There was more to Navy's 34-20 win over ECU on Friday than just the performance of quarterback Braxton Woodson. Eli Heidenreich had 123 total yards and a touchdown. Nathan Kent caught a 61-yard touchdown pass. Rayuan Lane made plays all over the field, and Kyle Jacob had another outstanding game with seven tackles and an interception. The defense, as a whole, played one of their best games of the year.
But in the context of the season, Woodson is the story of the game. Fans and media have questioned Woodson's ability all season long, especially after the Tulane game. They said the offense stalls with him in the game, or that he's not a big-play threat, or any number of other complaints. I received plenty of tweets saying it's time to move on to a different QB2. It was ridiculous. Considering how often it happens, I shouldn't be so amazed at how quickly fans quit on players (especially quarterbacks), but I am anyway. Every problem is caused by the quarterback, and every problem is solved by changing quarterbacks. It's a tiresome routine.
But at least for a little while, we'll all get a reprieve from the madness. Woodson ran for 125 yards and two touchdowns and went 12-19 passing for 165 yards and another touchdown, silencing the critics (for now). The offense rolled up 454 yards against a defense that held them to 10 points a year ago. It took a while to get going; almost 300 of those yards and all the points came in the second half. But the defense kept ECU in check until the ball got rolling, and once it did, there was no stopping it.
To their credit, ECU's defense was the main reason why it took so long for Navy to get going. Personnel-wise, the Pirates were basically a 4-2-5, but they used an unorthodox game plan. That plan had three main components, starting with the composition of the front four. ECU used three down linemen and a rush end, which is a typical setup. The unusual thing was how they lined up. They did something different on almost every play. Sometimes, they were spread out across the offensive line. Sometimes, the down linemen would all line up inside the B gaps. Sometimes, all three would be on one side of the formation, with the rush end by himself on the other. I assume the thinking was to give the offensive line so many looks that they'd be overwhelmed and make mistakes, although it won't be an issue for a good offensive line.
The second component of the plan was to slant the down linemen regardless of where they lined up. This didn't happen on every play, but it did on most. At the snap, all three linemen attacked gaps in the same direction. This was a bit of a gamble. If they slanted in the opposite direction of the play, there was a chance the offense would have a wide running lane. But if they guessed correctly, the linemen could shoot gaps and make stops in the backfield.
That's a gamble worth taking, though, because one stop can knock an option team off schedule and set up third and long. This is why some of the Mids' inside zone and fullback belly plays looked decent, while others were like running into a wall.
The third element of ECU's game plan was that the secondary lined up five deep, 7-9 yards off the line of scrimmage. They would send players up in run support at the snap, but they would change which ones on every play. This had two benefits. Putting the DBs so far back made it difficult for the offense to throw deep. Even when two of them came up in run support, it was still difficult for the offense to take advantage of it because they couldn't predict which ones. The second benefit is that it took advantage of Navy's blocking rules. When players are lined up deep enough on some plays, the offense won't assign blockers to them. In theory, this would allow the Pirates to have their cake and eat it too, giving them the run support of an eight-man front with a pass-first look of five deep DBs.
The defense's alignment was quirky, but it wasn't a problem for Navy. The other parts of the plan, however, were.
There are some obvious things the offense can do against all those deep defenders, starting with the toss sweep. The Mids ran it with decent success in the first half.
But the most straightforward thing to do against deep DBs is to just throw short passes. Even when you had DBs playing up at the snap, they were looking inside as run support. There shouldn't be a problem throwing short hitches on the outside. And that's what Navy did.
The Mids threw the ball 19 times, which is their second-highest total of the season. The pass was Navy's get-out-of-jail-free card all afternoon. Four of those throws resulted in third-down conversions. Three more came on second and eight or more, leading to either a first down or a manageable third down. I think ECU underestimated Navy's willingness (or ability) to pass consistently.
But while the short pass was always in Drew Cronic's back pocket, the running game needed some sorting out.
One of the first adjustments he made was to read the slanting line with a zone option. If the quarterback got a give read, the running back would run to the backside of the line.
Unfortunately, that didn't solve the problem with the DBs playing run support.
(That play might have looked like a missed read in real time, but it wasn't. Woodson made the correct read.)
The Mids then tried the counter option, presumably to slow down the secondary by getting them to take their first steps in the wrong direction. The first time they ran it, they caught the defensive line slanting the wrong way, making for easy down blocks and allowing the kick-out block to get outside. The play went for a reasonable gain, but the linebackers and secondary did a good job reading the pulling guard and following him outside to keep it from being an even longer run. The Mids tried to take advantage of that by running a reverse out of that same look away from the direction of the pulling guard. But this time, the line slanted in the right direction. The end got into the backfield, which disrupted the handoff. Woodson turned upfield instead to minimize the damage.
(That play might have looked like a missed read in real time, but it wasn't. It was actually a wise decision by Woodson.)
This is where the cracks in the defense started to form.
