Tag: Navy Midshipmen

Let’s get wild, week 11: Statistical projections for Notre Dame vs. Navy

Who has a big game for the Irish?

The Irish take to the road for an early start time against Navy. This game should be a fairly easy one for Notre Dame, as long as they just keep improving as they have been throughout the course of this season. This is a contest that Navy is outmatched and the Irish should put up some gaudy numbers. Here are some wild, but realistic, projections of what happens on Saturday afternoon.

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Five keys for Notre Dame to get a road victory against Navy

Not quite like last weekend but there are still keys for the Irish to get another W

On paper, this game for the Irish is a big mismatch and it should be. Navy isn’t nearly as talented as Notre Dame even with the game on the Midshipmen’s home field. It still doesn’t mean the Irish can just show up and take home a win,; they still have to earn it. The five keys below outline what it will take for Notre Dame to improve to 7-3.

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Know your foe, Navy: Which Mids could give Notre Dame problems

These five could make life uneasy for the Irish this weekend

The Irish hit the road this weekend as they face traditional foe Navy. It’s a game that Notre Dame should win pretty handily, but there are still plenty of Mids that could give them issues. Most of them reside on the defensive side of the ball, so Notre Dame’s task won’t be as easy as many would assume. Find out below which Navy players could give the Irish problems.

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Navy-SMU game delayed after pony mascot has accident at 40-yard line

You seriously won’t believe why the Navy-SMU game was delayed for 15 minutes

This would be a delay of game with no shame.

The Navy-SMU game was, um, interrupted for about 15 minutes Friday night thanks to some “leftovers” on the field after the pony mascot raced across the field following a Mustang touchdown.

Unfortunately, a pony had to go and left some souvenirs around the 40-yard line.

That caused a delay while the field was cleaned up from the incident or accident.

Peruna, SMU‘s black Shetland pony, debuted in 1932 and there has been one, over the course of time, present at every home football game (except one).

Navy Midshipmen Preview 2022: Season Prediction, Breakdown, Key Games, Players

Navy College Football Preview 2022: Team breakdown, season prediction, keys to the campaign, and what you need to know

Navy Midshipmen Preview 2022: Previewing, predicting, and looking ahead to the Navy season with what you need to know and keys to the season.

– Contact/Follow @ColFootballNews & @PeteFiutak

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Navy Midshipmen Preview
Head Coach: Ken Niumatalolo, 15th year at Navy, 105-75
2021 Preview: Overall: 4-8, Conference: 3-5
Keys To The Season
Season Prediction, What Will Happen
Navy Top 10 Players | Navy Schedule

Navy Midshipmen Preview 2022

… but they beat Army.

Navy is in a rut.

While Air Force and Army are rolling right along with winning seasons and bowl appearances, Navy is sputtering and coughing over the last two seasons going 7-15 since the great 11-2 2019 season.

Of course Ken Niumatalolo can coach, and of course this can all turn in a dime if the offensive system starts dominating again. Throw in the coming changes in the American Athletic Conference, and there’s a good chance Navy starts to win more and starts to look like it’s old self next year. But first, everything has to start working again and the team has to be a threat to come up with a winning season.

The offense can still control the clock, and the running game was ninth in America, and the defense even finished 34th in the nation and wasn’t bad. And yes, going 4-8 was awful, but four of the losses were by a touchdown or less, and …

Navy 17, Army 13.

Navy can play – there wasn’t a really bad loss among the eight last year – but being competitive isn’t enough. There’s enough in place to win a few more games and go bowling again, and beat Army, too.

Navy Midshipmen Preview 2022: Offense

The running game still came up with the yards. Yeah, it was able to get to 200 yards a game without a problem and it was able to hover around 300 yards on a regular basis, and it was able to control the clock, keep the turnovers to a minimum, and hit the really big downfield play when it did throw. But it wasn’t enough.

Navy only averaged 3.9 yards per carry and didn’t dominate on the ground as much as it needed to. Now it needs to improve with seven starters gone.

