Category: football

BRAINDRIZZLE

On By MikeIn football, navy football25 Comments

I’ve been brainstorming for ideas, trying to come up with something at least a little bit interesting to write about before practice news starts coming out. Unfortunately, it’s been more of a braindrizzle than a brainstorm. I have to regurgitate something to keep you hatchlings fed, though, so here you go. None of these things are really worth their own individual posts, but together they make three things that aren’t worth individual posts. Now that’s value, and I’m all about value.

— Boy, that escalated quickly. I mean, that really got out of hand fast. I am referring, of course, to that Georgia-Georgia Tech post from a few weeks ago. It’s funny… I write stuff like that all year about Navy, and you never hear about it outside of our modest little group. Post one thing about Georgia Tech, though, and it explodes all over the internet. Next thing you know, Tech fans love me, Georgia fans think i’m a stoopid liar, they all post about it here, and chbags kills someone with a trident. Chaos! But I think it’s safe to revisit the subject now. The only Tech fans still wasting their precious time reading this gong show of a blog are the guys who were already regulars here. Now that the tide has gone back out to sea and it’s just us again, there are a few things I wanted to talk about.

It’s fun getting a little added exposure to the world at large, I guess, but it’s not without its problems. Most of you guys “get it” with regard to the things I say,  or at least you attempt to read and understand my point before railing against it (or agreeing with it, for that matter). Not so when dealing with the internet at large. It’s just the nature of the beast.  If you scanned other blogs and message boards that linked to that post, you saw people saying things like, “OMG THIS GUY SAYZ U CANT DEFEND PAUL JOHNSON LOL,” both from people who agreed and disagreed with that premise. Except that isn’t what I said at all. The post was supposed to be about how coaches had defended the wishbone, and why those specific defenses don’t work against the spread option. Obviously Navy and Georgia Tech aren’t scoring 60 points per game, so teams do stop them to some extent.

But wait… Didn’t I say, “There’s no one defensive scheme that will shut down this offense?” Yes, I did. Don’t misunderstand that, though. You can say the same thing about any offense.  Any offensive coach that knows what he’s doing can look at any defense and recognize how to attack it within the framework of his scheme. Let me put it this way… When Ohio State only scores 3 against USC or 6 against Penn State, does anyone say that those teams “figured out” Ohio State’s offense? Of course not. They’ll make some other generic observations about talent or speed or not being focused or whatever. But LSU holding Georgia Tech to 3 points? None of those platitudes will do. Instead, it’s OH NOES THE RIDDLE OF THE OFFENSE IS SOLVED. This is because people continue to believe that the spread option isn’t a “real” offense; it’s a “gimmick” offense. And if you believe that, then you think you just need to figure out the corresponding gimmick on defense, and that’ll be the end of it. It just isn’t true.

This offense has won bowl games, conference titles, and national championships for 25 years, setting record after record along the way. If there was a magic defense to shut it down, it would have been discovered by now. Of course you can defend against it, but not through some crazy scheme.

–Then you must stop it by playing assignment defense, right? Well, sort of. This topic reminds me of some of my favorite plays, where some safety is tasked with covering the pitch man, and is so focused on his assignment that he’s oblivious to the fullback tearing right by him.

I think most people are confused about what assignment defense means, and what assignment defense is supposed to accomplish. As was pointed out on Smart Football, “assignment defense”

gets thrown around by announcers a lot, with the implication being that all you have to do is “assign” one guy to the dive back, one to the quarterback, and one to the pitch back.

If the people who subscribe to this idea would stop to think about it for a second, they’d feel kind of dumb. Eleven guys on the field, but it only takes three to stop a triple option play? That must be the easiest play to stop ever! Obviously, that’s not the case. You see, offenses have these guys called “blockers” that tend to get in the way of defenders trying to make a tackle. It’s unfair, I know, but I don’t make the rules. As soon as one of these blockers gets in the way of someone chasing his assignment, that concept of assignment defense sort of goes out the window. If it was that simple to stop, I don’t think the option would have become a staple of college offenses for half a century. Nevertheless, people still think this way. You don’t hear about “assignment defense” only from television broadcasts and the collective brilliance of message board analysts, though; coaches talk about it too. But when coaches talk assignment defense, it means something completely different. They aren’t talking about having three defenders cover three potential ballcarriers. When coaches talk assignment defense, they’re talking about all 11 defenders.

