Once again I find myself apologizing for a lack of posting. Not only did I not even bother to post a game preview for Hawaii, but only now, in the middle of Army week, am I getting the Hawaii recap out. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to be doing this blog. I’m just not able to post as regularly as I want to. Of course, now that I say that, Army will bring back the Alternative Service Option and I’ll start spittin’ hellfire and brimstone again. Short of a train wreck of that magnitude, though, The Birddog’s days might be numbered. We’ll see.

SEEMINGLY IRRELEVANT ANECDOTE TIME

Despite my staggering blogger cashflow, I’m way too cheap to spring for the NFL Sunday Ticket. My brother isn’t, though, so when the Chargers have a big game, I’ll sometimes make my way over to his house to watch. It can be an interesting experience. My brother has the ability to tell if the Chargers will lose after watching only one or two drives. If he doesn’t like what he sees, he gets up, says something along the lines of “I can’t stand to watch the Chargers fail,” and leaves. Meanwhile, I’ll sit on his couch and watch the horror unfold for the next three hours. He just has a way of telling when a team’s collective head simply isn’t in the game.

It didn’t take my brother’s sixth sense to see that the Mids were going to lose to Hawaii. For me it took one play on their second drive. We’ll get to that later, but first I want to talk about the other side of the ball.

Continue reading “HAWAII 24, NAVY 17” →

I drove ten hours
And stayed up ’til 1:30
To watch bad football.

OK, so I admit I was a bit greedy with the whole bye week thing. I know the Delaware game was a long time ago, and you’ve already moved on to Hawaii and Army and the Texas Bowl. If you don’t really want to read about Delaware, I don’t blame you. Actually, maybe it’s for the best. All that time off can help you quit this lousy blog cold turkey. Here’s your chance to escape! Oh, but you can quit any time, right? Yeah, I’ve been telling myself the same thing for the last three years. Anyway, there was indeed a game in Annapolis two weekends ago. I’m sort of glad I went a whole week before watching it again. I know I’ve said it before, but it really is helpful to watch a game without the baggage of emotional attachment that comes when watching it live (or soon thereafter). Ricky Dobbs led the Mids to a 35-18 win on Senior Day, running for 100 yards and a stadium-record 5 touchdowns. Alex Teich averaged more than 6 yards per carry, and Marcus Curry and Gee Gee Greene combined for 90 yards of their own. Pretty decent output for a game that seemed so frustrating at the time, but wasn’t quite as bad upon further review.

Continue reading “NAVY 35, DELAWARE 18” →

With the welcome relief of a bye week slowing things down, now’s as good a time as any to look at how the Texas Bowl is shaping up. The Mids are now 8-3, and officially accepted the invitation following the Notre Dame win last week. Their opponent will come from the Big 12 as long as the conference has enough bowl-eligible teams. Last year we spent half of the run-up to the EagleBank Bowl looking at the ACC standings and praying to avoid a rematch with Wake Forest. Thankfully, there’s no such problem this year (yet).

Here’s the Big 12 Bowl lineup, assuming only the champ makes the BCS:

1. BCS (Fiesta)
2. Cotton
3. Holiday
4. Alamo
5. Sun
6. Insight
7. Independence
8. Texas

It’s possible for more than one team to make the BCS if Texas loses the Big 12 championship game, but still gets selected for a BCS at-large bid. In that case, the Texas Bowl would have the #9 selection from the conference, and we might have to start worrying about having enough teams eligible. If the conference doesn’t have a team available, then Navy’s opponent will be an at-large selection from who knows where.

