Well, Did You Watch Them? (Follow Up to "Four Reasons Why College Football Fans Should Watch Navy")

Wow, the time kind of got away from me these last few months. I usually work on this blog over the weekends. But this fall, I have been consumed with watching Navy football. The truth is I could have posted something every week about the Mids' latest game, but I had the self awareness to recognize that not everyone would be as enthusiastic as me to read about them throughout the entire college football season. I am hoping you will indulge me this time now that the season is over though. I thought it would be interesting to look at the four reasons that I proposed for watching Navy play in back in September and see if their performance provided any kind of validation.  If you haven't read the first one, check it out now by clicking on the link labeled 2015 right under "Blog Archive". That way, this post will make more sense.  If you have read the previous post, we can get started.

Reason #4: Navy Has A New Home

Four years ago, the American Athletic Conference invited the Navy football program to join beginning in 2015. The Mids had a history of being very competitive against some of the current conference members and they also had a fan base that traveled well to bowl games. Given that Navy had been to a bowl in 11 of the previous 12 seasons, there was definitely a lot of upside to having them become the AAC's newest member. The Mids made their conference debut on September 19th against East Carolina, and they did not disappoint, coming away with a 45-21 win. They continued to ring up victories, including an upset of the then undefeated and 13th ranked Memphis Tigers in early November. It was a signature win for the program. Three weeks later they took on Houston for the division title and a chance to play for the conference championship. The Cougars prevailed that day, then defeated Temple to become AAC champions.  Still, Navy finished with a 7-1 conference record to match both Houston and Temple. The Mids also defeated Air Force and Army to win their third Commander-In-Chief Trophy in the last four years. Finally, they closed out their season with a win over the Pitt Panthers in the Military Bowl. It was their 11th win of the year. The last time a Navy football team won 11 games was the year after the Chicago Cubs won their last World Series. In case you aren't a baseball historian or a Cubs fan, that would make the year 1909. One of the most pleasant surprises of the season was the performance of the Navy defense. Defensive line coach Dale Pehrson took over as interim defensive coordinator at the beginning of the year after Buddy Green announced he was taking a sabbatical in order to recover from recent neck surgery. Coach Pehrson was a proponent of taking the fight to opposing offenses by using the defense's athleticism to put more pressure on them. That was going to be essential if Navy was going to be competitive in a conference where many teams ran the spread offense. The results were extremely impressive. Time and again, the defense came up with a big stop when it counted. They held high scoring teams like Memphis, South Florida and Tulsa well below their averages for points per game. Perhaps the best example of the defense's new welcomed aggression can be seen by looking at the number of sacks compared to last year. In 2014, the Navy defense had 8 sacks during the whole season. This year, Will Anthony had 7.5 by himself while the whole team got to the quarterback 22 times. So taking all these things into account, I think it's fair to say that Navy's first season as a member of the AAC was an unqualified success. Let's move on.

Reason #3: The Triple Option Offense

Navy's Triple Option (or Flexbone) alignment

There are some people people who will say that the correct terminology for Navy's offense is the Flexbone, and that the Triple Option is the basic play run from that set. But most people (including the coaching staff) just refer to it as the Triple Option because some variation of that play is run pretty much every time the offense lines up. Look, I am not going to split hairs over semantics. You can call it whatever you want. I'll continue to refer to it as the Triple Option just to be consistent. And the fact is that this year, Navy's Triple Option attack was one of the most efficient offenses in the country. They were ranked 2nd in the nation in 3rd down conversions and 1st in 4th down conversions. The Mids were also #1 in scoring once they got into the red zone, converting on nearly 95% of their opportunities. The other remarkable fact is that Navy only lost six fumbles the entire season while running 870 plays from scrimmage. When you consider how many times a game the ball is vulnerable to a turnover on the fullback (or B back) dive, and the pitch, that is pretty amazing. All in all, the Triple Option served Navy extremely well during their first year in the AAC. It enabled them to control the ball (12th in the country in time of possession) while at the same time providing some big plays at critical points in the game. Opponents also recognized that they would probably only get the ball about nine times per game compared to their usual average of 12-13 times. So if they came up empty on one of their possessions, there was added pressure to get results on the subsequent ones. That's when opposing offenses were more likely to make a mistake and turn the ball over. So what were the primary reasons for Navy's success with the Triple Option? Without a doubt, excellent coaching was one of them. Coach Niumatalolo and his staff did an outstanding job getting the team prepared for each game. You will not find a better Offensive Coordinator than Coach Ivin Jasper when it comes to both game planning and making adjustments during a game to counter what the defense is doing. On the field, the success of the Navy offense could be attributed to the maturity of the offensive line (all seniors) and the leadership of the best triple option quarterback that college football has ever seen.

