The Army-Navy game is one of the very best traditions in all of college football. It’s known for its passion, pageantry, patriotism and, most importantly, a penchant for running the ball.
Both service academies infamously boast triple-option offenses, which usually translates to keeping the ball on the ground and out of the air as much as humanly possible (think Mac Jones’ Monday Night Football performance every single weekend). Entering the 2021 Army-Navy game, both teams’ rushing offenses ranked among the top 10, with the Black Knights at No. 2 with an average of 301.2 rushing yards per game and the Midshipmen at No. 7 with an average of 228.2 yards. Army also came into this game with the most rushing touchdowns (43) among FBS teams.
But this year’s Army-Navy game was a different story.
Instead of providing a first-hand glimpse at what football looked like prior to the invention of the forward pass, both squads basically took an air raid approach, relative to their usual passing production.
Navy quarterback Tai Lavatai attempted a respectable six passes, while Army quarterback Christian Anderson threw an unthinkable 15 (he even completed seven of them). That’s essentially the triple-option equivalent to the college duel between Baker Mayfield and Patrick Mahomes, in which the two quarterbacks combined for nearly 1,300 yards on 124 attempts in 2016.
But what’s perhaps even more impressive is that — especially for a pair of teams who have found offensive success almost exclusively when running the ball — it seemed to work out. Lavatai averaged 13.7 yards per attempt, while Anderson averaged a worse but still respectable 7.2 per attempt. However, efficiency beat out volume in this one, as Navy earned a 17-13 upset victory to take its second Secretary’s Trophy in the last three years.
The Midshipmen finished a 4-8 season on a high note, while the Black Knights fall to 8-4 after a disappointing conclusion to what was otherwise an excellent season.
We could have gotten a glimpse of the new era of service academy football, but not everyone was pleased with the change. Responses to a relatively pass-heavy game garnered mixed responses on Twitter, ranging from curious excitement to rage to jokes.
[mm-video type=video id=01fparddhekv9ea68stx playlist_id=none player_id=01evcfkb10bw5a3nky image=https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/video/thumbnail/mmplus/01fparddhekv9ea68stx/01fparddhekv9ea68stx-782ee4a84766778988754226dab4122b.jpg]