Think about how defense is usually played. A guy either drops into the called pass coverage, or fills his running lane until he can diagnose what the offense is doing. At that point, he runs like a burning squirrel to the ball. But you can’t do that against the option. You can’t read where the offense is going to go with the ball because there’s nothing to read; the offense doesn’t even know where they’re going with the ball coming out of the huddle. The only thing you accomplish by anticipating is to guarantee that the ball won’t go where you jumped. That’s the whole point of the option, right? So instead of reading & reacting, players have to almost ignore the ball, and simply carry out their single assignment on every play. That is why you’ll sometimes hear about defensive coaches practicing without a ball the week before playing Navy; making a stop on one play does you no good if it leaves you open to the boomshakalaka on the next play. Imagine how hard this is for a player. Take the backside defensive end, for example. Here you have a guy who sees play after play going the other way whenever he sees the slotback in front of him going in motion. Navy keeps getting first downs. He gets frustrated, thinking, “they gave me a scholarship because I could make plays! I need to do something!” So he stops covering his gap when he sees motion, and starts cheating towards the middle to take the fullback and get involved with the play. Right about then, Coach Jasper will call a counter option, that guy will be trapped, and the quarterback runs right by him for 30 yards. That’s what they mean by discipline, which I don’t think gets conveyed very well on TV broadcasts. Even the guy on the opposite side of the field from the play needs to focus on his assignment, because the moment he does otherwise, the offense will adjust to him.

Well, crud. I guess the secret’s out now! Not exactly. Assignment defense isn’t any more of a magic option-stopping elixir as anything else. The offense will still get their 3-4 yards if they execute perfectly on every down. But how many offenses execute perfectly on every down? That’s the key here. The point of assignment defense isn’t to shut the option down; it’s just to prevent giving up the big play. In mistaking the spread option for the wishbone, people tend to assume that it’s also a 3-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust offense. But Georgia Tech led the country in plays of 20+ yards last year. For all the talk of New-Mexico-esque 8-minute megadrives, Navy has been far more likely to score in less than three minutes. This is a big-play offense. The more big plays you can pull off, the fewer plays it takes to score. And the fewer plays you need to score, the fewer opportunities you have to make a mistake. That’s what defending this offense is all about; preventing the big play, and forcing the offense to make a mistake. It can be something as simple as a 4-yard play turning into a 1-yard play. How you try to force those mistakes, and how the offensive coaches adjust, is where the chess match starts.

Of course, this doesn’t even scratch the surface of what assignment defense means to the passing game, something we expect to see utilized more this year. But that’s a topic for a later post.

— HOLY CRAP ACTUAL NEWS. Media day means that Bill Wagner awakens from his summer slumber covering sailing, and returns to his blog to nurture us with the golden nectar of information. Already, he is revealing that Navy’s uniforms will be receiving what in auto industry terms would be described as a mid-cycle refresh. The lacrosse team is unimpressed. Possible throwbacks for the Western Kentucky game are a great idea, both for the whole tradition thing, and for the money that’ll be made when those jerseys are auctioned off.

Wags is also reporting that Ricky won’t be seeing any contact this fall. After going through three quarterbacks last year, I don’t think the coaches are eager to repeat the experience. I don’t think this is that big of a deal. However, I eagerly anticipate the first time Ricky screws up, which some yahoo will undoubtedly blame on him not getting hit enough in August. CAN’T WAIT.

THINGS YOU CAN LAUGH AT

On By MikeIn air farce, football14 Comments

In life, we’re often forced to make tough decisions. These decisions aren’t always a simple matter of right vs. wrong; sometimes, they’re a little more complicated. Sometimes, our core values are placed in opposition to each other; we find ourselves evaluating what’s truly important to us, and choosing accordingly. I am engaged in such a conundrum even as I sit here punching away at my keyboard. As I weigh both sides of this predicament, I find that my urge to point and laugh at unintentional comedy is greater than my urge to boycott stupidity. With that, I link you to this seemingly insignificant blog entry by the Colorado Springs Gazette writer David Ramsey.