Reason #2: Keenan Reynolds

Navy's Record Setting Quarterback Keenan Reynolds

To be honest, I've just about run out of superlatives when it comes to talking about this young man. This goes for both his performance on the field and how he conducts himself off of it. In my last post at the start of the season, I described Reynolds as a quarterback who comes along maybe once in a generation. Later, I heard broadcasters calling the Navy games saying the exact same thing, so I knew it wasn't just my fan bias coming into play. The fact is that Keenan Reynolds has established himself as one of the greatest players in the history of college football based on what he has accomplished in his four years at Navy. Going into this season he had a chance to break three major NCAA Divison I records and a boatload (no pun intended) of school records. Reynolds already owned the record for the most rushing touchdowns by a quarterback. He got that one last season. At the start of the year, the records for most rushing touchdowns by a player, most total touchdowns (rushing and receiving), and most rushing yards by a quarterback were within reach. Reynolds broke all three of them. He passed Monte Ball with his 78th rushing touchdown on Senior Day against SMU, and he secured the last two records in Navy's win over Pitt in his final game. Reynolds finished his career with 88 total touchdowns (all coming on the ground) and 4,559 rushing yards. That's pretty impressive any way you look at it. But it was more than just the statistics. When it came to decision making and getting the offense into the right play after a defensive switch, Reynolds had no peer. Ivin Jasper stated that it was like having another coach out there in the huddle. And you want to talk about selfless? How's this for a textbook example. I mentioned that Reynolds broke Monte Ball's record for rushing touchdowns against SMU. The fact is he had an opportunity to break it the previous week when Navy played Memphis. Reynolds had dozens of friends and family members that made the trip from his hometown of Antioch, TN just outside Nashville so they could watch him run into the record books. With the game pretty much in hand, Navy was on the one yard line. Their bread and butter play was for Reynolds to fake the hand off to the fullback and follow the block to go in for the score. However, Memphis was dead set on denying him the record on their home turf, so they stacked the box with eight players and had every gap  covered. Seeing little chance of punching it in, Reynolds checked out of the play and called for a toss sweep to slotback Demond Brown, who practically walked in for the touchdown. So here you have a guy with an opportunity to break a big time record in front of friends and family who came to watch him do it, and he passes it up because the best call for that situation was to get the ball to a teammate who had a much better chance to score. That pretty much tells you everything you need to know about Keenan Reynolds.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention a little bit about the Heisman Trophy voting. Reynolds placed fifth overall, but at the very least he should have finished higher if those casting the ballots followed the selection criteria to the letter. I am happy to say that one of the first place votes that he did receive came from the Navy faithful via the Nissan Heisman House fan vote. That was a big debacle, and the story has been beat to death so I won't go into it here. But it was great to see Navy fans across the country rise up show their support. Reynolds wound up winning the fan vote by a pretty significant margin. It was pretty clear that the reason he didn't finish higher in the voting was because he didn't play in a Power 5 conference. Taking into account current affiliations, the Heisman has gone to a member of the Power 5 in 42 of the previous 45 years. Sorry, but the fact that a great player doesn't go to one of those schools shouldn't disqualify him from legitimate consideration.  Reynolds should not have to pay the price for those big schools not having the brains to recruit him. He was not invited to the ceremony, which would have been a nice move on the part of the selection committee, but they blew that too, citing another lame excuse. Reynolds handled the situation with his usual maturity and professionalism. Even before the dust had settled on that whole event, I had come to the conclusion that he was too good for the Heisman. His emphasis on team vs. individual accomplishments define the culture that has existed at Navy for years, and this year Reynolds and the Class of 2016 took it to an even higher level.

