Can Navy Take the Next Step?

The good news is that, at 3-0, Navy is officially a contender for a spot in the American Athletic Conference championship game.

The bad news is that if they want to stay that way, they’ll need to get better in a hurry.

Considering how the season started, it is a small miracle that we’ve reached this point. After a fall camp that didn’t include any contact in practice, the team has been playing catch-up ever since, trying to establish their fundamentals while simultaneously preparing for each week’s opponent. Nevertheless, they remain unblemished in conference play, the only team in the American at 3-0.

The American is a challenging conference from top to bottom, so any win is a big deal, especially on the road. Still, nobody expected Tulane, Temple, and East Carolina to challenge for the league crown. That’s not the case for Navy’s next four opponents.

On Saturday, the Mids will face Houston, with a prolific air-raid offense and a replenished roster. They’ll head to Dallas on Halloween to play #16 SMU. After that comes Tulsa, and while the Golden Hurricane wasn’t considered a preseason favorite in the league, they have a stout defense and a win over UCF under their belts. So does Memphis, who won the conference last year and rounds out this brutal stretch.

It’s a murderer’s row, but it’s also a tremendous opportunity. Cincinnati is the odds-on favorite to claim one berth in the title game. Most people would have picked UCF to claim the other spot, but they already have two conference losses. Navy plays every one of the remaining contenders, and three of the four are coming to Annapolis. The Mids, as the saying goes, control their destiny.

But can they seize the moment? It’s unlikely if they remain on their current path. We’re almost halfway through the season, and Navy has yet to put together a 300-yard rushing performance. The defense prides itself on stopping the run, but they’ve surrendered 233 yards per game on the ground in their three conference wins. Both units will need to make considerable strides if they expect to either slow down, or keep up with, the offenses they are about to face.

Even as he savored the win over ECU, Ken Niumatalolo acknowledged that his team had a long way to go. He offered an example, pointing out that more experienced quarterbacks could reliably get the offense in the right play after reading the defense.

“It got tough because they [ECU] were going back and forth,” he said. “They’ll get better as the year goes on. Older guys we’ve had, from Keenan, to Will Worth, Malcolm, they could check back. So if they [the defense] checked, we could check back. We’re not at that phase yet. We’ll get there.”

The question, of course, is when. This is a pivotal time for the Mids; they have the potential for everything from history to calamity. Where they fall on that scale depends on what point they are able to put together a complete performance.

Niumatalolo is heartened by how his team has found a way to win even as they haven't played their best.

"I'm encouraged that we're improving," he said. "We've got a long way to go, but I'm encouraged that we've found ways to win ugly games, to find a way to get the W. Hopefully, we can keep doing that. It'd be nice to have blowout wins, but we'll take anything we can get."

Niumatalolo has several reasons to be encouraged, given how far the Mids have come. The lack of contact before the season left the team physically unprepared, but those problems appear to be behind them. Indeed, there were times in the ECU game where Navy was physically dominant.

The mental side of things, though, hasn't quite caught up. There are too many mistakes being made on both sides of the ball. Some of them are obvious, like missed assignments or missed option reads. Others are more subtle; a player might hesitate for a split second because he isn't entirely confident about where to go. A lack of a spring practice and a proper fall camp would put any team behind schedule, but it came at a particularly bad time for this Navy team. So far this year, the Mids have had 22 players making their first career start, which is tied for the most in the country. Roster turnover isn't unusual at Navy, but starting so many underclassmen is; five defensive starters on Saturday were either freshmen or sophomores. Younger players are learning things on the fly that they might have picked up in a normal camp.

Still, while they aren't where they need to be, the young players are improving. ECU rushed 45 times for 268 yards on Saturday, but 201 of those yards were the result of nine plays. Outside of those nine plays, the Mids held ECU to under two yards per carry. This is why Niumatalolo often says that winning is hard; you can do everything right most of the time, but it only took nine mistakes to completely change the defense's overall performance.

An optimist might point out that they are only nine plays away from perfection. Without those mistakes, plus a few more correct option reads, this game wouldn't have been so close. But the last couple of horsepower is always the most difficult to squeeze out of the engine, and time is running out if Navy wants to compete for a conference title.

Both the coaches and players are keenly aware of the task at hand.

"We're getting better," said defensive coordinator Brian Newberry. "We've gotten a little bit better every week, but now we need to make a big jump. Moving forward, against Houston and the games coming up, we're about to run a gauntlet against some really good offensive football teams. If we don't get a lot better, then we're not going to have a chance to win another game. Our guys understand that. They're practicing with a purpose."

"We've won three games, but we've got a lot of room for improvement everywhere," said Niumatalolo. "We definitely haven't reached our ceiling, that's for sure."

With so many of Navy's problems stemming from how they practiced before the season, there is a silver lining; it's unlikely that they will reappear next year. However, there is a lot of football to be played in the meantime. To their credit, the Mids have played their way into a tremendous opportunity. Making the most of that opportunity will take a sense of urgency.