Navy pulled themselves back to .500 on Friday night with a solid 31-13 win over Central Michigan. It was a dominating performance by the defense, which held a fairly prolific Chippewa offense to only 221 total yards. As great as the defense was, the center of attention after the game was freshman quarterback Keenan Reynolds, who performed well enough in his first start to earn the job going forward. The first freshman to start at QB for Navy since Jim Kubiak became the first quarterback since Chris McCoy to throw 3 TD passes in a single game. Tack on another 59 yards rushing, and it was a pretty good game for a first start. It wasn’t perfect (it rarely is), and Central Michigan didn’t do very much read-wise to confuse him, but Keenan handled everything put in front of him. You can’t ask for much else.
Author: Mike
This Week in Service Academy Football
Army (1-5): Lost to Kent State, 31-17. Unfortunately for Army, they couldn’t turn an exciting win over Boston College into momentum for the next week. Kent State spent most of the game in the “wishbone defense” (4-4 with a single safety deep to play the pitch). It’s a very beatable scheme, but Kent State defenders were able to make up for it by winning most of the individual 1-on-1 battles. Army’s offense did a little better in the second half and actually ended up gaining more yards than Kent State, but it was too little, too late.
If there’s a silver lining for Army, it’s that their defense really didn’t play that badly. They had no answer for Dri Archer, who ran for 222 yards on only 12 carries (including an 87-yard TD run to put the game away in the 4th quarter), but Kent State only managed 84 passing yards. The defense kept Army in the game while the offense was held scoreless in the first half. Army even had a chance to make it a one-score game in the 4th quarter, but couldn’t convert on a 4th down from the Kent State 11 yard line. The game might have been even closer if Rich Ellerson didn’t make a somewhat desperate decision to go for it on 4th & 1 from his own 38 in the 3rd quarter. They failed to convert, and it led to a Kent State field goal.
My impression while watching this game was that the Army offense just had a bad day. They’ll get back on track soon enough. If their defense really is improving, then the second half of their season could get a lot more interesting.
Air Force (3-3): Beat Wyoming, 28-27. Wyoming blew a 27-14 lead and fell to 1-5. The turning point in the game came in the 3rd quarter, when Connor Dietz ran for 48 yards on a draw play on 3rd & 8 that kept alive what would become a 95-yard touchdown drive. Air Force’s defense held Wyoming to their only 3 & out after that, and the Falcons took the lead with a 16-play, 67-yard drive on the ensuing possession. Air Force’s defense continued to struggle, as the Cowboys actually out-rushed Air Force, 252-230. Wyoming was also starting a freshman backup quarterback, with starter Brett Smith out with an injury. Jason Thompson went 23-for-36 for 195 yards and a TD.
It might be a Pyrrhic victory for Air Force, depending on how badly Cody Getz is hurt. Getz left the game on the go-ahead TD drive with an ankle injury and did not return. His status for this weekend’s game against is unclear. Once upon a time that wouldn’t have been too big of a concern against New Mexico, but Bob Davie’s Lobos are born again hard and will be a big test for Air Force.
Getting more attention than the game itself is the postgame non-handshake between coaches. Dave Christensen chose instead to hurl a few choice words at Troy Calhoun. When asked about the confrontation after the game, Christensen said that he felt that the Air Force coaches told Connor Dietz to fake an injury in order to avoid having to call timeout. On what would turn out to be the game-winning drive, Dietz lost his helmet on 2nd & goal. By rule, that meant that he had to leave the game, and he started walking toward the sideline. Then, for some reason, he decided to sit down and have the trainers come look at him. Christensen claims that Air Force coaches told Dietz to sit in order to have extra time to set up the next play with his backup, Kale Pearson.
It certainly looked shady the way Dietz left the field, and there’s no doubt that the extra time was a big advantage for Air Force. If you’re on defense, you want nothing more than a backup quarterback rushed onto the field to call & run a play in that situation. I couldn’t see on television whether or not the Air Force coaches told Dietz to go down, so the coaches themselves are probably the only ones who know the truth. What we do know is that now Troy Calhoun is using the incident to reflect on the First Amendment, which makes him the biggest tool on earth regardless of whether or not he actually cheated.
LET’S PLAY ALL OUR ROAD GAMES ON FRIDAY NIGHT
Today has been awesome!
Postgame Haiku, Vol. 62
You say it’s Keenan
Or Central Michigan stinks
I say it’s blue pants
Game Week: Central Michigan
The big news for Navy this week is that Trey Miller’s ankle is forcing him to sit out tonight’s game, meaning that Keenan Reynolds will get the start for the Mids at quarterback. He’ll be the first freshman to start at the position for Navy in 21 years, when Jim Kubiak was tossed the keys to George Chaump’s attempt at a west coast offense. On paper, Central Michigan is exactly the team that you’d want a freshman option quarterback to make his first start against. They’re giving up 40 points per game and are 114th in the nation in rushing defense. That’s worse than even Army, a defense that we’ve poked fun at once or twice on this blog. That’s on paper, though. We should know by now that having a statistically bad run defense doesn’t necessarily mean that they won’t be able to defend the option, as Army has demonstrated more than once. Still, it isn’t a good start.
NAVY 28, AIR FORCE 21
Remember back when Navy-Air Force games were where offenses went to die? Times have apparently changed. Air Force was able to roll up over 500 yards of offense on Saturday, while Navy ran for 285 yards and was 6-for-6 passing. This is the second year in a row that offense dominated the game, which is a far cry from the days where punts were plentiful and touchdowns were celebrated like overtime goals in the Stanley Cup. It’s a fascinating evolution to observe if you’re a football wonk. In past games, both defenses were so familiar with the offenses that they were lining up against that it seemed like they were sending representatives to the opposing huddle. What’s interesting is that as both offenses have schemed to adjust, they’ve arrived at similar answers.