Reason #1: It's Not About Me

The Mids Celebrate Another Win

When a reporter asked Keenan Reynolds after the win against Pitt which record he valued most, he did not hesitate. He said, "You play the game to win, so the record for wins is the one that means the most to me." That response was totally consistent with the team's mantra. And the ones who were most responsible for instilling that mindset were co-captains Keenan Reynolds and Bernie Sarra. Sarra was himself a four year starter at nose tackle, which tells you something about his skills as well. They also added a creative slogan to keep the team focused: 1-0. Simply put, it meant the only game that mattered was the next one. And it continued to break down from there. Winning the next game starts with winning the next play, if you can keep doing that, you can win the next possession, the next quarter, the next half, etc, until you have reached the goal. And the next week, you do it all over again. Reynolds, Sarra and the other 32 seniors set the tone in each practice and the rest of the team quickly bought into the concept. The result was a record setting season 11-2 season and a top 25 national ranking. The class of 2016 will go down as one of the most successful ever at Navy. Among their accomplishments are 36 wins (a school record), 3 Commander-In-Chief Trophies, and 3 straight bowl victories (another school record).

Navy Head Coach Ken Niumatalolo

Reynolds and Sarra are moving on, but the good news is that Coach Niumatalolo is not. Just prior to the Army game, word got out that BYU was considering him as the top candidate for their newly vacant coaching position. Coach Niumatalolo had turned down several opportunities to interview for other jobs in the past, but it was totally understandable why he would consider this one. Coach Ken is a devout Morman and his oldest son is a linebacker at BYU. But in what he described as one of the hardest decisions he has ever made, Niumatalolo decided to stay at  Annapolis. He went on to say that it has been his home for twenty years and it was the best place for his family after having talked it over with them. To say that Navy fans were happy with the decision would be the understatement of the year. Athletic Director Chet Gladchuk deserves much of the credit for rewarding Coach Ken and his staff for all the things they accomplished this year as well as in years past. The great season they just completed should also really help them pull in some terrific recruits who will build on what the Class of 2016 has achieved.

So this closes the loop on Navy's 2015 football season. If you didn't have a chance to watch the Mids play this year, you missed watching what college football is all about. I'm not talking about all the hype and the ESPN game day nonsense. I'm talking about eleven guys on both sides of the ball who buckle up their chin straps and compete on every single play. This year, they unveiled a terrific defense that held most of their opponents well below their season averages while the offense was led by a sensational  and record setting quarterback the likes of which we may not see for a long time. So if you did in fact miss this year's edition of Navy football, it was your loss.

Until next time . . .

Karl

Four Reasons Why College Football Fans Should Watch The Navy Midshipmen Play At Least Once This Season

The start of the college football season brings with it a few questions that many fans are looking forward to getting answered. For example, what are the odds that Ohio State will win a second consecutive national championship? Will the SEC bounce back as a conference after having a year in which many thought it had taken a step backwards? Can the Pac-12 sustain the momentum they built going into the end of last season and put another team in the playoffs? Any way you look at it, this is shaping up to be an interesting season on many levels. But as far as I'm concerned, the one question that is most pressing on my mind is how will Navy do in their first year of conference play after being an independent for the past 134 years?

For the average college football fan, Navy does not even represent a blip on the radar screen. Believe me, I totally get that. After all, they are a middle tier Division I football program with no chance at winning a national championship. The only time people outside of the alumni might be inclined to watch them is when they play Army in their last game of the year, and that might be partly because it's the only Division I game on TV that afternoon. But I'm telling you, if you're a fan of college football and have never seen Navy play, this might be the year to start. Here are four reasons to do just that.

Reason #4: Navy Has A New Home

When the college football landscape began to change three years ago as a result of conference consolidation, the natural question that came up was whether or not the independent teams could remain relevant. At the time, those teams were Notre Dame, BYU, Army and Navy. For Notre Dame, the answer was clearly yes. The Irish definitely have the gravitas to survive on their own.  After all, they had enough juice to negotiate their own television contract with NBC. Why would they even bother with a conference affiliation?  But even the Irish chose to join the ACC as a partial member, scheduling five games per year beginning with this season. Coaches in the ACC want to see them go all in, but that hasn't happened yet. The truth of the matter is that they don't really need to at this time.

The same can't be said for BYU. They were in the Mountain West Conference until 2010. Though some pundits think that they can continue to thrive as an independent, there are others including their own AD who say that joining a Power 5 conference is just a matter of time. Which one they land in seems to be the only question.