QB Tai Lavatai is a good-sized 6-2, 210-pounder who threw well – he hit 56% of his passes for 449 yards and five scores with the ability to hit the deep pass – and he ran for 371 yards and seven scores. The quarterback situation overall is fine, and a No. 1 receiver has to rise up.

It’s all relative – Mychal Cooper tied for the team lead with just 11 catches – but Jayden Umbarger and Mark Walker are veterans who’ll be fine. As always, as long as the wide receivers catch just one or two big passes a game – and block, they’re doing their job for a passing game that finished dead last in the country averaging 57 yards per game.

The tackles are set with Jamie Romo and Kip Franklin back, but the interior needs to be settled. It’s a smallish group outside of 307-pound Lirion Murtezi, and there has to be improvement along with the changes.

The top three rushers are done, and there isn’t a thumping fullback in place to replace leading ground gainer Isaac Ruoss or 230-pound James Harris.

It’ll be a quick backfield that will rotate all the smallish speedsters, and they’ll be fine as long as the O line does its job.

Navy Midshipmen Preview 2022: Defense

The defense is in better shape personnel-wise with six starters expected to be back. Last year’s bunch finished third in the AAC and was great against the run, but it has to force more takeaways and there needs to be some semblance of a pass rush.

Three of the top four tacklers are done, with the biggest hit at linebacker losing Diego Fagot. Tyler Fletcher is a young, productive hitter and John Marshall will work in the Striker role as the leading returning tackler – he made 53 stops last year – but the losing LB Johnny Hodges to TCU hurts.

The D that only came up with 16 sacks needs someone to be disruptive. Jacob Busic is a linebacker-sized end who made a few plays behind the line, and Clay Cromwell is a quick interior presence with 292-pound size to work around.

The secondary needs help from a pass rush. There were seven interceptions, but none over the last four games. Overall, the teams that could throw were able to do it on the Midshipmen. The corners are the big early concern, but Rayuan Lane and Evan Gibbons know what they’re doing at safety.

Keys To The Season
Season Prediction, What Will Happen
Navy Top 10 Players | Navy Schedule

Navy Midshipmen: Keys To The Season, Top Game, Top Transfer, Fun Stats NEXT

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Top 17 Big Ten expansion candidates for consideration

The Big Ten expansion possibilities are fun to think about. Notre Dame, Oregon, and the Army-Navy Game?

There are officially no limits on schools that can be considered expansion candidates for the Big Ten after extending invitations to join to USC and UCLA. With the Big Ten set to welcome the two iconic Pac-12 programs in 2024, the future of the Big Ten has never looked more open and there are so many directions the Big Ten could go next.

The Big Ten has made it a point to focus on schools that are members of the Association of American Universities when exploring potential expansion candidates. USC and UCLA are each members of the AAU, for example. But membership in the AAU is not necessarily a major deal-breaker, as is the case for Nebraska. Nebraska was voted into the conference when it was an AAU member, but the school lost its AAU affiliation months after heading to the Big Ten.

There are a number of AAU members not included in this list as they are current members or future members of the SEC. Of all the conferences out there, the SEC is likely the one conference that stands the least chance of having a school leave for another conference. The SEC is home to AAU members Florida, Missouri, and Texas A&M and Texas will soon join them.

This list of potential expansion targets for the Big Ten is based off the current membership of the AAU with one very notable exception. We may as well get that exception out of the way right now…

A Reddit user highlighted a massive football mistake in Top Gun: Maverick

Ok, this is a really good point.

Top Gun: Maverick is not only the biggest movie in the U.S., it’s absolutely obliterating box offices worldwide. Maverick as sped through the $900 million mark as it looks to join Spider-Man: No Way Home as the only post-pandemic movies to hit a billion dollars in ticket sales. It is already Tom Cruise’s biggest box office success, and it has also received high praise from critics and audiences alike with a 97 percent and 99 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, respectively.

Maverick features incredible aviation sequences, thrilling action and a lot of up-and-coming stars. With a lot of nostalgia that harkens back to the 1986 original, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Joe Kosinski made a few updates to bring the action into the 21st century.

