The Crystal Ball Run is a new collaboration between several fine bloggers, including some you’ve come across while reading this blog over the years like Blatant Homerism and In The Bleachers. They asked if I would answer a few questions on Navy football, and I obliged. You can read my responses here.

You can follow The Crystal Ball Run on Twitter. You can follow me too, for that matter.

Football practice started two weeks ago. Media day is done, the first scrimmage is in the books, and the season is officially underway. Usually around this time I start blathering about how the summer felt so short and that I’m not sure if I’m ready to start again blah blah blah. That mess won’t fly this year, since I basically took the second half of last season off. I might end up doing the same thing this year, but for now I’ll fool myself into thinking that I’m gung-ho.  Time to get crackin’. I have a lot of work to catch up on. The next week will be dedicated to clearing out my DVR and putting a bunch of games on DVD. That, and maybe I should actually write a thing or two. LOLLERS LET’S NOT GET TOO FAR AHEAD OF OURSELVES.

Anyway, a new season brings all the usual questions as we try to sift through the unknown. How do the new players look, how are the position battles shaping up, how do you fight complacency… You know the drill. This year it also brings a few not-so-usual questions too, as the Mids come into 2011 with someone else on the top of the service academy heap for the first time in a long time. The last time a Navy team started the season without the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy in Bancroft Hall, most of the current plebe class was entering fifth grade. It’s a weird feeling. If you’re in search of silver linings, that probably takes care of the whole “complacency” thing. The other questions are in the process of being sorted out.

Most of those questions come on the defensive side of the ball, where Jabaree Tuani, Max Blue, and Kwesi Mitchell are the only starters returning from a year ago. The last time we saw this kind of turnover was 2007, and those were some dark days. That was a bit of a different situation, though, since a slew of injuries pressed a bunch of freshmen and sophomores into starting roles. That isn’t the case this year. Of course, I said the exact same thing going into last year, and while the 2010 defense wasn’t anywhere near as bad as they were in 2007, they were incredibly erratic. Against Maryland, the run defense let everything through like it would’ve been impolite not to. A week later against Georgia Southern, they were fantastic. If tackling is an art, then the Notre Dame game was the Louvre while the Duke game the following week was more like those galleries that show crucifixes made of poop. Sure, you could say that some of the inconsistency stemmed from who they were playing, but we even saw Jekyll & Hyde performances in the same game like in the first and second halves against SMU. It was crazy, and it’ll be hard to build consistency in 2011 with the unit breaking in 8 new starters.

Hard, but not impossible. When you look at Navy’s recruiting classes over the last 2-3 years, the majority of the players that had other I-A offers were on the defensive side of the ball. Athletically, the defense is as good it’s ever been.  And while there aren’t many returning starters, that doesn’t mean these guys are devoid of experience, especially on the defensive line. It’s the linebackers that are the biggest unknown, but the coaches have said a lot of good things about Jarred Shannon and Mason Graham, and the inside linebackers all stood out because of their hard work  in the offseason strength and conditioning program. The pieces look like they’re in place, so there’s a reason for a measure of optimism. Anything more than that would just be blind faith.

The offense is a different story, with 4 returning starters on the offensive line, both starting slotbacks, Alex Teich at fullback, and a senior quarterback in Kriss Proctor that has seen plenty of reps and knows the offense cold. Aaron Santiago is finally healthy, and together with Gee Gee Greene they give the Mids a one-two punch at slot that we haven’t seen since Reggie and Zerb. The entire slotback rotation is stacked, for that matter. Even the wide receivers have been making plays in practice, although with Proctor not exactly known as a gunslinger it’s unlikely that they’ll be catching as many passes as they did last year.