That left Army and Navy. After enjoying some modest success in the mid-'90s, Army decided to join Conference USA in 1998. It turned out to be a big mistake. They proceeded to go 12-67 over the next seven years including an 0-13 year in 2003. The truth was they simply did not have the athletes to compete. Team speed is king in college football, and the Cadets were sorely lacking in that department. Compared to the other teams in Conference USA they looked like they were running in wet cement half of the time and in quicksand the other half. In 2005, Army came to their senses and became an independent again. It took them about five years to get their program back to a decent level of respectability, so it's understandable if they don't want to go down that road again.

The same factors were no doubt weighing on Navy's mind when the American Athletic Conference approached them in 2011. The AAC was made up of teams from the old Big East Conference as well as Conference USA. As an independent, Navy did enjoy a certain amount of flexibility when building their schedule because they weren't locked into a certain number of conference games. They would be giving that up if they joined the AAC. But the larger question was whether they could remain competitive playing their style of football. Some doubted it, but a closer look at Navy's performance lately shows that they are more than capable of holding their own. The Midshipmen own a 14-3 record against current AAC teams over the last 10 years. So it's not likely that conference opponents will be overlooking them on the schedule. The other thing working in Navy's favor is that they will be in the AAC West Division. That means they will be playing two teams from Texas (Houston & SMU) on a regular basis. From a recruiting standpoint, you couldn't ask for a better situation. Coach Ken Niumatalolo and his staff have a strong track record of recruiting in Texas. Their increased presence now that they are in the AAC West should help them out even more. The bottom line is that Navy is in a position to be competitive right away, and they can remain that way if they take advantage of the increased exposure in recruiting hotbeds like Texas. So, playing its first year as a member of a conference is one reason why college football fans should take some time to check out the Midshipmen.  Let's take a look at another one.

Reason #3: The Triple Option Offense

In 2001, Navy had just come off the worst year in their history. They finished an abysmal 0-10 and had only chalked up one win in their previous 21 contests. That's when they made the decision to hire Coach Paul Johnson (the offensive coordinator at Navy in the mid-90s) away from Georgia Southern. Bringing Johnson back proved to be one of the two best decisions the Navy AD Chet Gladchuk has made with respect to Navy football. Coach Johnson resurrected a program that was pretty much on life support by installing his own version of the triple option offense, and the results during his tenure were nothing short of amazing. The team took their lumps in the first year learning it, but after they destroyed Army 58-12, Navy fans had a reason to be optimistic when the 2003 season began.

They were not disappointed. The Midshipmen went 8-5 that year including wins over Air Force and Army. Navy's triple option gave opposing teams nightmares when trying to prepare. Many called the offense gimmicky, and that it wasn't real football. My contention is that those types of comments usually came from fans who had just watched Navy embarrass their team. The fact is when the triple option is executed properly, it can absolutely shred a defense. And when you see the fullback, quarterback or slotback break a long run a few times a game, it can be just as entertaining as watching some of these spread offenses that are so en vogue now. Defending the option requires the highest form of discipline. Otherwise, a good option quarterback can just make an opposing team look silly. The Midshipmen used this offense to catapult them back to respectability. From 2002-2007, Navy was consistently among the top 5 Division I football teams in average yards rushing per game, and in 2004, they recorded their first 10 win season since the Roosevelt Administration . . . that would be Teddy Roosevelt.

After the 2007 season, Johnson left to coach Georgia Tech. That's when Gladchuk made the second of his two great decisions as Navy's AD. Less than 24 hours after Johnson announced he was moving on, Gladchuk promoted assistant coach Ken Niumatalolo to head coach. Niumatalolo had learned the triple option when he was a quarterback at Hawaii. Johnson was the offensive coordinator there at the time. Gladchuk recognized that maintaining the stability of the program was the key to Navy's success moving forward, and that meant sticking with the triple option offense. Since his hiring, Coach Niumatalolo has gone on to become the winningest coach in Navy football history. His resume includes two wins over Notre Dame, three bowl wins, and a perfect record against Army to date.

As Navy begins a new era as part of the AAC, look for Coach Niumatalolo to continue to expand and tweak the triple option. Part of that will include further developing the passing game. The good news is that Navy's success has allowed them to attract better and better athletes who can excel in this system. Take this next guy, for example.

