After SMU bought its way into the ACC, it left the American with a void. Now what program gets tagged— or cursed— with the "sleeping giant" label?

The obvious choice is USF. On paper, they have a lot going for them. It's a good school in an exciting city surrounded by football talent, which makes it a hot transfer destination. It's the last program in the American that was part of the Big East without interruption since the 2005 realignment. And the last piece of the puzzle-- an on-campus stadium-- is finally more than just vaporware. The future of the program is bright.

But why wait for the future? The Bulls were a popular dark-horse pick to win this year's conference title. After inheriting a team that went 1-11 in 2022, new head coach Alex Golesh remade the roster via the transfer portal. Predictably, the team was inconsistent at the start of the year, but they went 4-2 down the stretch, averaging 36 points per game and blasting Syracuse 45-0 in the Boca Raton Bowl. Going from 1-11 to 7-6 is an enormous leap, and if they stayed on that trajectory, they'd be a Playoff contender.

Unfortunately for the Bulls, the dream season hasn't materialized. USF will enter Saturday's game vs. Navy with a 4-4 record, 2-2 in the American. It's a disappointing place to be when hopes were so high at the beginning of the year, but what twists the knife is how USF has been the victim of some bad luck. Star quarterback Byrum Brown has been beset with injuries. The schedule has been brutal, including games against Alabama and Miami. The team was forced to evacuate Tampa during Hurricane Milton and had their game against Memphis moved to Orlando. Unsurprisingly, they didn't play well with the upheaval, falling behind 14-0 in the first ten minutes before losing 21-3. Any team would have struggled under those circumstances.

But USF might be ready to turn things around. While the Bulls still have their ups and downs, the peaks are starting to look much higher than the valleys are low. USF has won two straight games, and in stretches, they've played as well as anyone in the country. After falling behind UAB 19-7 five minutes into the third quarter, Golesh's team stormed back over the last 21 minutes to come out on top, 35-25. Last week, the Bulls went into the locker room trailing FAU 14-7 before rushing for 369 yards in the second half and cruising to a 44-21 win. Strangely, their defense has run similarly hot and cold. USF lost 42-16 to Alabama, but that score is incredibly misleading. Five minutes into the fourth quarter, it was a 14-13 game, and the Crimson Tide had just over 200 yards. Then the wheels fell off. The Memphis game was the opposite; after falling behind early, the defense kept the Tigers' offense off the scoreboard over the last 50 minutes. No team has been as hot and cold as the Bulls.

For whatever reason, USF has yet to play a complete 60-minute game, but it's scary to think of what they're capable of once they finally do. The Mids' goal this week is to prevent that from happening. To do that, they'll have to stop one of the fastest offenses in football.

The pace of play is the first thing that stands out when looking at the USF offense. Tempo is a crucial component of Golesh's attack. The Bulls are averaging 74.6 plays per game, which is actually fewer than the 82 they averaged last year. But don't be fooled; their 20.6 seconds per play is the fastest pace in the country. That tempo puts pressure on defenses, limiting chances to make substitutions and making it difficult to adjust.

While the tempo grabs most people's attention, spreading the field is another critical element to the USF offense. Golesh uses formations to force defenses to cover the entire field, with wide receivers often lining up outside the numbers.

Both of these elements have the same goal: to simplify defenses. If a defense has to match the offense's pace, it's hard for them to disguise what they're doing. Navy likes to mess with blocking assignments by using late stemming. That is hard to do when you have to align yourself quickly. Lining up receivers from sideline to sideline limits the number of players you can put in the box against the run. This is another problem for the Mids. The key to Navy's defense is unusual run fits. Players don't necessarily defend the gaps that they are lined up over. Instead, you might have exterior defenders covering the A gap or interior defenders stunting outside. That makes it hard for offensive linemen to know who to block. But if the secondary is spread thin, it limits who can contribute to run support. The farther defenders are from the ball at the snap, the harder it is to give them a gap assignment. This simplifies run defenses, and USF is a run-first team.

They certainly showed that last week with a three-headed monster at running back. Ta'Ron Keith had 81 yards on only three carries. Kelley Joiner ran for 89 yards. Nay'Quan Wright led the group with 17 carries for 117 yards. All three scored a touchdown, including Wright's 64-yarder in the second quarter.

But where USF has really missed Byrum Brown is in the passing game. While the Mids held their own against the USF rushing attack in last year's matchup, Brown torched them for 338 yards and three TDs through the air. That includes an 88-yarder in the second quarter to receiver Sean Atkins, who gave the Bulls their first lead. But while Atkins is back and leading the team with 42 catches for 415 yards, the big plays haven't returned with him. No wide receiver for USF has more than one touchdown catch on the year. The Bulls are 128th in yards per passing attempt, behind such aerial luminaries as Iowa and Kent State. Their 16 throws of 20+ yards are the eighth-fewest in the country. South Florida has the receiving talent to make big plays; we saw it first-hand last year. But even as quarterback Bryce Archie has grown more comfortable in the starting role, the downfield passing is the one thing that hasn't materialized.