The passing game might be the only potential hiccup in this offense. There was a time when Navy fans held their collective breath whenever the Mids dropped back to pass, but that changed a bit with Ricky Dobbs at quarterback. Ricky had a strong and accurate arm that made passing a viable and routine alternative in the Navy arsenal. While that kind of passing ability is more of a luxury than a necessity in this scheme, you do need to be able to connect on play action downfield. Navy’s defensive philosophy revolves around preventing the big play, with the idea that the more snaps you force an offense to take, the more likely they are to make a mistake. The same applies to the Navy offense as well; more snaps, more opportunity for error. That’s why you have to take advantage of big plays in the passing game when that’s what the defense is giving you. Remember the Delaware game in 2003? The Blue Hens completely sold out on the option and ignored pass defense altogether. Early on, the Mids were able to take advantage and shot out to a 14-0 lead after Craig Candeto connected with Eric Roberts on a long TD pass. But Delaware stuck to their game plan, and the Mids weren’t able to make those pass plays consistently. They would end up losing to Delaware 21-17. Last year, when Louisiana Tech tried the same thing, the Mids responded with 219 yards passing and a 37-23 win.

Kriss doesn’t have to throw like Ricky to make this offense go, but he does have to throw well enough to at least give the defense something to think about. He’s been compared to Kaipo more than once due to their mutual grasp of the offense. Something else Kaipo was known for early in his career was having a noodle arm. By the time he graduated, though, Kaipo had developed into a pretty good passer. It rarely looked pretty when he dropped back to throw, but it was effective. If Kriss can even come close to making that kind of progress, this might be the best Navy offense of the last decade. If not, it’ll still be pretty good. It will have to be with the schedule that the Mids will be facing this year.

So that’s how I see things coming into 2011. Thoughts?

If I Could Be Anybody It Would Be:  King Leonidas, because he was the best leader of all time and a total savage.

http://www.navysports.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/063011aaa.html

Did Vince Lombardi say that he wanted his linebackers to be savage leaders? If not, he should have. Between that and his opinion on PowerPoint:

Bill Wagner weighed in yesterday on Ricky’s performance in the East-West Shrine Game. It was a positive assessment for the most part, and I agree. I thought Ricky played well. He looked a little bit uncomfortable on his first series, and looked like he could have used some better cleats when he slipped on his first pass attempt. On his second series, the coaches started him out by running a couple of quarterback draws, which are right in Ricky’s wheelhouse. That seemed to give him a little confidence, and he played well after that. The wind was absolutely ridiculous that day– it was strong enough to actually blow over one of the metal benches on the sideline before the game– making downfield passes a virtual impossibility. On short and medium-range passes, though, Ricky threw the ball very well. Well enough to turn the heads of NFL scouts? Hell if I know. Besides, most of their evaluation is done during the week in practice. But if nothing else, Ricky played well and made Navy fans proud. At least this Navy fan, anyway.

There needs to be some clarification after Wags’ article, though. He’s wrong about the “Alternative Service Option.” The ASO is not, as he put it, a “Department of Defense initiative.” The DoD policy, which you can read here, requires a minimum of two years of active duty service before an athlete is allowed to apply to his particular service’s secretary for permission to play professional sports. I emphasize “minimum” because any further requirements, including additional years of active service, are at the discretion of the individual service secretaries. The Secretary of the Navy requires that athletes serve the entire length of their active duty obligations. The Secretaries of the Army and the Air Force do not, and instead abide by the DoD minimums.

The “Alternative Service Option” is a defunct program that the Army attempted as a way to circumvent the Department of Defense minimums. Born out of a West Point committee assembled in 2003 and tasked with finding ways to improve Army football, the ASO allowed Army athletes to play professionally immediately upon graduation beginning in 2005. In order to get around the DoD requirement for at least two years of active duty service, the ASO simply said that athletes could play professional sports and call that “active duty service.” The Department of Defense shut the ASO down, issuing a memo that stated “constructs for ‘active duty’ service should not include arrangements typically unavailable to others in uniform.”

In short, there is no DoD “program.” Applications to play professionally are handled on a case by case basis, following DoD minimums, and at the discretion of each service’s secretary. The Secretary of the Navy simply chooses not to approve the applications he receives.

