The ECU Debrief
I hesitate to call Navy “lucky” for their 27-23 win over East Carolina on Saturday afternoon. I don’t want to minimize the team’s effort; they made plays on both sides of the ball when they had to.
Still, one can’t help but feel like the Mids dodged a bullet. ECU was shorthanded due to COVID testing and contract tracing. Among the players missing was quarterback Holton Ahlers, and the ECU offense became very one-dimensional without him. The Pirates ran for a whopping 268 yards, but freshman quarterback Mason Garcia completed only 10 of his 20 pass attempts for 104 yards. A more reliable passing threat from a veteran quarterback could easily have made the difference that ECU needed to tilt the outcome in their favor.
Hypotheticals, though, don’t win football games. We’ll never know what might have happened, but in the realm of the actual, the Mids pulled off a hard-fought victory. The defense did damage control after being repeatedly saddled with a short field, and the offense built a lead in the second half before draining the clock at the end. Nelson Smith continued his impressive form by running for 157 yards and two touchdowns, while Diego Fagot led the defense with 12 tackles after missing last week’s game due to injury.
In the preview, I speculated that ECU defensive coordinator Blake Harrell would alternate between odd and even fronts against Navy based on what he did against Wofford with Kennesaw State last year. That’s exactly what he did. If I expected it even with my untrained eye, you know the Navy coaches saw it coming from a mile away. It shouldn’t even matter, anyway; the Navy offense practices against multiple looks every week no matter what.
Still, after the offense had a tough time moving the ball in the first half, I wondered if the different looks might have given quarterback Dalen Morris some trouble. Every team that Navy has faced this year has used an odd front almost exclusively. I asked Ken Niumatalolo after the game if the multiple looks might have been a problem for Morris when it came to getting the offense in the right play. I thought his answer was interesting.
“Yeah, you’re trying to guess as a play-caller where they’re going, so you try to pick the right side,” he said. “But eventually we said, you know what, we’re just going to come off the ball, do our deal, and that’s what the guys did. We were trying to figure out which way they were going and different things. They did a good job of mixing things up, so it was hard to get a bead on that. But after a while, I said screw it, we’re going to come off the ball and go. Our B-backs ran really well and did a really good job.”
Smith and Jamale Carothers combined for 239 of Navy’s 288 rushing yards, although it took a while for them to get going. Navy's first five possessions consisted of one touchdown along with two turnovers and two three-and-outs.
On Navy's first play from scrimmage, we saw the ECU defensive game plan. It consisted of two main elements. The playside linebacker and safety played aggressive run support, while the backside defenders rolled behind them to follow the play. Meanwhile, the dive key interfered with the playside tackle's outside release, keeping him from blocking either of the ILBs.
This is what influenced the playcalling for most of the afternoon.
Because the defensive end was trying to prevent the PST's outside release, it made him easy to trap, making that one of the offense's first adjustments. Instead of releasing outside, the PST released inside to block the backside ILB. The motion of the slotback drew the safety away from the play.
That was really the only time that the FB trap was effective, though. The ECU defense made a clever adjustment of their own. Knowing that the fullback reads the nose guard to determine his path, the defense started to have the defensive tackle break one way, while an inside linebacker shot the opposite gap. Because the guard was pulling, there was nobody there to block.
Of course, every adjustment creates an opportunity somewhere else.
When the defense is overly aggressive in following the play, it opens them up to several things, with misdirection being the most obvious. We saw that when the Mids ran a reverse in the first quarter. They also used more subtle adjustments; the inside and outside zone both opened running lanes behind the defense's pursuit.
Knowing that the nose guard and a linebacker were responsible for the A gaps, the Mids started running the inside zone. With the nose guard immediately shooting an A gap, the center didn't even block him; he went straight to the second level. Blocking the nose guard became the adjacent guard's responsibility. One ILB shot the opposite A gap while the other was blocked by the center, allowing the fullback to cut back.