TIME TO BREAK OLD HABITS
Perception can be a funny thing.
When you watch a team like Boise State or Houston rise in the polls, you can almost feel the regret from voters who rank them highly. They don’t want to. In their eyes, teams like that aren’t supposed to be any good. It’s a slow climb up the mountain if you aren’t a name-brand program, and the moment you slip up, those voters are all too eager to drop you off a cliff. Anything short of perfection, and these programs get little to no respect. History shapes our perception, making it harder for upstarts to prove their worth in the eyes of the public. The missteps of more established programs don’t cost them as much.
It’s a similar dynamic in the smaller ecosystem of service academy football, where Air Force was the dominant program for the better part of two decades. After beating Navy the last two years and winning the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy, fans and media alike were eager to hail the return of the old days. Don’t get me wrong; wins are wins, so if Air Force was called the better team those years, there isn’t much of an argument to be made against it. But because of that history and the perception that comes from it, people didn’t want to leave it at Air Force simply being the better team that year. No, this was a return to the old Air Force and the old Navy and the way things were in decades past. Navy beat Air Force for a record seven straight years, but like the Boises and Houstons in the polls, it took all of one game to tear down what those teams built. After two games, it was official: Air Force was superior once again. Troy Calhoun was the real deal. Navy was sliding back into mediocrity. Ken Niumatalolo couldn’t maintain what Paul Johnson had built. Everything was falling back into place.
Because of this, Navy’s problems this year were overblown while Air Force’s were overlooked. We all know the issues that the Mids have faced. There was the bad defense against Notre Dame, the turnovers, the penalties, and the lack of offensive production against San Jose State. We’ve heard about them non-stop, which is to be expected with a team that’s 1-3. But for some reason, Air Force got a free pass on their shortcomings. Navy was a disappointment last year, finishing 5-7. But Air Force underachieved too, going 7-6 with their most experienced team in a long time. They were only 2-2 going into Saturday, so they weren’t exactly setting the world on fire this year, either. While the teams that have defeated Navy are a combined 13-3 and include one program ranked in the top 10, Air Force lost to 1-5 UNLV. The Falcons have had every bit as much trouble fumbling the ball; until Saturday, they were just lucky enough to recover them. Air Force’s defense has had major issues, giving up 356 passing yards to Idaho State, and 292 passing yards in 3 quarters to Colorado State’s backup. Air Force was just as flawed as Navy going into Saturday. That Navy won shouldn’t be considered too much of an upset, but it was.
Nobody denies Navy’s problems from decades past. The record is there for all to see. Simply knowing the record, though, is not the same thing as understanding it. When talking about the reasons why Army failed in Conference USA, I mentioned that there was a struggle within the Army program over whether or not they were truly a legitimate Division I-A program. The truth is that the same could have been said about Navy to some extent after George Welsh left. The Mids were playing half of their schedule against James Madison, Lehigh, and Dartmouth, while playing South Carolina, Syracuse, and Pitt in the other half. Navy was trying to straddle two worlds, and the record reflected that. Air Force, on the other hand, was committed to playing top-level football. As a result, they got the lion’s share of top-level service academy players. They were a real I-A program. Navy was not. For all of his faults, this is the one thing that Charlie Weatherbie understood. His solution, unfortunately, was to remove all I-AA teams from the schedule and try to play as many BCS-caliber opponents as he could. Like most things under Weatherbie, that didn’t work either. But as the program moved on under a new coach and a new athletic director, it did so having learned from the mistakes of the past. Navy is now a committed Division I-A program, with the facilities, coaches, and recruiting that go along with it.
That’s why it’s wrong to base your expectations on the records of the past. The factors that led to those records have changed. Air Force built their reputation for service academy dominance against a Navy program that wasn’t dedicated to fielding a competitive Division I-A team. That is no longer the case, and the results reflect that. Since Navy jump-started its program in 2002, they have won 8 of 11 games against Air Force, and two of those losses were still close games. Troy Calhoun is 2-4 against Navy, and 2-3 against Ken Niumatalolo. Niumat has two wins over top 25 programs; Calhoun has none. Navy’s losing streak to Notre Dame is dead, and they’ve put together two 10-win seasons under two different head coaches in the last decade. While you can’t ignore last season’s losing record, you also shouldn’t be so quick to assume that it was anything more than an anomaly.
The point of all this is not to claim that Navy is superior. The point is that this Navy program is not the program of the past, and it’s time for perception to change. Service academy football is no longer made up of one program that knows what it’s doing while the other two are off finding themselves. Air Force should no longer be placed on a pedestal while everyone waits for Navy to fall off a cliff. It isn’t going to happen. It’s a new era of equality in service academy football, and we aren’t going back.
Big East before 2015?
Not to be overlooked from the weekend’s news is this report that Big East commissioner Mike Aresco intends to talk to Navy about joining earlier than the original 2015 target; an idea to which Chet Gladchuk responds, “SIR NO SIR.” I assume that Aresco’s interest in bringing Navy into the fold sooner than originally planned is related to television contract negotiations. However, considering everything with scheduling and television contracts that Navy had to rearrange just to make 2015 feasible, it’s no surprise that the Navy AD rejected the idea.
On top of the contractual hassles, putting the entry date in 2015 allows Navy to build up to Big East competition, both in facilities (as Gladchuk mentioned), and in giving Navy coaches a full recruiting cycle to sell themselves as a Big East program before playing a conference schedule. Joining any earlier is a bad idea if Navy wants to hit the ground running. I understand why Aresco might want it to happen sooner, but let’s hope this is the last we hear of it.
The Birddog 