It can be difficult to get everything correct, as one savvy Reddit user highlighted. Instead of the iconic beach volleyball scene, Maverick features an oiled-up beach football scene.

There’s just one problem.

As naval aviators, all of the game participants have Navy ties (although it’s not a given that they are all Naval Academy grads).

“However, the game consists of almost exclusively spread formations with forward passes, a clear slap in the face to the much superior triple option offense run by the service academies,” user puuma20 said in a self-proclaimed rant. “I almost got up and walked out of the theater.”

They’ve got a point. In 2021, Navy completed just 48 passes for a total of 681 yards and six touchdowns. Most impressively last season, the Midshipmen upset Tulsa, 20-17, without completing a single pass.

Man, what an oversight by the filmmakers. We need answers, Maverick.

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Navy LB Diego Fagot had no idea he’d get the snap on incredible fake punt conversion

“I didn’t know it was coming.”

The Midshipmen prevailed in Saturday’s Army-Navy game at MetLife Stadium, upsetting the Black Knights, 17-13, in a game that saw far more passes than any college football fan would expect from these two service academies.

Another unexpected moment from the game was Navy’s successful fake punt on 4th-and-1 early in the final quarter when the Midshipmen had a slight 14-13 lead.

And it even came as a surprise to linebacker Diego Fagot, who took the snap and successfully got the first down for his team.

As Navy lined up to punt from its own 34-yard line, punter Riley Riethman was all ready to go. Except the ball didn’t come to him and ended up in Fagot’s hands. The 6-foot-3, 240-pound linebacker then took off and stiff-armed a defender to the ground before hurdling over another, as he picked up the first down and then some.

He grabbed four yards on, unsurprisingly, his only carry of the game.

But the best part of this awesome fake-punt play is that it caught Fagot totally by surprise, and he showed off his lightning fast reflexes while making some moves. As he explained in his post-game interview with CBS, he had no idea the ball was coming to him.

He said:

“No one asked for it. The snapper, he just snapped it to me. I wasn’t expecting it. We weren’t expecting it. I didn’t know it was coming, honestly.”

In addition to Fagot’s reflexes, that was some incredibly fast thinking on his part after what turned out to be a “mistake” on the snap, as Navy coach Ken Niumatalolo later explained to CBS:

“It was a mistake. Sometimes, you gotta get lucky, and players make plays, and he made a great play.”

A mistake that turned into an awfully memorable play in this long-time rivalry matchup.

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Army and Navy actually passed the ball, and college football fans were befuddled

Something about this just doesn’t quite feel right…

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.

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Notre Dame moves up for 2nd week in a row in USA TODAY Sports AFCA Coaches Poll

Irish move up again

Although watching the game might now have been so pretty, the result, 34-6 win over Navy, was enough for Notre Dame to move up a spot in the latest USA TODAY Sports AFCA Coaches Poll.

The Top-5 remained the same, although Alabama jumped Cincinnati. The biggest mover inside the Top-10 was Michigan State, who lost to Purdue and dropped three spots to No. 9. The Spartans take over for Wake Forest, who lost to North Carolina in a shoot-out on the road, fell to No. 13. This is good for the Irish as their win against the Tar Heels looks much better.

A few new teams popped into the Coaches Poll as well, find out below the updated rankings with last weeks rank in parenthesis.

1 – Georgia (1)

2 – Alabama (3)

3 – Cincinnati (2)

4 – Oklahoma (4)

5 – Ohio State (5)

6 – Oregon (7)

7 – Notre Dame (8)

8 – Michigan (10)

9 – Michigan State (6)

10 – Oklahoma St. (11)

11 – Texas A&M (12)

12 – Ole Miss (15)

13 – Wake Forest (9)

14 – Iowa (16)

15 – BYU (20)

16 – UTSA (18)

17 – Houston (19)

18 – Baylor (13)

19 – NC State (22)

20 – Auburn (14)

21 – Coastal Carolina (21)

22 – Pitt (25)

23 – Penn State (23)

24 – Wisconsin (NR)

25 – ULL (NR)