First, a little background. The Air Force Academy has recently revised its media guidelines, making access to coaches and players a bit more difficult. Not surprisingly, Falcons beat writer Jake Schaller thinks this is unfortunate. And it is; those of us who try to keep a finger on the pulse of Air Force football appreciate the work Schaller does, in print and on his blog (even if we disagree about things). Obviously, less access for him means fewer updates for the rest of us. It’s our loss. Schaller used his blog entry to give us all a heads up on how these new rules will affect his coverage. Ramsey, on the other hand, just wants to pick old scabs.

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I-DAY

On By MikeIn football, I-Day, navy football1 Comment

I-Day was yesterday. Other than the environmental effects from the explosion of new whiteworks smell that is now being carried around the globe via the jet stream, the most important part of I-Day is the official release of recruit lists. As most of you already know, the Naval Academy does not participate in the National Letter of Intent program, so Navy coaches cannot discuss recruits until they are actually enrolled in the school. You can find the football release here.

The coaches don’t talk about recruits until I-Day, but thanks to various media sources we usually already have a pretty good idea of who’s coming. That makes the official release less of a cause for celebration, and more a cause for nervous apprehension as we scan the names looking to see who’s changed their mind since verbally committing. The most unusual part about this year’s class is that there are only two quarterbacks. Normally there are a bunch of them; two or three will end up staying at QB, and the rest are athletic enough to fit in at other positions. Not so this year. We already know that Kavon Seaton left NAPS. Apparently, this year’s QB crop is all headed to Newport first. I’m not panicking, I just found it a little bit strange to only see two QBs.

Anyway, as usual on I-Day, it’s also time to re-post the manifesto.

OTHER PEOPLE’S RIVALRIES AND THE FUTILITY OF DEFENDING AGAINST THE WISHBONE

On By MikeIn football114 Comments

I’m home alone right now, and great googly moogly is it boring around here. My wife is out of town on some urgent family business, so my personal interaction with others has been limited to pushing my cat down every time he climbs up onto my keyboard. That’s not to say that there isn’t any excitement, though. I mean, last week I came home from work one day to discover that the cat had opened the door to the garage, and the dog had learned how to escape from his crate. The two of them proceeded to find the bag of dog food that we keep in the garage, rip it open, engorge themselves, then leave heaping piles of crap all over the carpet. VROOM VROOM DER PARTY STARTER. The thought of an encore makes me feel all tingly.

As exciting as that was, I still look for other, less odorous, ways to entertain myself. Rather than doing anything productive with my free time, my favorite pastime in this situation is watching old games. It’s like my own little ESPN Classic, but without the bowling or world’s strongest man competitions. It’s good to calibrate my memory whenever I get the chance; it’s sort of amazing how the things you think you remember can differ from what actually happened in a game. It’s fun to see players and plays I haven’t thought about in a while, too. The best part about revisiting old games is being able to look at them with a critical eye, but without the inherent emotional bias that you have when watching it live.

Emotional bias really wasn’t a problem for the first game I decided to take a look at– last season’s Georgia Tech-Georgia game. I mean, I wanted Georgia Tech to win, of course, but a loss wouldn’t have had the same marriage-jeopardizing implications for me that most Navy losses do. I know, I know… Georgia Tech again. Blah blah blah. But even if you’re sick of talking about them, there’s still plenty to learn from watching them. They’re like an offensive laboratory for us. It’s not because of what they’re doing themselves, necessarily; I don’t think they’re doing much that we haven’t seen before, although the frequency with which they do a few things is a bit different. It’s really about the opportunity to see how a different group of defenses line up and try to stop the spread option, and to see if there’s any difference in how common opponents (like Duke) try to defend the two teams. I’m kicking myself right now for not having recorded more Tech games this year, but oh well. I’ll be sure to get their games that don’t conflict with Navy’s next year.

Anyway, enough talk of poop and regret. More talk about football. As I was rewatching the game, I took notes on a couple of items that I thought would be of interest to Navy fans. I began this post with the intention of highlighting only those things, but as I got going I figured I might as well break down the whole game like I would any other. In the process of doing so, I was reminded of plays we’ve seen in Navy games past. I decided to go ahead and include that stuff too. It makes for one long, sprawling post. But hey, it just gives us more to talk about in the middle of the summer, right? So off we go.

Continue reading “OTHER PEOPLE’S RIVALRIES AND THE FUTILITY OF DEFENDING AGAINST THE WISHBONE” →

GEORGIA TECH: FRIEND OR FOE?