Here’s how things look in the Big 12 right now:

Bowl eligible: Texas (10-0), Oklahoma State (8-2), Nebraska (7-3), Oklahoma (6-4), Texas Tech (6-4), Iowa State (6-5), Missouri (6-4)

Still alive: Kansas State (6-5), Kansas (5-5), Texas A&M (5-5), Baylor (4-6)

LOL no: Colorado (3-7)

Seven teams are bowl eligible, with four still kicking. None of the four has an easy go of things to finish up the season, so there are no guarantees to get eight eligible teams, let alone nine. Kansas State has 6 wins, but still isn’t bowl-eligible because two of those wins came against I-AA opponents. They play Nebraska next week. Win, and they get a spot in the Big 12 championship game and a chance to play for the Fiesta Bowl. Lose, and they don’t go to any bowl game. Talk about feast or famine… Anyway, the only team I wouldn’t want to play is Texas Tech, since that would be a rematch of the 2003 Houston Bowl. From a football perspective, anyone else in the conference would make a very appealing bowl matchup for the Mids. For obvious reasons, Texas, Oklahoma State, and Nebraska aren’t going to be trickling down to the #8 selection. The best-case scenario for Navy would be a team that would bring a lot of fans to the game, creating a better atmosphere for the game and helping the bowl committee financially. That means Oklahoma or Texas A&M. 

A few things need to happen in order for either of those teams to make their way down to the Texas Bowl. They would most likely have to finish 6-6; the bowls that pick ahead of the Texas Bowl will want OU and A&M too, but they won’t be able to select a 6-6 team if a team with a winning record is still available. That also means that a few other schools need a win in the next couple of weeks to guarantee a winning season. So here’s your Birddog Big 12 Texas Bowl Rooting Guide to give you something to follow during Navy’s week off.

1) Oklahoma at Texas Tech: An Oklahoma win gives them a winning record for the season and likely eliminates them from Texas Bowl contention. Same with the Red Raiders, so root for Texas Tech.

2) Iowa State at Missouri: This is the Cyclones’ last game of the season, while Mizzou still has a game against Kansas next week. Root for Iowa State to get a winning record, making it less likely that they will fall to the Texas Bowl.

3) Baylor at Texas A&M: Call in whatever karmic favors you have to pull for Texas A&M.

4) Kansas State at Nebraska: Not that it’s going to happen, but the more bowl-eligible Big 12 teams, the better. Cheer for Kansas State.

5) Kansas at Texas: Don’t bother hoping for the impossible. Texas.

If by some miracle all of this comes to pass, that will leave us with 6 teams with a guaranteed winning record: Texas, Oklahoma State, Nebraska, Texas Tech, Iowa State, and Kansas State. Oklahoma would be 6-5 with a game at home against Oklahoma State left to play. Mizzou would be 6-5 with 5-6 Kansas next on the schedule. Texas A&M would be 6-5, with their season finale against Texas remaining. If Texas wins the conference, that would leave at least 9 teams for the 8 bowl games to pick from. A Missouri win over Kansas would give them a winning record as well, leaving the Independence Bowl and Texas Bowl to pick from OU and A&M, assuming each loses its last game.

Confused yet? That’s the best-case scenario. I think it’s more likely that Kansas, Missouri, or Iowa State will end up playing Navy. Any of those would make for a great game, but I’m not sure if they’d make for a great crowd. Here’s hoping I’m wrong. Kansas and Missouri both drew well in their bowl games last year, after all. I’m just not as sure they’ll turn out for a game against Navy the way a more local team would.

Navy wins again;
Seven is greater than three.
Bye week! Sweet relief!

For Navy fans who lived through the two decades after George Welsh left to coach Virginia, it can be hard to admit that the Mids are, in fact, good. Slowly but surely, though, people are coming around. After all, Navy has won a lot of football games over the last seven years– 58 to be exact. “Expect to win” hasn’t just been a marketing slogan for NAAA; it’s been sound advice. While we all understand how challenging it is to win at a service academy, we know that Navy enters every game with a shot to win it. It shouldn’t be a surprise when they do.