Dalen Morris' touchdown run was an outside zone where he ran behind the aggressive playside safety and through the arm tackle of the backside safety.
The Mids also ran the fullback off tackle, a play they often use when a defense uses the squeeze and scrape stunt. While that wasn’t really what ECU was doing, it had a similar effect. The perimeter defenders were focused on the possibility of the pitch, allowing the fullback to slip inside them. Since the side receiver didn’t have to block either of them, he could turn inside to block any linebacker that might be following the play. Chance Warren put a cherry on top with an excellent downfield block to turn a good play into a scoring play.
Early on, the Mids used different formations to get a numbers advantage. Their first touchdown came on a fullback toss. Coach Niumatalolo noticed that ECU didn’t alter their alignment to match Navy’s slotbacks being on the same side of the formation. He went a little nuts on the sideline, trying to get Morris’s attention, but the offense checked to the toss after he did.
The over-pursuit of the defense also opened up the passing game. Navy’s second play was a pass to the fullback out of the backfield. Carothers faked a block on the blitzing linebacker before slipping out of the backfield into the open space created by the secondary running in opposite directions.
Navy tried to run a variation of this play in the second half, using a slotback to slip behind the defense rather than the fullback. However, the attempt was thwarted when an ECU defender beat a cut block attempt by the guard.
The Mids also ran a crossing pattern in the opposite direction of the tail motion.
While I’ve highlighted the best examples of these plays from the game, others didn’t go so well. Some solid individual efforts from ECU defenders made it difficult for the Mids to run these plays consistently. That made it essential for Navy to execute option plays; then, they could read defenders instead of overpowering them. Unfortunately, for the first half, they could not.
Just before scoring their first touchdown, Navy tried running the triple option. Morris made the right reads and pitched the ball, but the safety beat the slotback's block attempt.
The biggest problem, though, was that Dalen struggled with option reads, whether it was the triple or midline, dive or pitch.
Each of those plays killed a drive, either by causing a turnover or putting the offense behind schedule. It forced the Mids to go away from option plays. After Morris left the game due to injury, he was replaced by Tyger Goslin. Right away, the offense went back to running option plays.
Goslin made a good read on his next drive as well, moving the ball well into ECU territory and setting up the Mids’ final score.
The offensive line got an incredible push on that play, re-establishing the line of scrimmage four yards downfield. It was an inconsistent day for the Navy offense, but it got a lot better once the option started clicking.
Inconsistent would be a good way to describe the performance of the Navy defense as well. Mason Garcia wasn’t much of a threat to pass, but he was a very capable runner. Navy played a lot of man coverage in this game, which made themselves vulnerable to the quarterback draw. You can see here how the receivers ran Navy’s secondary to the sideline, leaving a lot of room to run in the middle of the field.
After getting burned a couple of times, Coach Newberry changed things up a bit. Normally, the goal of the Navy defense is to focus on stopping the run on first and second down before coming after the quarterback on third down. In the second half, the Mids starting blitzing on less conventional occasions. Here, you can see them send an extra pass rusher on first down, then put a spy on the quarterback on third down to prevent scrambling.
Other problems, however, remained unsolved. The Mids continued to struggle against cutbacks on zone runs.
ECU took advantage of this by running designed counters. The line would move one way, but two blockers would pull to the backside. ECU tried a few different variations of this, with their biggest gains coming when the center and guard pulled.
You’ll notice on that second play that Newberry tried to slow it down by firing the cornerback. While it didn’t work then, other times, it did:
There was also some confusion between the Mids on their assignments. More than once, there were two linebackers filling the same gap, leaving another gap uncovered.
Those kinds of mental errors are what create the defense’s Jekyll-and-Hyde appearance. You can see the potential, but not the consistency. The Pirates ran 45 times for 268 yards. Only nine plays— nine— accounted for 201 of those yards.
As I’ve said before, it’s better to look back on what needs fixing after a win than it is after a loss. If these things aren’t fixed, though, the Mids won’t be so fortunate.