On By MikeIn football, navy football37 Comments

Paul Johnson may have left the Naval Academy, but I think it’s safe to say that most of us still root for him. It’s hard not to. His offense gave Navy a singularity in the cosmos of major college football; something above and beyond the usual “they play hard for 60 minutes!” type of chatter that seems to come naturally to casual observers of the service academies. College football reporters and talking heads thst covered this ingenious combination of run & shoot and spread option couldn’t seem to decide if the offense was innovative or archaic. Navy fans didn’t care either way. To us, the offense was just something uniquely ours. Of course, with the wins, bowl games, and service academy domination, Johnson could have run pretty much anything and Navy fans would still be happy. Beyond the offense and results he produced, he was also a great interview– sarcastic, straightforward, and funny to listen to. Most of us just plain liked the guy. So as upset as we were when he moved on to what he felt were greener pastures at Georgia Tech, most of us hope he finds the kind of success in Atlanta that he didn’t think was possible in Annapolis. (Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong). Even those of you who might not be pulling for Coach Johnson still get the enjoyment of seeing skeptics of this offense have to eat their words. (Of course, we knew that would happen all along).

(As a side note, how annoying is it to watch the same “experts” who told you how the option would fail in a BCS conference now try to explain to you how and why it works? Meh, moving on…)

But now, the offense isn’t just ours anymore; our friends at Georgia Tech have joined us in the pleasure of hearing the same cliches every year about how the option won’t work.  As fun as it can be having a second chance to see our favorite offense in action each Saturday, do you ever wonder if Paul Johnson being at another school somehow has an adverse effect on Navy? I mean other than the obvious questions people have whenever a new coach takes over a school; hopefully by now you don’t need any convincing as to Ken Niumatalolo’s ability to lead the Mids. But could it be possible that in rooting for Georgia Tech, you are indirectly rooting for Navy’s demise? That Georgia Tech, in using the same offense that helped catapult Navy to success, might somehow be working against the Mids now?

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ADDENDUM

On By MikeIn air farce, conference talk, football, recruiting8 Comments

Since we’re talking about Air Force, now would probably be a good time to talk about the recent hullabaloo over the Mountain West’s attempts to gain BCS membership, or to create a playoff. With all the talk we do around here about recruiting advantages, can you imagine if Air Force coaches could go into a recruit’s living room and tell him that he could play for a BCS conference? Especially when that recruit’s options are probably something like Air Force, Navy, Bucknell, Dartmouth, and Rhode Island. Those three little letters would certainly enhance the Mountain West’s image, Air Force included. Perception is reality, as the cliché goes. It would also add a lot of money to Air Force’s coffers. So… Is it time?

In a word, no.

The Mountain West can talk about how good Utah, TCU, and BYU are all they want, but it won’t matter. The BCS isn’t about quality of competition. The BCS is about putting together a television package that generates the maximum amount of revenue while being split between the fewest possible number of teams. To that end, it doesn’t matter how good the teams are. All that matters is how many people will watch. This is where the Mountain West’s case falls flat.

The BCS isn’t made up of the best teams in college football; any number of non-BCS teams routinely knock off BCS-conference foes every year. The BCS is made up of the most popular teams in college football. Take a look at the average home attendance of each BCS conference last year:

SEC 76,844
Big Ten 70,125
Big 12 62,956
Pac-10 57,350
ACC 52,737
Big East 43,145

Now, compare that to the Mountain West’s average attendance: 35,125. Only two MWC teams, BYU and Utah, have a higher home attendance than the Big East’s average. Those two teams skew the league’s average a bit. The average home attendance for the rest of the conference is a paltry 25,802. In short, nobody cares about the Mountain West.

That isn’t meant to be a slight to the MWC. It’s just reality. If the MWC or anyone else is serious about joining the BCS, they don’t need to show how their teams are good enough to compete; Utah, BYU, and TCU have done that. What they need to do is show how their inclusion would make current BCS members more money. But as the attendance numbers show, the Mountain West doesn’t add enough value in terms of a dedicated following for the BCS to be able to charge a significant premium for its television package. Adding nine more teams would just reduce the per-school share of the BCS money pie. That’s also why there’s resistance to a playoff; the money generated from the tournament would have to be split between too many teams. There is no incentive for the BCS schools to be more inclusive.

