How does one feel about Navy's performance on Saturday against Wagner?

On the one hand, it was a win, and this is a program that needs wins. It wasn't just any win, either; it was a shutout, which head coach Brian Newberry correctly pointed out is a rarity in modern football regardless of your opponent. On the other hand, when you're playing a 45-scholarship NEC team that has won one game in three years, you'd hope that your offense would run through them like a hot knife through butter. Instead, it felt like sucking eggs through a cocktail straw. The Mids could muster only 245 yards on the ground, went 4-13 on third down, had four three-and-outs, and had two drives that went for negative yards.

It was a weird, frustrating game. Maybe the strangest thing was that Navy's offense looked like the same scheme we've seen for the last 20 years, as the Mids spent most of the game running option plays out of the double-slot spread formation. I'll never complain about seeing more of my favorite offense, but for all the talk of change this year, there wasn't much to be had on Saturday.

Yet despite the underwhelming performance on offense, Newberry was sanguine when talking to the media after the game. He acknowledged that there were missed reads and missed opportunities, but he was pleased with the effort he saw on both sides of the ball. It wasn't what I expected to hear. Now, this was his first win as a head coach. You can't hold it against someone feeling good in a career milestone moment. But then he said something that caught me off guard:

"They came out with something that we hadn't practiced against, a different look, and you've got to kind of go to your option bible when that happens."

I was stunned when I heard this. I had to watch the game again because I thought I'd missed something, but I hadn't. Wagner is a base 3-3-5 stack defense. Against Navy, all they did was break the stack and move the outside linebackers up to the line of scrimmage to create a five-man front. Two of the five defensive backs lined up most of the game at linebacker depth. It was more or less a 5-3 defense. There was some variation in how the front five aligned themselves; sometimes the defensive end was in the count, and sometimes he wasn't. But that's it.

This is what almost every 3-3-5 team does against the option. It's certainly what they've done against Navy over the last decade. There is zero chance that this isn't exactly what the Mids expected from Wagner.

I call shenanigans.

Based on that comment, plus the fact that Navy only ran maybe 7-8 plays-- all looking like they were straight out of the old playbook-- I suspect that they spent most of the last two weeks preparing not for Wagner, but for Memphis. Newberry likely didn't want to tip his hand to a conference opponent Navy hasn't beaten since 2018. Maybe he was smiling after the game not because it was his first win, but because he knew he got away with one.

I'm not generally a fan of that approach if indeed that was the case. If Navy was a veteran team coming off of a 10-win season or something, then sure, maybe you can get cute with the game plan against a team like Wagner. But that's not who they are. Navy is a team learning how to win again while running a new offense with several new coaches. I would think that there is a greater benefit to running the new offense in a game situation and giving the players confidence in what they are doing. Nobody's paying me to run a Division I football program, though, so I will defer to the experts.

Anyway, onto the game.

Rather than run into the five-man front, the Mids opened the game by running around it. On the first drive, they ran a double option, using the fullback to block the deep middle safety. The quarterback's read was the outside linebacker. The playside safety was assigned to the pitch man, and ran into the backfield to cut off his running lane. The pitch man was still able to cut upfield.

The Mids ran this play three straight times, and eventually, the inside linebacker started cheating outside. But with the playside safety being so aggressive running into the backfield, it set up the wheel route.

The Mids scored two plays later. That was about as good a start as Navy has had in a long time, but then things got dicey.

On the next drive, offensive coordinator Grant Chesnut again focused on getting the ball outside. With the inside linebacker starting to cheat and the safety being so aggressive getting into the backfield, he turned to the jet sweep. This would get the ball outside faster than the linebacker could get to it, and the ball carrier wouldn't have to cut inside the safety behind the line of scrimmage. The wide receiver and playside slotback switched assignments to get a better blocking angle on the safety.

Similarly, the Mids also tried to get the ball outside through the air, but the motion slotback wasn't aggressive enough in his block and the play didn't go anywhere.

The pass wasn't perfect but without better blocking it wouldn't matter if it was.

Navy's next two possessions included missed reads.

The first of those drives ended with a fumbled exchange on an inverted veer. The second ended on a busted play. Rather than sending the playside safety into the backfield, Wagner started using the deep middle safety to follow the play. The defensive end kept the playside slotback from getting upfield to make the block. On the next play, the Mids used twirl motion to slow down the safety, and it looked like they had the blocks set up for a good gain. However, the would-be pitch man ran the wrong way on the play.

Navy's next possession was a little better, going 57 yards on 12 plays and ending with a field goal. With the deep middle safety still following the pitch, Navy's response was to run the triple option, but simply have the quarterback or pitch man cut inside the safety.

The drive stalled after another missed read.

After a fantastic 40-second touchdown drive to close out the first half, the Mids went back to the air in the third quarter. Because the deep middle safety was so aggressive moving laterally to stop outside runs, Chesnut used play action off of a jet sweep to draw the safety upfield. He then ran a post pattern behind him.

Unfortunately, that drive ended with a botched field goal attempt.

In the fourth quarter, the Mids tinkered with their formation a little bit, using a trips formation with stacked receivers. Wagner adjusted by moving the playside safety over the stack. The middle safety was used for run support, and the Seahawks went back to plan A, which was sending a safety into the backfield to disrupt the pitch. The Mids responded by going back to the jet sweep.

And that capped off the scoring on a very long afternoon.

Perhaps what is most notable in this game is what we didn't see. Even with the safety being so aggressive in run support, we didn't see any counters. The only misdirection we saw was some twirl motion before the snap. To me, that is more evidence that Chesnut was trying to keep things as basic as possible. Not just basic, but misleading; showing the old offense while there is a new offense waiting to be unveiled this week.

Even some of the missed reads might not be missed reads. Some of those plays looked more like off-tackle runs. You can see the guard and tackle double-teaming the defensive end on some of them. That's not a veer scheme. That's something you can call if the outside linebacker is stepping into the backfield; you take a chance and leave him unblocked to get an extra blocker upfield. Like this:

I called them missed reads because that's what Coach Newberry said after the game. But that could just be another ruse.

I'm not exactly a grizzled veteran of college football journalism, but I have followed coaches closely enough to realize that they don't care much about what you and I think. When they talk to the media, they have two priorities. They say things they think their team needs to hear, and they say things to make sure they don't reveal anything to their opposition. If they can mislead their opposition, well, that's even better.

There are two possibilities with the Wagner game. Either the entire thing was an exercise in deception, or Newberry was being straightforward after the game, and Wagner forced Navy to go back to the basics. If it's the former, the performance is slightly more palatable. You might even get excited about how good Tai Lavatai looked throwing the deep ball. Even then, though, you still don't want to see missed reads and mental errors. However, if Newberry was being honest, and this game was Navy executing the fundamentals of their new offense... eek.

I guess we'll find out on Thursday.