The SMU Debrief
The good times didn’t last long.
After a thrilling win over UCF a week ago, the Navy offense took a step backward against SMU, rushing for only 177 yards in a 31-24 loss. The Mids jumped out to a 21-7 lead that quickly evaporated thanks to another special teams blunder and the inability to move the ball. There were bright spots, especially from the defense. However, in a game that required consistency, Navy’s offense couldn’t deliver.
There is a reason why I opened the debrief from the UCF game by saying that you shouldn’t let yourself go wild with your expectations. For all the offense did well against the Knights— and they did play well— there were many ways they were still untested. The Mids deserved credit for that effort, but other defenses would pose different challenges. Navy still had to prove that they could execute against those other looks. Unfortunately, based on what we saw on Saturday, there is still work to be done.
In the game preview, we looked back at how Jim Leavitt defended Georgia Southern when he coached at FAU. Against the Eagles, he didn’t do anything fancy; he had his defense line up in their base 3-4 and just play their assignments. That’s all he did against Navy, too. SMU didn’t use any stunts to try to confuse the quarterback. They just lined up and played.
That should have been good news for the offense. Indeed, as long as Tai Lavatai made the correct read, they were fine.
The problem is that Lavatai missed his read more often than not.
After the UCF game, I cringed a little bit when people said things like, “all three phases of the triple option were working.” As I pointed out in the debrief, they really weren’t. The fullbacks played well in that game, but the vast majority of their carries were predetermined handoffs, with most of those runs being off tackle. They were not the result of option reads, which meant that Lavatai’s ability to read the dive key at the mesh was still an open question. That question was answered on Saturday, and unfortunately for Navy, it wasn’t good.
The inability to consistently read the dive key correctly is what drove Navy’s play-calling for the rest of the afternoon. Once it became apparent that they weren’t going to run the option consistently, Navy had to fake it. They ran plays to attack different parts of the field, but instead of reading their way there, they had to force their way.
To get the ball to the fullback, they ran the inside zone.
They also tried to run the fullback off tackle, as they did against UCF. However, you'll recall that UCF's pitch key was squatting on almost every play, which made it easy to run to the inside of him. That wasn't the case with SMU.
To adjust for this, the Mids ran the quarterback off-tackle instead. That allowed them to use the fullback as an extra blocker to account for the pitch key.
Some of these plays worked better than others, but the Mids had to keep running them because there was no other way to set up the defense for outside runs and pitch plays. Coach Niumatalolo tried every trick in his arsenal to get those outside runs to work.
One cheat that Navy used was to have the fullback block the dive key. That way, they could run the same blocking scheme as the regular triple but manufacture a keep read for the quarterback.
Eventually, though, SMU figured out what was going on. The dive key started running straight for the mesh, making it difficult for the fullback to get to him quickly enough to stop him.
(I included the slow-motion replay there because you could see that the fullback was indeed trying to block the lineman and not looking for the ball.)
Navy also tried using the counter option and the trap option. While the backfield motion on these plays is different, I lump them together because the offensive line assignments are the same. On both plays, the dive key (or, more accurately in non-triple plays, #1 in the count) is left unblocked by the playside tackle. Instead, a guard pulls from the backside to trap him. When it works, it looks like this:
The problem is that the pulling guard had a difficult time making his block. When Navy ran the counter option, the unblocked #1 forced the quarterback to pitch. When you pitch off of someone who isn't the pitch key, you court disaster. Fortunately for the Mids, all that happened was that the actual pitch key made the tackle for no gain. When Navy ran the trap option, the unblocked #1 tracked the quarterback down from behind.
Navy tried running the load option, using the fullback as a lead blocker outside. Early on, they had success with it:
At times, though, Lavatai struggled with making the proper read on this play as well. On this play, the pitch key makes the tackle, which should never happen:
The Mids tried running the outside zone. On the outside zone, the ball carrier reads his own offensive linemen. The playside guard and tackle double-team the defensive end. If the DE steps outside, the guard releases his block and heads to the second level. The ball carrier follows him. That's what Lavatai did here, but SMU's nose guard held the center, keeping him from getting to his assignment. That left the backside ILB unblocked and allowed him to run down the play.
The offense had a similar problem on their next adjustment. They tried to run a sort of off-tackle option play, where the playside tackle and guard would double-team the dive key. The playside tackle's typical assignment on the triple option is to block the playside ILB. Instead, the fullback would block him. This was another way of manufacturing a keep read. Again, though, the backside ILB could track the play down when the center got caught up in traffic.
Niumatalolo still wasn't done trying to find something that would work. Toward the end of the game, he had the offense line up in the heavy formation, putting two tackles on the same side of the line. The hope here is that the extra tackle would get #1 to line up over the C gap instead of the B gap, making the option read a little slower and easier for the quarterback. For a split second, it worked. However, you can see the other SMU defenders telling the defensive end to move back inside. Navy lined up in the heavy formation again on the next play, and the defensive end was back where he belonged.
You might have seen comments on Twitter and elsewhere expressing frustration that Navy's coaches never made adjustments over the course of the game. However, as you can see, not only did they make adjustments, but they never stopped. There were a half-dozen different things that Navy did in an attempt to get the ball outside.
The problem is that there is a vast difference between making adjustments to counter a defense and making adjustments to cover up your own shortcomings. The beauty of the triple option is that, by reading two players, it makes the game 11 vs. 9. All of these adjustments, though, involved adding another player to the blocking scheme. Instead of 11 vs. 9, the game became 11 vs. 10, which negates the option's inherent numbers advantage. As the game progressed, SMU figured out what was going on, making the plays less effective. Without the numbers advantage of the triple option, the secondary didn't have to be as involved in defending runs up the middle. And if the secondary isn't as engaged in run support, they aren't going to be fooled by play action, and they will be freer to track plays down on the perimeter.
And that's exactly what happened. Navy's smoke and mirrors worked for a while, but it couldn't last for an entire game. The Mids averaged 5.6 yards per play in the first half but only 2.5 in the second. Navy had 241 yards of total offense. Over half of those yards came on only six plays, five of which occurred in the first half. Navy averaged only 2.1 yards per play on everything else.
It was a particularly frustrating performance because Navy performed very well defensively. SMU committed two turnovers, was limited to 80 rushing yards, and converted only two of 11 third downs. The Mustangs hadn't given up a sack all season, but Clay Cromwell's strip-sack of Tanner Mordecai led to a fumble that Diego Fagot returned for a touchdown. I'm sure that Brian Newberry saw plenty that needed correcting, but in the big picture, Navy's defense did its job.
I usually try not to single out individual players in these writeups, but when it's the quarterback who makes the mistakes, it's unavoidable. That's the nature of the position. And one bad game doesn't mean that it is the end of the world, either. However, the pressure is on to prove that it was indeed just one lousy game rather than a more significant issue. Lavatai made a giant leap forward in the passing game between his first and second starts. Now he needs to do the same in the option game.
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