The people running the Mountain West aren’t stupid. I’m sure they know that they have no chance at seeing their proposals come to fruition. But by making a public to-do out of it, they generate free publicity for their best teams, highlight the true nature of the current BCS system for the public, and help to establish themselves as a leader among the non-BCS conferences.

Those are all good things as far as Mountain West schools are concerned, but nothing any Navy fan should really worry about.

THE STATE OF SERVICE ACADEMY FOOTBALL: AIR FORCE

On By MikeIn air farce, football10 Comments

At this time last year, it appeared that Air Force head football coach Troy Calhoun and AD Hans Mueh were preparing fans for the worst. At the very least, they probably wanted to temper the expectations of those who dreamed of a future filled with Mountain West greatness after Calhoun went 9-4 in his first season in Colorado Springs. The recurring theme to their responses when asked about how the 2008 season would go was how young the Air Force football team would be. There was talk of “thin senior classes” and how it would be three years before Calhoun has the team full of the juniors and seniors he needs to really succeed. With talk like that, it would have been easy to expect disaster, but disaster isn’t what happened. Not exactly, anyway.

Continue reading “THE STATE OF SERVICE ACADEMY FOOTBALL: AIR FORCE” →

THE STATE OF SERVICE ACADEMY FOOTBALL: ARMY

On By MikeIn army, football32 Comments

At the end of the football season, I like to take a step back and look at how each service academy program is doing relative to each other and the college football world in general. A “state of the union” of sorts. First on the list: Army.

2008 was a season that began with optimism. Most seasons do at any school, I suppose, but not at Army. Not since Todd Berry took the West Point football program and gave it a tombstone piledriver from which it has yet to recover. Since Berry’s 0-13 debacle, the hope amongst the Army faithful was that one day, option football would return. After all, even a coaching legend like Bobby Ross failed to reverse the Army team’s fortunes. Army fans decided that there was no other recourse; it’s option football or bust. So when it was revealed that Jim Young  had been seen helping out at Army football practices, well… That’s enough to work any Army fan into a frenzy. Young, of course, is the Army coach who took over in 1983. After a 2-9 season that saw the Cadets average a paltry 12 points per game, Young switched to a wishbone offense and found immediate success, winning 8 games (including the Cherry Bowl) and more than doubling point production for the season. His presence could mean only one thing: that option football was returning to West Point. So why not have a little optimism? Even if getting to a bowl game was still a bit pie-in-the-sky, it seemed reasonable that Army would at least be more competitive, right?

Apparently not. Not to start the season, anyway. What was thought to be a winnable game against Temple turned into a 35-7 blowout loss. I-AA New Hampshire came to Michie Stadium a week later and dominated the Black Knights in a 28-10 win. Army had the week off after the New Hampshire loss, but it did them no good as Akron came to West Point and dealt out a 22-3 thumping of their own. Army fans, players, and coaches had to believe that those were three winnable games at home; instead, Army was outscored 85-20. With another loss on the road at Texas A&M, Army started the season 0-4. That’s not how it was supposed to go.

While there was disappointment on the field, there was drama off of it. Carson Williams, the team’s returning starter at quarterback, was benched after three games in favor of sophomore Chip Bowden. Army’s prize recruit in its freshman class, Indiana quarterback Paul McIntosh, left the school. Both the West Point Superintendent and athletic director allegedly came to the Army locker room and berated the players for their supposed lack of effort. And then there was the all-too-ominous kiss of death vote of confidence given to head coach Stan Brock by AD Kevin Anderson. By the end of September it was getting to be apparent that Stan Brock’s second season as Army’s head coach would be his last.

But then a strange thing happened; Army started to play better. It began with a 44-13 rout of Tulane in New Orleans. Fullback Collin Mooney led the way with 187 yards rushing and 4 TDs. Army won again a week later, topping Eastern Michigan 17-13 behind Mooney’s 229 yards. The Black Knights had a 24-10 lead on eventual MAC champion Buffalo before falling in overtime, 27-24. A 14-7 win over Louisiana Tech a week later, and Army had won 3 out of 4 games going into the first leg of the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy round-robin against Air Force. Army lost a tight game to the Falcons, and lost another close one to an explosive Rice team that would go on to win the Houston Bowl. Rutgers had Army completely overmatched, but for six straight games, Army was doing what the faithful thought they should. They were competitive. And what better way to announce the resurgence of Army football to the world than a win over their biggest rival on the season’s biggest stage?  The Mids had lost Paul Johnson to Georgia Tech, after all. Besides, Army was able to hang with “teams that are a lot better than Navy,” right?