But that may be about to change. For weeks now, Golesh has been hinting that Brown is on the verge of a return. It's possible that USF's coach is just trying to give opposing defensive coordinators one more thing to prepare for. But it's also possible that Brown could play against Navy. If he does, he adds a whole new dimension to the offense and changes how the Mids must approach the game.

There's similar uncertainty on the other side of the ball. There may not be a defensive coordinator who has made more of a singular impact on the last decade of Navy football than USF's Todd Orlando. Orlando was the DC at Houston in 2015 when the Mids fell to the Cougars in a de facto division title game. He used the same game plan the following year when the Mids upset the sixth-ranked Cougars in one of the greatest games in Navy history. Almost every team Navy faced that season copied Orlando's defense, and after spending the entire offseason preparing for it, the Mids burned them all. It led to a spot in the conference championship game but also masked some of the issues with the offense that were exposed over the next two years. Earlier in his career, Orlando was 2-0 against Air Force when he was DC at Utah State. He was also the defensive coordinator for UConn in their 2006 meeting with Navy, a legendary game for in-the-know option football fans.

Orlando's defenses have a reputation for being aggressive, and this year is no exception. Against conference opponents, the Bulls are second in the league in both sacks (3.0/game) and tackles for loss (7.75/game). Last year, that aggression carried over to his option game plan.

USF's defense spent most of the game in an eight-man front, which is a standard look against option teams. What drove Navy's playcalling for most of the afternoon wasn't the defense's alignment as much as it was their aggression. Knowing that the fullback runs through the B gap in a veer scheme, Orlando had the playside inside linebacker covering that gap and sometimes running straight for it after the snap. The outside linebacker didn't wait to read the play; he shot straight into the backfield to cover the pitch.

Early on, the Mids tinkered with running the option against this. Since they knew the ILB would be playing inside to take the fullback, they put him in the count as the pitch read. The OLB, usually the pitch read, would instead be blocked. In theory, with the ILB playing inside, that would be an easy pitch read, and it was. The play went for a decent gain. However, the pitch was awfully close to getting batted down, and nobody was able to block the safety, who made the tackle.

The Mids didn't need to run the option to have success against this look, though. With the OLB running into the backfield and the ILB covering the B gap, Navy just started running the ball through the C gap. Their most successful play, especially early in the game, was just the fullback belly play. If the ILB tried to read it, the slotback could seal him inside. If the ILB blitzed the B gap, the slotback could move on to the safety to set up an even bigger gain.

This helped Navy get out to an early lead, but the defense adjusted by using the DE to shoot into the backfield to beat the pulling lineman while the ILB scraped outside.

With the DE now shooting for the mesh, the Mids ran a double option to pitch off of him. A pulling guard took care of the scraping ILB. After that, the Mids went back to the belly play. This time, the pulling guard trapped the DE shooting upfield. With the ILB scraping outside, the fullback ran up the middle instead of through the C gap.

The adjustments went on and on. For every wrinkle Navy came up with, Orlando had a response. None of them were anything that the scheme couldn't handle. The problem is that the players couldn't. The more adjustments the offense had to make, the worse their execution became. Most defenses run out of ideas after one or two adjustments, but USF never did. That forced the Mids deeper into their playbook, which they weren't prepared to do.

That leads to an interesting question when it comes to Saturday. Does Orlando use the same game plan? The answer probably depends on how he views last year's game. On the one hand, his team won. While Navy ran for 240 yards, half of that came on six plays. Their other 42 runs only averaged 2.7 yards per carry. On the other hand, the Mids scored 30 points and left more on the table. Does the former outweigh the latter?

My guess is that it probably does, but that's not a guess with a high degree of confidence. I'm not sure it matters either way. Even if USF lines up the way Navy expects them to, they will evolve throughout the game. The Mids will need to be ready to run just about anything, which isn't what you want to hear when the team is coming off of back-to-back games full of awful execution.

I think that makes for an unusual key to the game this week. Most people talk about winning on first down or converting third downs. On Saturday, I think Navy has to win on second down. If USF constantly changes their stunts, there's a good chance that they'll make some first-down stops. The key will be to have an immediate answer to these changes on second down so you can pick up enough yardage to make third down reasonable. Spending the afternoon in third and long is no way to win a football game, especially with a defense as sack-happy as USF's. Navy can't afford a slow start against an offense that can have you down 14-0 five minutes into the game. And you don't want to play catch-up against a second-half team.

This game is a massive opportunity for USF. After Navy, the Bulls have three games against teams with a combined record of 9-18. USF has a shot at nine wins if they can get past the Mids. That would be remarkable progress and put this season in a whole new light. This team still has a lot to play for and has the confidence that comes from just having played their best half of football. They will be dialed in, and Navy has to match that focus.

Over the last two weeks, they have not. True, there have been unusual circumstances. However, having understandable reasons for playing poorly is not a substitute for actually getting the job done. In the race for the conference championship game, sympathy is worth zero points. This week, there is no media circus. It isn't exam week. There will be no five-hour delay to wait out.

There is no reason why the Mids shouldn't play their best.

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