The Navy Blitz, Volume 1: Aggressive Defense and Balanced Offense Fuel the Mids' Solid Win Over Temple

In Today's episode, we’re launching our first installment of the Navy Blitz. Here, you’re going to get all of the insights and commentary on the most recent Navy football game. We’ll start by breaking down the Mids’ opponent, move on and talk about the keys to the game, and analyze the big plays. And finally, we’ll check out some of the stats that helped determine the outcome. 

This is going to be a little bit different from the usual Navy Sports Central podcast episode because the only topic discussed will be Navy Football. 

It will be short and to the point, but by the time it’s over, Navy football fans will be 100% up to speed on how the team performed and how things look moving forward. So please, stick around. 

Related Links:

• Navy Defeats Temple 38-11 for Their First Conference Win of the Season
• Navy-Temple Highlights

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Music is provided courtesy of Audio Jungle. Artists featured in order:

• Seven In Music (Intro)
• Cinematic Alex (Closeout Music)

Chapters

• 0:14 Navy Blitz Intro
• 1:38 A Quick Temple Snapshot
• 2:39 Keys to the Game
• 3:16 Defensive Domination
• 4:48 An Efficient and Explosive Hybrid Wing-T
• 8:52 Closing Thoughts, an Early Look at Memphis and Show Credits

Transcript

Karl: 0:14

Hi everybody, my name is Karl Darden and I'd like to welcome and thank all of you for joining us today on Navy Sports Central. I'm your host and this is the official podcast of the Navy Sports Nation where we take a deeper dive into Navy sports. Today we're launching our first installment of the Navy Blitz. Here you're going to get all the insights and commentary to the most recent Navy football game. We're going to start by breaking down the mids opponent, move on to talk about the keys to the game and then analyze the big plays, and then, finally, we'll check out some of the stats that help determine the outcome. This is going to be a little bit different from the usual Navy Sports Central podcast, because the only topic discussed will be football. It'll be short and to the point, but by the time it's over, navy football fans will be 100% up to speed on how the team performed and how things look moving forward. So please stick around. All right, so glad you all dropped in. I really appreciate you taking the time. This Navy Blitz show is what I like to call an offshoot of the Navy Sports Central podcast. As I mentioned in the intro, its only focus is going to be Navy football. When I was going over how to cover the season, I decided that having episodes that only discuss football would be the most efficient way for me to manage the workload. In the meantime, I do plan to record some guest interviews for our usual Navy Sports Central podcast that I plan to release throughout the fall. I'm actually kind of curious to see how this all works out. So let's go ahead and get started by taking a look at the team that squared off against the Mids in Week 2.

Karl: 1:39

The Temple Owls finished the 2023 season with a 3-9 record. They were 1-7 in the American Conference, tying them for last with East Carolina. But it turns out that the Owls' lone conference win happened to be against Navy. They absolutely rolled the mids 32-18 last September. The Navy offense never got past midfield. The entire first half. In fact, they punted five times and three of those came on 3-outs. After that game, coach Brian Newberry stated he was completely embarrassed by how the team performed. Considering how the rest of the season went, you could actually argue that the loss to Temple cost Navy a chance to compete in a bowl game. So there was no question in my mind that the Mids would come out Saturday with some real attitude when they took the field against the Owls.

Karl: 2:18

One thing that was true was that this was a different looking Temple squad. They picked up a bunch of transfers through the portal and last year's quarterback, E. J. Warner, who's Kurt Warner's kid, left to go to Rice. His replacement, Forrest Brock, had a really tough outing against Oklahoma last week. The Owls turned the ball over six times and failed to get into the end zone, losing 51-3. Still, coach Newberry knew that the Navy-Temple games are usually pretty physical battles and there was every expectation that this one would be the same as all the others. The message all week was to start fast, defensively and finish strong. That was definitely one of the keys to the game.

Karl: 2:57

Navy's defensive coordinator, P. J. Volker, kept things pretty basic last week against Bucknell, but, this being the first conference game, his plan was to keep the Temple offense guessing as much as possible. On offense, the big key to the game was just to eliminate those pre-snap penalties. Assuming the mids could do that. Cronic was was looking to build on the good things Navy did last week while adding in another layer of his hybrid wing tee system. For the record, navy was favored by 11.5 at kickoff and, as you all saw, they didn't have much trouble covering that spread. So let's take a look and see how they did it.

Karl: 3:24

On defense, they got six for the second straight week. In fact they got nine for the second straight week. Led by Colin Ramos and Jaxson Campbell, the Navy D forced four, three and outs, turned over the owls on downs twice, came up with two interceptions and recovered one fumble. So that comes out to nine altogether. One of the three and outs resulted in a safety, so you could almost take a two for one there, and the mids also scored a touchdown following that interception by Campbell. Overall, it was a pretty impressive performance.

Karl: 3:53

The Mids were clearly the more physical of the two teams, despite Temple having some pretty good athletes. Ramos and Campbell were flying all over the place and I counted at least three hits, including one by Deshaun Peel, that could have easily loosened a couple of fillings. And I counted at least three hits, including one by Deshaun Peel, that could have easily loosened a couple of fillings. Ramos led the team with 15 tackles and had a pass deflection as well. Jackson Campbell chipped in with five tackles, as well as that interception that led to the touchdown, and Justin Reed had two tackles for a loss.

Karl: 4:15

That Navy D was not only aggressive, but they were really, really intimidating. I know that Forrest Brock was happy for that game to be over. Coach Volker did an awesome job getting that defense prepared. But there's still a matter of those penalties. The mids were flagged for one personal foul, a pass interference and an offside. None of them did any really serious damage. But that can't happen in two weeks against Memphis. The bottom line is that the mids are going to need close to a clean sheet if they expect to win that game.