Remember when this was, like, a blog? With, like, posts and stuff? That was cool. Now it’s pretty much just a testing ground for the WordPress spam filter. Yeah, this football season was pretty much a punt as far as the blog was concerned. Not that anyone was all that upset over my absence.

Then again, the season isn’t *quite* finished yet, at least for one Navy football player. Ricky Dobbs, fresh off of being named First Team All-East by the ECAC, still has one more game to play. Ricky is one of three quarterbacks on the East roster for Saturday’s East-West Shrine Game to be played in Orlando. That’s a short drive for me, so I’ll be in attendance. I went to Mobile to cheer on Eric Kettani in the Senior Bowl a couple years ago; Eric got a lot of playing time, scored a touchdown, and came over to us after the game to talk for a few minutes. It was a good time, even if you had to make sure your vaccinations were up-to-date before you went into that stadium. I’m sure it’ll be a good time this Saturday, too; I wish I wasn’t going to miss the Army-Navy basketball doubleheader, but that’s what DVRs are for. It’s worth it for one last chance to see a Navy great in action.

The fact that Ricky is even in this game makes me chuckle a little. When quarterbacks from run-first offenses are invited to these games, they’re often switched to more NFL-friendly positions that highlight their athletic ability. Chris McCoy, you’ll recall, was invited to the old Blue-Gray Game in 1997 to play tailback (which he did well enough to be named the game’s MVP). Ricky, on the other hand, will be playing quarterback. Fortunately, whoever was in charge of inviting players to this game realized something that a lot of “experts” did not: that Ricky can throw the ball really, really well. I don’t know why ESPN trots out Bob Davie almost any time they’re showing an option team, but they do. Watching Air Force play Georgia Tech in the Independence Bowl, it got really old listening to Davie compare the Air Force offense to the spread options run by Georgia Tech and Navy. Or, to be more accurate, it got old listening to Davie compare the caricatures of each offense that he had drawn up in his head, talking about Air Force’s “diversity” and the “advantage” in being able to score quickly that comes from lining up in the shotgun. The whole “Navy isn’t a quick strike offense” line is something that we hear from every broadcast booth almost every week. And while I expected The Mtn’s Poinsettia Bowl preview show to be SDSU-centric (nothing wrong with that), their assessment of Navy was incredibly bad– calling Navy’s offense “simpler,” saying that Ricky “isn’t quite the same decision-maker as Tim Jefferson,” and calling Ricky a “questionable” passer. Really? Well, let’s compare the Navy and Air Force offenses, shall we? Which offense threw for more yards last year? That would be Navy. More touchdowns? Navy. Better yards per attempt and yards per completion? Navy. Lining up in a shotgun once in a while doesn’t make for a good passing team. Having a quarterback like Ricky Dobbs, though, does.

Ricky Dobbs can throw. He steps up into pressure without hesitation and throws on the run as well as anyone on any level. Now, there’s nothing inherently good or bad about throwing the ball, so this isn’t a commentary on the superiority of any offense. But if you’re going to make a comparison of each offense’s capability in the passing game, don’t you think that it would make sense to note which offense has actually thrown for more yards? Don’t you think that perhaps it might take more than one game to gauge a player’s passing ability? I expect national TV commentary to be generic and focused on the lowest common denominator, but not… wrong. Anyone who followed Navy football this year knows that the old option offense cliches don’t apply, thanks in large part to Ricky’s arm.

Postseason college all-star games aren’t really the biggest deal in the world, but if nothing else, playing in the East-West Shrine Game gives Ricky one more chance to highlight the Naval Academy. There are some people who resent the attention that Ricky gets. Those people, frankly, are idiots. The school fields a Division I-A football program because playing major college football puts the Naval Academy in the same conversation as other schools in America’s mainstream. It’s a medium to get USNA into the living rooms of high school students that otherwise wouldn’t consider or even have heard of the place. The attention that Ricky gets enhances that; it isn’t just good for the football program, it’s good for the school. Take, for example, Ricky winning the 2010 Lowes Senior CLASS Award. That’s a 30-second spot shown during the BCS Championship Game, which just happened to be the highest-rated show in cable history.

