Air Force entered Saturday's game as objectively one of the worst teams in the country. They were averaging less than 10 points per game against FBS competition. They had 300 yards of total offense in a game only once, against a winless Wyoming team. They lost that game by 12 anyway. If any name other than "Air Force" was on the team's jersey, no Navy fan would have been worried about this game.
But it's hard for Navy fans to look at service academy games objectively, and for good reason. These games are emotional, to the point where coaches often have to get players to calm down rather than get them excited to play. That kind of emotion on a team full of college students brings a whole new variable to the matchup that can influence the outcome. With the history of this series, especially in Colorado Springs, some Navy fans weren't convinced the Mids would win until the clock hit zero.
But that's what made this game so extraordinary: it was so normal. Navy's performance was best described as matter-of-fact. They made some big plays, to be sure, but they've been doing that all season. The emotion was there, and you could see it after the game. But during the game, everything felt almost routine. The Mids carried out their business with minimal fuss, and what should have been a convincing win was indeed just that: a convincing win.
One thing we discussed in the preview was how the Mids' new offense could change the dynamic of their service academy games. In the past, much effort has been spent coming up with something different to use on offense against Army and Air Force. An advantage I thought Navy had coming into this game was that they could run more things that would look different to Air Force but were still within the bounds of the "normal" Navy offense. And that's precisely what happened. We saw some new wrinkles, but nothing beyond the scope of what Navy practices every week. Because they were running their regular offense and not something special, Navy's execution was far better than usual in this matchup. Their 329 rushing yards were the most they've had against Air Force since 2017 and their second-highest total of the season.
Drew Cronic likes to go off of a script on his first possession, calling plays designed to reveal the defense's plan as much as they're designed to move the ball. While the Mids went three and out on their opening drive, we saw what the Air Force plan was. They played man coverage underneath with one safety over the top, starting with two deep safeties and bringing one up in run support based on whatever motion Navy used. They also shifted their linebackers to match the motion. Navy's playcalling evolved as Air Force adjusted this setup through the game.
On their second drive, the Mids started by running a counter option. The motion caused the safeties and linebackers to react, but because of the reverse pivot, the playside safety ended up dropping into coverage. That left more running room for Blake Horvath.
The Mids followed that up by running a counter trey option. You may remember this as the play they ran so well against UAB last year. The goal here was to basically create a win-win situation. The jet sweep should be fast enough to outflank the safety playing up, while the counter the other way had big-play potential if the quarterback got the right read. In this play, it was the former.
After that, Navy worked on the linebackers by running a belly option play. The motion was enough to get the safety rotation going the wrong way again. The linebackers, though, read the play and shifted to the play side. This is what the Mids were counting on. The motion receiver blocked the inside linebacker, preventing him from scraping outside. The outside linebacker was left unblocked as the pitch key.
The grand finale of the drive was a wheel-post pattern that put Navy on the doorstep of the end zone. With three receivers lined up on one side of the formation, both safeties lined up to the strong side of the formation with one in run support. That made him susceptible to the wheel route if he didn't diagnose the play early. That's what Brandon Chatman ran. The fake bubble screen drew up the other safety to ensure there would be no deep help on the wheel route.
That set up Navy's first touchdown.
On Navy's second drive, Air Force adjusted by just playing straight man defense, which you can see on this FB belly play. A safety follows the motion man, and the fake jet sweep gets the linebackers moving outside. Alex Tecza found some space by cutting inside the scraping linebackers.
Playing man defense, though, makes it very easy to get defenders running the wrong way, which led to Nathan Kent's touchdown on a reverse. Both safeties follow the motion. The playside cornerback is playing man defense on the tight end and follows him inside even though the TE is only blocking. That left nobody home when Kent turned the corner.
Air Force had to adjust again. On Navy's next possession, the Falcons shifted to a cover 3 zone. At first, the Mids took advantage of the cushion underneath. But because the cornerbacks were in zone coverage, the receivers could no longer run them out of the play. The corners could have their eyes in the backfield more, which helped them step up against the run.
On third and three, Navy anticipated pressure from the cornerback and called another wheel route. Normally, the wheel is paired with a post route, but since the safety bit the cheese the last time the Mids faked a receiver screen, they tried it again. This time, though, it was the inside linebacker's job to cover the flat instead. The safety stayed deep.
I suspect the play call would have been more conservative if Navy had not had a 14-0 lead. But with that lead, it was a decent gamble for a chance to blow the game open.
With the defense playing straight zone, Navy turned to the RPO. One thing that Cronic tries to do in his playcalling is create conflict with individual defenders. By combining a QB rollout with a receiver in the flat, the flat defender has to choose between his zone or the ball carrier. That defender becomes the quarterback's read, and when he runs outside, Horvath turns upfield. Seeing that the defense was in zone again, Cronic went back the the wheel route, this time accompanied by a post pattern. The flat defender had to respect the run again, which kept him from dropping into a deeper zone. The post route should have drawn the safety away enough for Horvath to thread the needle between zones, but instead, it turned into offensive pass interference that killed the drive.
(Man, what a perfect throw that was, though.)
On the next drive, the Mids went back to the belly option, using the shifting outside linebacker as the pitch key. With the corner and safety dropping into zone coverage, there was plenty of running room.