Karl: 4:48

Now let's take a look at how the offense did. It's true that Temple isn't the same kind of team that won the conference championship eight years ago over Navy, by the way but that doesn't mean they don't have really good athletes lining up on defense. And considering that the Mids had all kinds of trouble moving the ball against them last season, this game wasn't necessarily a slam dunk. The main thing I was looking for on offense in this second game was to see whether or not Coach Kronick would shift in and out of different formations more, and I think we did see that to some extent. There were several occasions where the mid started off with one look and then changed into a shotgun formation with a full backfield. Other times they set up in a pistol formation and then went with a read option. And then of course there was the usual triple option alignment with Horvath or Woodson under center.

Karl: 5:27

During his press conference this past week, coach Kronick spoke a lot about getting the timing of the offense down and I think you saw pretty good evidence of that improvement if you compare it to the game against Bucknell, that screen pass to Heidenreich on the first touchdown pass was a good example. He lined up wide right and Horvath was in a shotgun with a full backfield. When the ball was snapped, heidenreich started upfield and engaged his defender as Horvath faked a handoff on the fullback dive. As he was doing that, heidenreich came off of his defender and took a couple steps back to catch the ball. Horvath's pass was right on target by that time. Navy tight end Jake Norris got just enough of a kickout block on Heidenreich's defender to spring him for a nine-yard gain. And then Horvath ended up scoring two plays later. That made the score 9-0 Navy.

Karl: 6:08

The other thing I wanted to point out about this game was the blocking by the offensive line. I know that in the press conference last week Coach Chronic made a point of saying that the offense played hard, but clearly there were some issues in terms of the blocking schemes that he felt needed improving and I think they did improve on it. And you saw that on Blake Horvath's long, 62-yard run following Jaxson Campbell's interception. They were in a triple option alignment with Horvath under center. On the snap he started left and then Connor McMahon and Ben Purvis, who are the tackle and guard on that side, completely sealed off their defenders and when Horvath saw that, he immediately planted his foot in the ground and turned upfield. He had an option to pitch to Isaiah Bryant, but that was not going to be the right call because he had a wide open lane to get to the sidelines and he took it. Heidenreich got a nice kick out block and even though Bryant didn't get the pitch, he stayed with the play just enough to get a push on the Temple defender and that allowed Horvath to sprint through that gap. He almost got tripped up but was able to stay on his feet and ended up scoring a few seconds later. Now it was 16-0.

Karl: 7:08

Navy. The Mids' third touchdown was pretty much all Alex Tecza doing a great job, staying on his feet long enough to get to the outside and take off. But the reason it was so wide open was because the left side of the offensive line got their guys on the ground. When Tecza shook himself free, there was nothing but open field in front of him. So again, just another example of some really, really good blocking on the part of the offensive line, especially on the left side.

Karl: 7:32

Horvath's touchdown pass to Heidenreich was a play that we've seen plenty of times as part of Navy's triple option attack. Still, it's nice to see them execute it so well. I mean, you could see that the Temple defenders had their eyes in the backfield and Heidenreich just snuck out right past them and was just wide open for that pass from Horvath. So that put the mids up 31-3, and it was this last touchdown that Horvath scored. That told me he is totally comfortable running this offense.

Karl: 7:58

The Mids were lined up in a pistol formation with Heidenreich wide left. He went in motion right and Horvath looked like he was going to hand it off to him on a sweep. When the Temple defensive end committed to shutting down the play, Horvath pulled the ball and took off left Again. That side of the line sealed things off nicely and that gave Horvath a really nice lane to sprint through for the touchdown that made the score 38-3, and then, of course, temple did pick up one more touchdown with a two-point conversion to make the final score 38-11. So I thought the offense executed very well against Temple. You can tell they're getting more confident. They were two for two in the red zone, scoring touchdowns on both occasions, and that makes them a perfect seven for seven on the year in a stat where they ranked near the bottom of the FBS last season.

Karl: 8:40

And are you ready for this? The only offensive penalty was a meaningless delay of game that they took intentionally just to give Riley Reithmann more room to punt. There were no false starts or holding penalties the entire game. That's the kind of discipline the Mids will need if they want to beat Memphis in a couple of weeks. So we'll see how things go.

Karl: 8:55

I will say that this is a pretty timely bye week coming up for the team. The line did get a little bit beat up, so the extra days will definitely help everybody get back in fighting shape and getting back to Memphis. This will be Navy's first really big test. I think everybody can agree on that. Historically they do play the Tigers pretty tough. In fact, last year they came pretty close to pulling off a big upset in a Thursday night game. Memphis is picked to win the conference again in 2024, and they've looked pretty good in their first two games, averaging 39 points a contest. So if the Mets can figure out a way to come away with a win, that could set the stage for a really interesting season. That's gonna do it for this edition of the Navy Blitz.

Karl: 9:30

Thank you all so much for joining us. Let me know what you think of this approach to covering Navy football. As always, I'd be interested in getting your feedback. Remember, you can text the show directly with your comments and I'll be happy to share them in the following episode. And just a quick reminder the views expressed on Navy Sports Central are my own and do not reflect those of the US Naval Academy or Navy Athletics. By the way, the music used in Navy Sports Central comes to you courtesy of Audio Jungle. This is a great site for purchasing the rights to use the music from thousands of artists around the world, and those featured in the podcast will be credited in our show notes. Talk to you soon, everybody. Until next time. This is Karl Darden. Go Navy Beat Army. Thank you.