The exception to that rule is Notre Dame. Navy could be the 5-time defending national champion, and beating Notre Dame would still be a big deal. It’s just not supposed to happen… A point we were all reminded about for 43 straight years. The losing streak might have ended in 2007, but Saturday’s win was just as satisfying. This was supposed to be the year that Notre Dame put Navy back in its place on the way to a BCS bowl. Instead, the Mids walked out of South Bend victorious, and Navy fans have been giddy ever since. Well, this Navy fan has been, anyway, and I’m sure I’m not alone. If it’s hard for us to move on, imagine how hard it must be for the team. Moving on has been sort of a theme for Navy football this season, as Ken Niumatalolo has found himself trying to keep the team grounded after impressive performances in games like Ohio State and Rice. Too many people patting the team on the back, he said; he had to make sure his guys didn’t let it go to their heads. Niumat probably had to work overtime this week. He knows that the fastest way to squash the feel-good vibe from the Notre Dame win would be to walk out onto the field on Senior Day and lose to Delaware.

It’s not like it hasn’t happened before. In 2003, the Mids jumped out to a 14-0 lead before fizzling out on offense and falling, 21-17. In 2007, the offense was phenomenal, but the defense took the day off in a 59-52 loss. The Blue Hens advanced to the I-AA title game in both of those years, winning in 2003. The wheels fell off the wagon for Delaware last year, as they finished 4-8. This year’s team has bounced back a bit, coming into the Navy game at 6-3 and ranked 23rd in I-AA.

The difference has been primarily at quarterback. Delaware has relied on I-A transfers at quarterback over the last few years to lead their offenses. In 2003, it was Andy Hall, who transferred from Georgia Tech. In 2007, it was Pitt transfer Joe Flacco. Last year, head coach K.C. Keeler was about two games short of holding an open tryout with the student body to find someone to play the position. This year, though, Keeler has Penn State transfer Pat Devlin. With Devlin, the Blue Hen spread offense has regained some of its punch. Devlin threw for 302 yards against William & Mary, 329 against Maine, and 284 against UMass, helping to make Delaware the 25th-rated passing offense in I-AA. The Delaware offense is what Paul Johnson would call the “NCAA Offense:” spread, 3 or 4 wide, QB in the shotgun. The running game is a lot of the same zone schemes that have plagued the Mids in the past, although with an average size of 6-4, 277 pounds, the offensive line doesn’t have nearly the size of the other teams that ran those schemes.

Defensively, Delaware lines up in a 4-3. It’s a fairly young unit that will be taking the field against the Navy offense, with only 3 seniors expected to start. Over the years, Delaware has tried a little bit of everything against the Mids. In the ’03 game, the safeties basically ignored the possibility of the pass, and it burned them– once. After that, the Mids weren’t able to capitalize. Aaron Polanco was a much better passer than Craig Candeto, so that approach wouldn’t fly in ’04. Instead, they actually tried more of a straight man-to-man. Kyle Eckel ended up running for 143 yards. Last time, it was the ol’ free-safety-follows-the-slotback defense:

It didn’t work. Of course, the Mids couldn’t stop Delaware either, but I doubt that K.C. Keeler is anxious to recycle a game plan that gave up 52 points the last time out.

The concern after a big win is that it will lead to a letdown the following week. I don’t think that’s what we’re going to see out of Navy, though. The team already had a letdown against Temple. They’ve learned their lesson. I think that the win over Notre Dame will serve as a wake-up call for just how much this team can accomplish. A 10-win regular season is still within reach. As tired and beat up as the Mids are heading into their 11th straight week without a bye, they can go all-out knowing that a break is on the horizon. Ricky Dobbs looked like he hadn’t missed a beat last week, and the Navy offense might get a similar spark from the return of big-play slotback Marcus Curry. Navy fane know how dangerous Delaware can be. They’ll be motivated this week, too, as they will need to win to stay alive for a playoff berth. I don’t know if this Delaware team measures up to the championship contenders of years past, but they aren’t to be taken lightly. Fortunately, nobody knows that better than the Mids.

The scene: a television studio in Burbank, California. The audience listens in amazement as psychic John Edward relays messages from the other side.

JOHN EDWARD: …and so, Steve, Larry says that just because he’s dead, don’t think you don’t still owe him that 20 bucks.

STEVE: God dammit.

JOHN EDWARD: Larry says that can be arranged.

STEVE: *slinks away*

The audience claps.

Continue reading “CROSSING OVER” →

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