Air Force couldn't afford to keep sitting back, so they started choosing spots to send a safety in run support again. When the Mids went back to the counter trey option, the safety on the side they pulled to came up to play the run. The Mids responded with a pop pass. A lineman pulled to make it look like a counter option, which made the safety come up. The pass went behind him.
The Mids then got a circus catch from Eli Heidenreich that put them in the red zone, where they went to the triple option. One safety followed the offensive line's zone blocking and came up in run support, which left running room for the option as the other safety dropped back.
On the next series, Horvath picked up a first down on a rollout, followed by another first down on a counter option. On the next play, the offense ran the counter trey option again, and while it went for a decent gain, the linebackers followed the sweep while ignoring the pulling linemen. So, on the next play, the Mids added a wrinkle by running the same counter play, but making it a triple option. If the quarterback gets a give read, the fullback takes the ball and follows the pulling linemen to the backside. With the linebackers going the other way, Daba Fofana wasn't touched until he was five yards past the line of scrimmage.
In the red zone, Navy went back to the regular zone triple option. The last time the Mids ran the triple, the linebackers followed the line, and there was plenty of running room for the quarterback. This time, the linebacker and safety went the opposite direction to take that running room away, but it just left nobody covering the gaps when the quarterback got a give read.
In the fourth quarter, Air Force desperately needed a play, so they got aggressive by playing man defense with the safeties on the snipes again. And once again, they were burned by it. First, the Mids ran the counter trey option again, and the entire defense followed the sweep. Heidenreich was forced to reverse field, but when he did, not only were there no defenders waiting for him, but he had the two pulling linemen out there leading the way.
In the red zone, the Mids faked the jet sweep to get the safeties moving the wrong way, then flipped it to Tecza, who was left with nobody in front of him.
There was a constant back-and-forth between the Navy offense and the Air Force defense, and the Falcons didn't make an adjustment that Cronic didn't have an answer for. It was a different story when Air Force had the ball.
The Falcons had a hard time making adjustments because Navy didn't give them much to adjust to. While Air Force's safeties and linebackers were constantly caught running the wrong way, Navy's never were. The Mids never chased eye candy and stayed home even when Air Force threw all kinds of misdirection at them.
In this play, the Falcons sent a fullback and a pulling lineman in one direction before tossing the ball to the tailback going the other way. Rather than chase the misdirection, Jaxson Campbell stayed home. While he didn't make the tackle, he kept the runner from being able to turn upfield right away. This gave other defenders time to run to the ball, and the Mids got a big third-down stop.
It was the same story when Air Force tried to run a reverse. Even after the ball was tossed, Kyle Jacob and Luke Pirris didn't try to chase it down from behind. When the ball carrier came back their way, he had nowhere to go.
This is remarkable discipline by the players and remarkable trust in the players. If you have defenders staying home instead of chasing the ball carrier down from behind, that means your playside defenders have to be absolutely solid both in tackling and shedding blocks. It also put a lot of responsibility on the safeties' shoulders, because a lot of the inside-out responsibility fell to them. In this play, you can see Dashaun Peele staying behind to guard against any receivers or ball carriers running out the back door. Air Force had everyone blocked on the play side, but Mbiti Williams Jr. was able to track the play down and make the tackle for only about a three-yard gain.
Relying on the players to make plays paid off more often than not. Look at this incredibly athletic tackle by Justin Reed after beating the cut on the backside:
If Colin Ramos doesn't make this stop, it probably goes a long way:
But because Navy defenders did make those stops, the coaches never had to put them in situations where they risked being caught out of position.
That's not to say that the coaches didn't pick their spots, but when they did, they tried to confuse the offense more than overwhelm it with numbers. In this play, the Mids line up in an odd front. Just before the snap, though, Jacob moves up to the line to make it an even front. The blocking rules are different against an even front, and after the last-second change, someone missed their assignment. Reed went into the backfield unblocked.
The Mids also did a good job masking their gap assignments, which is a trademark of their run defense. Here is a zone run where the offensive lineman blocks the player lined up in front of his area, which is what you're supposed to do in zone blocking. The problem is that the defender assigned to that gap was actually Campbell, who was lined up well outside the tackle box.
Air Force's inexperience also showed at times, like on this play where they had the tackle and playside slotback arc out, but neither one of them blocked anyone. To be fair, it wouldn't have mattered if they did. Ramos again made another great play, getting into the backfield and scaring a pitch out of the quarterback. The problem is that he wasn't the pitch key; Peele was. The pitch man got the ball when he wasn't supposed to. He was toast.
With the offense prone to mistakes like this, it was easier to use a game plan that made them drive the length of the field. There wasn't a need to force mistakes out of the offense when they were likely to do just fine producing them on their own. The Falcons did make a few plays, but only once did they lead to points.
Air Force is not a good football team. This win won't move the national needle, nor should it. But that doesn't mean Navy fans shouldn't appreciate it. Wins in Colorado Springs have been all too rare. And while we will see better Air Force teams in the near future, Navy's new offense should still alter the dynamic of the series, making it look more like actual football games and less like 60-minute rugby scrums.
One more test has been passed. On to the next one.
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