27.3 million people saw Ricky Dobbs as a role model, awarded for excellence on the field and in his community, all with the Navy name on the front of his jersey and in his service dress blues on stage. Ricky has a compelling story that people want to write about, a personality that people want to talk about, and happens to be kinda good at football. Naturally, people are going to be drawn to that. And if you care at all about the big picture, you should pray that players like Ricky will get the kind of attention he has.

The pride of Douglasville, GA (literally) started getting significant playing time as a sophomore in 2008, coming off the bench to lead the Mids to wins over Temple and SMU, and getting his first start in a 16-0 win at Northern Illinois. Everyone could tell that he was a special player right away, but for me there was something more. I mean, I don’t write poetry for just anybody. I wasn’t sure what it was until about halfway through this season, when it dawned on me: Ricky Dobbs reminds me of my childhood hero, Alton Grizzard.

Other than simply being two of the best quarterbacks in Navy history, they’re alike in so many ways:

Toughness— Grizz was the prototypical wishbone quarterback, built out of a mix of concrete and stubborn determination. He was a quarterback that wore a neck roll. He suffered a bruised lung against Boston College his senior year, but didn’t tell anyone until he started spitting up blood later in the week. When told he couldn’t play the following week against Air Force, he lobbied team doctors to let him switch to wide receiver, thinking that he’d take fewer hits (they said no). Everyone remembers Frank Schenk’s game-winning field goal to top Army in 1989. Not everyone remembers the drive that got the Mids in range, led by Alton as he fought for first down after first down. Ricky is no stranger to playing with injury himself. He played half of last season with a broken kneecap, an injury he first sustained in high school. Even after surgery in the offseason, he still was playing through pain to start 2010. For good measure, he went ahead and played through a sprained ankle and bruised sternum suffered in the first two weeks of the season.

Running Style— Neither quarterback was particularly fast, but they bored through the line like an auger. They both made a cut at the first sign of a hole, laughed at defenders trying to arm-tackle them, and excelled at turning back and running against the grain:

I got goosebumps putting that clip together. Eerily similar.

Passing— Grizzard didn’t exactly throw much in Elliot Uzelac’s wishbone offense, but that changed his senior year after George Chaump was hired. Alton took full advantage, throwing for 1438 yards and a school record 12 TDs. That stat line looks remarkably similar to Ricky’s senior year numbers of 1527 yards and a new school record of 13 TDs, especially when you consider that Ricky had an extra game.

In the Record Books— Alton ended his Navy career as the Mids’ career leader in yards from scrimmage with 5,666. Ricky had 5,435. Ricky set a school record for rushing touchdowns in his junior year, then followed it up with the school record for passing touchdowns in his senior year. The record he broke for passing TDs was Grizzard’s. Both finished with 20 passing TDs in their careers. Grizzard’s best day on the ground was a 225-yard performance against Penn in his freshman year. Dobbs’ best was 224 against SMU in his sophomore year. Grizzard is 7th on Navy’s career passing yardage list. Dobbs is 8th.

Larger Than Life Personality— Maybe the biggest similarity between Alton and Ricky is how they really were the big men on campus. It wasn’t just because they were star football players, either. Both have been described as genuine, engaging, and just plain friendly by the people who know them. They were as popular for who they were off the field as much as for anything they did on the field.

Navy played a lot of bad football for a long time, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t some great players on those teams. With the Mids winning under the leadership of Paul Johnson and Ken Niumatalolo, I always wonder how my favorite players from the past would have done if they had the kind of coaching that Navy has now. I used to wonder about Alton more than anyone else, but not anymore. I know how Alton would have looked. He’d look like Ricky. Over the last three years, I was able to relive part of what made me a Navy fan in the first place. And that’s why I will be in Orlando on Saturday.

Gratitude.

Think I’ll go ahead
And just pretend that tonight’s
Game never happened.