It didn’t take long for everyone in the stadium to realize that wasn’t the case. Shun White’s touchdown run on Navy’s third play from scrimmage deflated whatever high spirits Army might have had coming into the game. While some stubborn Army alums continued to make the laughable assertion that Navy’s athletes were “no better than ours, if not worse” (!), it felt as if every play in the 2008 edition of the Army-Navy game served as an argument to the contrary. White’s run was the most obvious example, but some of the best demonstrations of the talent gap came when Army had the ball. The Black Knights had open plays, but simply weren’t fast enough to take advantage of them. While the Mids were clearly focused on bottling up Mooney, their linebackers were fast enough to keep any Army play that went outside from doing significant damage. In the last two years, Army has scored a total of three points against Navy.

The 34-0 pounding delivered to Army was the last straw. Maybe Army had made progress over the course of the season, but they were getting no better relative to the one school they just have to beat. On December 12, Stan Brock was fired.

It was an exercise in the inevitable. When athletic administrators take it upon themselves to make on-field football decisions, you know the end is near. That’s exactly what happened over the offseason; it sure wasn’t Stan Brock’s decision to go to an option offense. How do we know? Well, just ask him what he thinks about the option:

“I don’t think a 100-percent triple option is the answer,” Brock said. “If it was, Navy would be national champions because there’s nobody that runs it better than Navy, nobody. …

“There’s a lot of positive things that are part of that offense and some other things, you have to be able to do when the situation arrives,” Brock said. “You have to be a well-rounded offense.”

Army actually scored more points per game running their old offense against a tougher schedule in 2007. If the head coach didn’t even believe in the new offense he was running, then it could hardly be considered a surprise that the players struggled with it. And so, out went Brock, and a search–one that Army fans feel should have happened the last time they hired a coach– began.

From comments he made in the media at the time, it was apparent that Anderson was determined to hire an option coach. Based on some names that were floating around (which may or may not have had any merit), being an “option” coach was more important than being a “good” coach when it came to qualifying criteria in the search. Fortunately for Army fans, they have found a bit of both in Rich Ellerson.

Ellerson isn’t an “option coach” in the truest sense of the phrase; he’s made a name for himself as a defensive innovator. But even though he was never the guy drawing up the Xs & Os of the triple option himself, he believes in the spread option and has been dedicated to it as a head coach. Ellerson was the defensive coordinator at Hawai’i from 1987-1991. The Rainbows’ offensive coordinator at the time was, of course, Paul Johnson. Ellerson might have been a defensive assistant for his entire career, but he knew a good offense when he saw one. When he finally got the chance to be a head coach himself– first at Southern Utah, and later at Cal Poly– he knew what offense he wanted to run. When Ellerson was named the head coach at Cal Poly in 2001, he hired Gene McKeehan away from the Naval Academy to be his offensive coordinator. McKeehan installed a spread option offense that would become among the most prolific in I-AA under the direction of succeeding coordinators Ian Shields and Joe DuPaix. While DuPaix is on Ken Niumatalolo’s staff as the slotbacks coach, McKeehan and Shields have followed Ellerson to West Point and will add their expertise to Army’s coaching staff.

The spread option, combined with Ellerson’s defenses, were a winning formula for Cal Poly. Once a Division II power, the Mustangs had only one winning season in the six that preceded Ellerson’s hiring. Ellerson went on to post a 56-34 record in San Luis Obispo, including two appearances in the I-AA playoffs. That’s especially significant, since Cal Poly’s conference– the Great West Football Conference– does not receive an automatic invitation. Of course, that also tells you a little bit about Cal Poly’s competition– it stinks. But don’t get hung up on that. A school with the academic challenges of Cal Poly taking down I-A San Diego State twice in three years and beating traditional I-AA power Montana in a 2005 playoff game says a lot about its coach. It says a lot about San Diego State too, but that’s a different story for a different day.  