Reason #2: Keenan Reynolds

On October 6, 2012 Navy was battling Air Force with their season hanging in the balance. They had stumbled to a 1-3 start, and the offense was sputtering. Ball security was a major issue. Their quarterback, Trey Miller, was really struggling, and Coach Niumatalolo had basically put him on notice, letting him know that things had to improve or they were going to make a change. Ironically, Miller wound up playing pretty well against Air Force, but the Mids were still down 21-13 in the fourth quarter when he had to leave the game with an ankle injury. At that point, I figured it was pretty much over. In came the back up quarterback. His name was Keenan Reynolds . . . and he was a freshman. I buried my head in my hands. Seriously? Now I really knew it was over. I didn't see any way possible that a freshman could come into a pressure situation like that and turn things around.

Never in my life have I been more happy to be so wrong.  Reynolds led Navy down the field executing the triple option to perfection. When he was asked to throw, his passes were sharp, and he made plays with his feet time and again.  The kid was absolutely unflappable. He scored from about 12 yards out and then executed a perfect pitch to the fullback for the two point conversion to tie the game. Navy eventually won it in overtime. Reynolds has been Navy's starting quarterback ever since. They finished the regular season 8-4, including a big win over Army that went down to the final seconds.

Over the last three years, Keenan Reynolds has practically rewritten the Navy record books. He is a shifty runner with above average speed, and his arm is both strong and accurate, which essentially gives Navy a pretty viable fourth option offensively. But his strength as a quarterback lies in his decision making. The Mids have had some very good quarterbacks running the option over the years, but Reynolds is in a class all by himself. His reads are quick and his decisions are rarely incorrect. Even when teams key on stopping him from running, he can usually make the defense pay a heavy price for ignoring the fullback and slotbacks. He is one of the most unselfish players I have ever seen, and barring any significant injury during his senior season, Reynolds has a very good chance to break the record for the most rushing touchdowns in Division I college football. He is currently 13 shy of tying it. But you know what?  I honestly believe that he couldn't care less about that. And that's because Reynolds and every other player has bought into a culture that brings me to the biggest reason fans who aren't familiar with Navy should watch a game or two this season.

Reason #1: "It's Not About Me"

That is the team's mantra. It's also referred to as "INAM" (pronounced E'-nahm). This mindset is on display every week that Navy takes the field. They are out there because they love to compete as a team. It certainly isn't because they are trying to improve their draft status or hoping to attract a sponsor in order to land a fat shoe contract. That isn't their reality. Just about all of these guys know that their football careers end when they play their last collegiate game. But that's okay. They knew all of that when they came to Navy. It's not about them. It's about the guy next to them. That's who they play for, and that's what makes them so much fun to watch.

The triple option is the epitome of a system that rewards selflessness. If one option isn't there, you go to the next one. But that next option  or the one after that won't work unless all eleven players are fully committed to doing their job. And when Navy has that offense firing on all cylinders, there are very few teams in the country that can keep them out of the end zone.

The INAM philosophy is even more true on defense. In almost every game Navy is giving up at least 30-40 pounds per man on the line. That means everyone else needs to be quick to the ball. Otherwise it's going to be a long day. No one can afford to take a play off. If the ball isn't coming their way, defenders need to get to it as soon as possible to help bring down the ball carrier even if they have sprint all the way from the other side of the field. Navy defenders are very good gang tacklers. They have to be. In a way, it's a matter of survival. Coach Niumatalolo said it best after Navy upset a heavily favored Missouri team 35-13 in the 2009 Texas Bowl. "We're going to have 11 guys running to the football. We're like 11 hyenas -- we're going to take down an elephant sooner or later, and we're going to get on you." That statement is even more true today. On defense as well as offense, it's all about selling out for the guy next to you.

So there you have it, four solid reasons to watch the Navy Midshipmen play this college football season: a conference affiliation for the first time ever, an entertaining (if not unconventional) offense that gives defenses fits when executed properly, a special quarterback who comes along maybe once in a generation, and a team philosophy that represents college football in its most pure form. For these players, there will be no guaranteed NFL contracts in their futures; nor will there be any big time endorsement deals. Instead they will be be serving their country as commissioned officers in the United States Navy or Marine Corps. It's a chance to once again be part of something that is much bigger than themselves. And they relish the opportunity; because like all Navy football players say, "It's not about me."

Until next time . . .


Karl