Navy defeated Bucknell handily in game one, rolling up 49 points in the process. It was an emphatic change of pace after the Mids averaged a meager 17.7 points per game in 2023. Still, while the performance was welcome, it was hard to see it as a bellwether for the season, given the competition. Temple isn't exactly the Broad Street Bullies either, but they are a conference opponent, and one that defeated the Mids last year. Navy did have a few question marks in the opener, and the Owls would be better able to capitalize on them than the Bison were. The Mids needed to improve.

They did just that, defeating Temple 38-11. Blake Horvath was named American Athletic Conference Offensive Player of the Week after rushing for 122 yards and three touchdowns and throwing for 112 yards and another touchdown. Navy's defense held Temple to 35 rushing yards, grabbed two interceptions, and scored the game's first points with a safety. It was a convincing performance.

In my postgame writeup from the opener, I pointed out a few things I thought Navy needed to shore up. They corrected most of them. Special teams was a strength on Saturday. Temple's average starting field position was their own 23-yard line. Riley Riethman had two punts downed inside the 10, one of which helped set up the safety. The offensive line wasn't flagged for any chop blocks, and the offense wasn't called for any penalties at all. Temple's lone run of more than 10 yards didn't come until 2:26 left in the game, and it resulted in a fumble. Coach Newberry was pleased with his team's effort in the postgame press conference. It was precisely the kind of improvement you expect to see from week one to week two.

Nevertheless, the opponent has to be considered. When you rewatch the game, it becomes clear that our pregame assessment of Temple was pretty accurate. The offense looked disjointed, which isn't surprising for a team full of transfers and underclassmen. They were called for nine penalties, and it seemed like their line had communication issues.

You saw that almost immediately on their first series. On this play, the nose guard is left unblocked as the center and right guard apparently failed to clarify their assignments.

This was not the only example of subpar offensive line play. While it would be nice to attribute Temple’s inability to run the ball entirely to Navy’s defensive superiority, the Owls also had a hand in their demise. But that isn’t to say the Mids didn’t play well. There was a lot from this game to be encouraged about.

Versatility is essential for Navy defenders. Secondary players are expected to make plays at the line of scrimmage, and linemen are routinely asked to drop into coverage. Jaxson Campbell’s stat line indicates this: as a striker, he had seven tackles, an interception, a pass breakup, and a QB hurry. Both he and Colin Ramos were all over the place, but they weren’t alone. One of the things that struck me about this game was how athletic the defensive line was and how physical the cornerbacks were.

Temple tried to make up for a shaky offensive line by getting the ball out of the quarterback’s hands as quickly as they could. They used the short and horizontal passing game to extend their running game, but it wasn’t very effective. One reason for this is that Navy’s defensive line was everywhere. Take a look at these three plays. In the first, Justin Reed flies into the backfield behind the pulling linemen to make the stop. In the second, Landon Robinson runs the quarterback down from behind to make the tackle. In the last play, Kendall Whiteside drives his man into the backfield, gets a hand on the ball, and almost makes a spectacular interception:

These guys can move. That kind of across-the-board athletic ability in a Navy defensive line is rare.

It was also impressive to see how much Navy’s cornerbacks embraced contact. The Mids’ one sack on the day came from cornerback Dashaun Peele. On the other side of the field, Ira Oniha had a breakout game. Here, you can see him breaking up two passes and forcing a fumble with hard hits.

Having defensive linemen who can run and cornerbacks willing to hit creates options for P.J. Volker as he draws up ways to confuse opposing offenses.

Speaking of options, we saw plenty of option football out of the Navy offense this week.

I’m not sure, but I suspect Navy’s first drive (and maybe the second) was scripted. Drew Cronic has mentioned that he’ll sometimes run from a script at the start of a game to see how the defense plans to defend his offense. That would explain the different shifting and motion that we saw early on. The first drive ended after Horvath lost his footing and made a bad pitch on an option play, while a bobbled snap thwarted the second.

The drives were underwhelming, but they did produce the intended result of revealing the defensive game plan. As it turned out, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Temple used the same plan as last year. They lined up in a 4-3. The outside linebackers were stacked behind the B gap, inside the tackle box. They would sometimes shift toward the field if the ball was on one of the hash marks, especially if the tight end was lined up to that side. After the snap, the OLBs read the play, and if they saw it going outside, they scraped. In the secondary, the safeties would follow any snipe that went into motion and shift accordingly.

You can see the secondary shift clearly on this quarterback sweep:

After establishing this, Cronic could get into the meat and potatoes of his playcalling.

Early on, the Mids ran a jet sweep away from the shifted LBs, but the alignment of the linebackers became less of a factor as the game progressed.

The bulk of the offense was about dealing with the scraping linebacker and the secondary.

As to the former, I wrote this after last year’s game:

Ideally, you wouldn't have to do anything special against this. You would just run the triple and make the scraping linebacker the pitch key.

Sure enough:

We also saw some fullback runs off tackle designed to take the ball inside of the scraping linebacker. They helped to set up Horvath’s long touchdown run. This play is a triple option, but both the dive and the pitch keys focus on the fullback. With good blocks by the playside snipe and tight end, only the backside safety had a chance to get to the ballcarrier, and he got caught up in traffic.

The more success these plays had, the more it set up misdirection to take advantage of the secondary following the snipe in motion. This is how Navy made most of their explosive plays.

The obvious play to run against that defense is a reverse, which we saw in the third quarter.

We also saw the Mids use misdirection in the passing game. Here, they ran a wide receiver screen away from triple option play action:

On this play, the safety followed the pre-snap motion, which left no help over the top when Eli Heidenreich ran a post pattern the other way:

Later in the game, the Mids started running counters against the aggressive secondary. On the first play here, they ran a fullback trap, designed to run inside the scraping OLB. When the TE/H-back starts his motion, the safety follows him, even as the play then pivots to go the other way. Two plays later, the Mids ran a counter option and pitched off the scraping linebacker, with the TE again blocking the safety that followed him. Then the Mids ran play action off of the same look, with Heidenreich subbed in as the TE. He looked like he was going to block the safety, but then he turned upfield. The safety was fooled, and Heidenreich was wide open.

Sometimes the Mids didn't even have to do anything special against the secondary. Alex Tecza's touchdown run came on a regular triple option play. On that play, the fullback reads the first down lineman over or inside the B gap. If the lineman goes one way, the fullback cuts the other way. Here, the read is the defensive tackle, who goes right along with the flow of the play. Tecza reads him and cuts left. But since the backside of the defense was so aggressive in following the flow of the play, there was nobody in front of Tecza when he got past the line.

It was a similar situation on Navy's last touchdown. Late in the game, Temple started blitzing their backside linebacker whenever the Mids lined up in the shotgun. On the first play here, the offense ran a fullback trap. It's a counter play, so the quarterback's back starts to the front side of the play. The linebacker reads it as the back side, so he blitzes. Two plays later, the Mids lined up in the shotgun to run the power read. The quarterback gets a keep read. The backside linebacker ran into the backfield, effectively taking himself out of the play. The backside safety followed the pre-snap motion, leaving open field in front of Horvath when he cut back.

And that was it. For the most part, this was just straightforward option football, with a little something sprinkled into the passing game. We'll have more on that when I answer the mail bag over the weekend.

For now, the Mids are sitting pretty at 2-0, although the wins have come against what will likely be the two easiest opponents on the schedule. Still, while the road gets harder from here, there's something to be said for taking care of business. They didn't always do that last year, so this is progress, and progress is good.