248 yards and six touchdowns in the rout and never relinquished the job.
After spending the first four years of his college career at Rutgers and throwing for 952 yards, five touchdowns and seven interceptions for the Scarlet Knights but never getting a permanent opportunity, Simon made the move to North Broad Street before the 2024 season. He eventually took the starting job from Forrest Brock and threw for 2,032 yards and 15 touchdowns in former head coach Stan Drayton’s final season at Temple.
Under head coach K.C. Keeler and offensive coordinator Tyler Walker, Simon broke out in 2025. Although he passed for just 65 more yards than he did in the previous season, he threw a career-high 25 touchdown passes and just two interceptions. Simon became one of the most outspoken leaders during Keeler’s first season at Temple, most notably making the decision to sleep at the team’s Edberg-Olson Hall facility last August while competing for the starting job. He eventually earned a single-digit jersey number and became a team captain.
Simon now heads up to New York to join a fellow former Manheim Central quarterback, Giants offensive coordinator Matt Nagy, while he looks to become the first Temple quarterback to earn an NFL roster spot since PJ Walker in 2023. In New York, Jaxon Dart is of course solidified as the starter, with veteran Jameis Winston as the backup. As of now, Simon’s biggest competition for the No. 3 spot is Brandon Allen, a 2016 sixth-round draft pick who has since bounced around to six NFL teams, most recently the Titans in 2025.
Hollawayne, Temple’s second-leading receiver from a year ago, received offers from both the Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers to attend rookie minicamps. While he doesn’t possess the game-changing speed of a top-end receiver, Hollawayne’s size at 6-foot-4 and 210 pounds might give him a chance to compete for an NFL roster spot.
Hollawayne, who had a late-career resurgence with Temple, was one of Simon’s favorite aerial options in 2025 as he pulled down six touchdowns, which tied for the most on the team with tight end Peter Clarke.
Hollawayne, who signed with UCLA back in 2021 as a dual-threat quarterback, eventually switched to receiver and didn’t see game action until his redshirt freshman year, when he tallied just 32 receiving yards after transferring to Grambling State. Following a season with the Tigers, he made the move to JUCO and Riverside Community College, where he recorded 22 catches for 425 yards.
Temple signed Hollawayne ahead of the 2024 campaign as he saw sporadic time during his first season back in Division I, though he took off for the Owls in 2025 with 489 yards on 39 receptions. He pulled in a career-high 146 yards against Navy, along with a 10-reception, three-touchdown game against Tulsa.
Hollawayne got a pre-draft social media bump when Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts showed up on Temple’s campus earlier this month to work out with his former quarterbacks coach Scot Loeffler. (Loeffler, not a stranger to the Owls’ facility, was Temple’s quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator back in 2011.) During that workout at Temple’s indoor facility and at Chodoff Field, Hurts threw passes to Hollawayne and Eagles receiver DeVonta Smith.
Hayse was the Owls’ starting long snapper in 2025 after transferring in following a four-year stint at NAIA Indiana Wesleyan. The Danville, Indiana, native worked 118 snaps throughout the season, helping to solidify what was a strong special teams unit for Temple in 2025 with punter Dante Atton and kicker Carl Hardin.
The four UDFAs in Stewart, Simon, Hollawayne and Hayse give Temple 16 total active players in the NFL if you include Jaguars cornerback Christian Braswell and Eagles edge rusher Arnold Ebiketie, both of whom graduated from Temple but finished out their college careers at Rutgers and Penn State, respectively. The 2026 season marks the 11th straight in which Temple has sent at least one player to the NFL. That ties the program record originally set from 1979 to 1989.
