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