The Mids accounted for the slanting line by turning the counter option into a power running play. When the Mids ran the counter and counter reverse, they ran away from the tight end side. Now, they ran toward the tight end on a designed quarterback run. If the line slanted in the direction of the pulling guard, like on the reverse, the defensive end would just run himself out of the play. If the line slanted opposite the direction of the pulling guard, the defensive end would be met by either the tight end or the fullback. The one that didn't block the DE joined the pulling guard as lead blockers to take on the linebackers.
The offense also used other plays with a pulling guard to influence the linebackers, such as the power read. If the linebackers ran outside like they did on the counter option, the quarterback would get a keep read and run behind them. If they didn't overreact to the pulling guard, the quarterback got a give read for the sweep. Navy always ran the play in a trips formation, putting four blockers outside to account for all the playside secondary defenders that could potentially be in run support.
But the play that really opened things up was the RPO.
Navy ran a couple of different RPOs in the game, but the one with the most impact was a three-man pattern that paired a wheel-post combination with a flat route. The two playside DBs that stayed deep took the wheel and post. The DB who stepped up in run support was put into conflict. He had to choose between taking the quarterback and covering the flat route, and even if he covered the receiver, he still had a bad angle on him.
Once the RPO started clicking, the secondary was no longer able to have it both ways, and that opened up the jet sweep. If the run support DB got too far upfield, the runner could cut inside of him. If he stayed back, he became easier to dodge.
On the touchdown run, the slanting defensive line made it easier for all five offensive linemen to get downfield.
Toward the end of the game, Navy also used some formation sleight-of-hand to confuse the linebackers. Earlier, I pointed out that Navy always ran the quarterback counter to the tight end side and ran the power read to the side with a tight end and two receivers. Late in the fourth quarter, the Mids lined up with a tight end on one side of the formation and twin receivers on the other. They went back to the quarterback counter, but now they ran it away from the tight end. The first time, it looked like the linebackers anticipated a sweep and ran toward the twin receivers. The second time, they didn't know where to go.
There was also confusion on Woodson's touchdown pass to Kent. This was the same RPO play we looked at earlier, with the wheel-post and a flat route. It looked like it was supposed to be cover 3, but the two safeties mixed up who had run support and who had the deep middle. That left nobody to cover Kent on the post route.
And that's how a snowball of a start turned into an avalanche by the end.
The prevailing narrative I've seen regarding Woodson's performance is that a switch flipped at halftime, and he started playing much better. I disagree with that. You saw here what was slowing down the Mids. Plays that looked like missed reads were something else, and some of them (like the botched reverse) were actually good decisions from Woodson. I don't doubt that his confidence grew as the offense had more success, but that success was a matter of finding the right plays to call, not Woodson suddenly doing anything differently.
I have been Woodson's most vocal defender, whether here, on Twitter, or the Anchors Aweigh podcast, and he did some things that even I wasn't expecting. One thing that surprised me was his strength. Physically, Woodson doesn't look like a typical Navy quarterback. He's tall. He's a long strider. I wouldn't call him slender, but nobody will ever mistake him for a fullback, either. Yet there were a couple of plays where he stiff-armed would-be tacklers like it was nothing. Anyone who has watched Woodson since the spring knows he can make long runs in this offense, but with the quarterbacks going mostly no-contact in practice, you never got a sense of his ability to run with power. You do now.
The other thing I thought was a good sign was Woodson's scrambling.
He didn't hold onto the ball too long hoping a receiver would come open, but he didn't immediately tuck and run either. He went through his progressions and made a snappy decision to run if nothing was open, and it extended drives.
Woodson made the reads that were asked of him, but it should be noted that one thing we didn't see in this game was the triple option. He was inconsistent with some reads against Tulane, and that might be something that still needs more development. Still, he's only a sophomore. The reads can be taught. Running like the wind cannot. If nothing else, nobody should be questioning Woodson's physical ability.
Defensively, this was another standout performance. ECU had been an explosive offense, but Navy didn't sit back trying to prevent the big play. They attacked the run. Rahjai Harris had averaged seven yards per carry in the four games leading up to Friday, and the Mids did have some issues with run fits in the first quarter. Over the last three quarters, though, ECU averaged only 3.05 ypc. Navy left their defensive backs in a lot of single coverage downfield, but Katin Houser couldn't connect with his receivers. The Pirates came into the game tied with Ole Miss for the most plays per game of 20+ yards over the last month. Against Navy, they had only two, with the second one not coming until 1:31 left in the game. P.J. Volker had a fearless game plan, and the Mids rewarded him for it.
Before the game, there was a lot of talk about how much this game mattered since the conference race was over and the Army game was on the horizon. I think it mattered a great deal. Navy still has a chance to win ten games. You also don't want to go into the Army game with two lackluster performances in a row. Besides, it's college football. Every game matters, especially for seniors who only have so many games left in their careers. This was a great win for the Mids. To pull it off while giving Blake Horvath more time to heal is just icing on the cake.