So if you’re wondering if Rich Ellerson is a good coach, don’t bother. He is. But if there’s a lesson to be learned in service academy football, it’s that being a good coach is not the same thing as being the right coach. Navy fans might not have anything nice to say about Gary Tranquill, Elliot Uzelac, and George Chaump, but believe it or not these guys were good coaches.  Gary Tranquill has long been a respected offensive mind. He was the offensive coordinator for George Welsh at Virginia, Nick Saban at Michigan State, and Bill Belichick with the Cleveland Browns. He was recently hired for the same position at Boston College. Elliot Uzelac is another well-respected offensive coach who has been the offensive coordinator at four different BCS schools, including the 11-1 Fiesta Bowl champion Colorado team in 1994 (the year of Kordell Stewart and the Hail Mary). George Chaump never had a losing season as Marshall’s head coach. He led the Thundering Herd to two 10+-win seasons, including the school’s first two I-AA playoff berths and an appearance in the championship game. They all appeared to be solid hires at the time.

This isn’t the first time we’ve talked about this good coach/right coach concept here. But what does being the “right coach” mean? Honestly, I’m not completely sure. I think it may be about a guy’s personality more than anything else. There are a few traits, though, that fans seem to like to talk about when it comes to what makes the right coach, but are instead completely irrelevant. First and foremost, running the option doesn’t make someone the “right coach.” Bob Sutton has a somewhat similar background as Rich Ellerson in that they are both defensive coaches who ran option offenses. Sutton had only two winning seasons in 9 years, and even those seasons featured a combined 5 wins over I-AA teams (four of them non-scholarship I-AA teams). Elliot Uzelac brought the wishbone to Navy and went 8-25 over 3 years.

Having service academy experience is another thing a lot of fans look for, but that doesn’t make someone the right coach either. Sutton was an Army assistant under Jim Young. Tranquill and Uzelac were both former Navy assistants; Tranquill under George Welsh, and Uzelac under Rick Forzano. Charlie Weatherbie spent six years on Fisher DeBerry’s staff. None of them had lasting success at Army or Navy. There are other things that fans like to think matter, too, like “getting the mission” of the school or wanting to coach at the school forever and ever. That’s all nice and flowery, but only if the guy actually wins. If he doesn’t, then nobody cares if he’s super gung-ho about creating military officers. Hell, West Point itself wasn’t even super gung-ho about turning its football players into officers as of last year. Yes, Army is Ellerson’s dream job, and he’s bringing the option to Michie Stadium. But that’s not what will make or break him. Recruiting, however, will.

Army has a pretty steep hill to climb in that category. First, the good news for Army fans: Coach Ellerson has stated that the team needs better speed across the board, and that finding speed is his top recruiting priority. Hey, the first step is admitting that you have a problem, and with that Ellerson has already done more than his predecessors who thought that Army had “closed the gap” on Navy. But recruiting is easier said than done. I’m sure some Army fan will read this and think it’s just some Navy fan being arrogant, but Navy should beat Army for recruits. All else being equal, the Naval Academy has two distinct advantages on top of simply being the best program right now. The first is location: downtown Annapolis vs. middle-of-nowhere Highland Falls is a no-brainer. The second is far more important: the Naval Academy is the only school of the three that can offer pretty much anything that the other schools do after graduation. Want to fly jets? You can do that. Be a ground-pounder? Ditto. Drive ships? Submarines? Jump out of airplanes? Drive tanks? Yes to all of them. The same can’t be said of USMA or USAFA, barring the rare interservice transfer. To an 18-year old kid, this is huge. Making a commitment to the military can seem intimidating enough without having to rule out service options from the get-go. Having four years to to make an educated decision about what’s appealing to you isn’t just comforting; it’s smart. Why burn bridges? Of course, all other things are rarely equal. There’s always some difference in coaching, facilities, and the whims of individual recruits. But this advantage plays out over time. Of the 14 men’s sports in which Army and Navy compete against each other, Navy leads the all-time series in 12 of them (with one tie).  And by switching to an offense that’s similar to Navy’s, it makes it that much more important to beat Navy for players.

And that is what will ultimately decide whether Rich Ellerson is the right coach for Army: getting the right players. It’s a tall task, but not an impossible one. If it happens at all, it’s going to take time– which may or may not be a luxury that Kevin Anderson posesses. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now, Army fans can at least look forward to a spring game that promises to be more than just a “defensive scrimmage.” So it’s already better than last year, right?