Reversal of Fortune: Navy Football Erases Four Years of Frustration vs. Air Force in Convincing Fashion

Welcome to Navy Sports Central, the official podcast of the Navy Sports Nation!

In this episode, we will break down how the Navy Football team dominated Air Force from the opening whistle. The Mids executed their game plan on both sides of the ball and effectively purged their memories of four years worth of nightmarish losses against the Falcons. 

We're going to really get into that in our Deep Dive segment. And we'll also discuss how an Air Force team that has won 29 games over the past three seasons is now struggling to score even 10 points per contest. 

Finally, I will share some of the numbers that point directly to why the Mids are off to such a great start, and why they still haven't reached their ceiling. 

We've got all that plus our Question of the Day and Mid Watch segments, so please stick around! 

Related Links:

• Navy - Air Force Game Highlights
• Amanda Graziano Bends It Like Beckham

We want your answer to our Question of the Day. Here is the one for this episode:
Blake Horvath has opened the season with 5 consecutive games where he has passed for 100 yards or more. In the last 23 years what is the record for the most number of games where a Navy Quarterback has had 100 or more passing yards. Is it:

A. 5
B. 6
C. 7
D. 8

You can answer by sending us a text message using the link at the top of the show notes. I'll also post the question on our group Facebook Page.

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• Loka Music (Question of the Day Lead In)
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Chapters

• 0:14 Intro & Episode Description
• 4:44 Deep Dive Segment (Pt. 1 - Navy v. Air Force Breakdown))
• 15:43 Deep Dive Segment (Pt. 2 - With This Game . . .)
• 18:21 Question of the Day, Mid Watch 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. This is the official podcast of the Navy Sports Nation, where we take a deeper dive into Navy sports, with the focus obviously being on football. The Mids have a bye week that came just at the right time on the schedule. After a dominating but very physical win over Air Force, the team has a chance to rest up and recover before starting a stretch of five straight games that includes Notre Dame and Tulane, and all but one of them are away from Navy Marine Corps Stadium. But first things first. After a quick sports update, we will take a closer look at that game against the Falcons in our deep dive segment, and we'll also have our question of the day and check in with our athletes on the mid-watch. So sit tight, we're just getting started. All right, it's great to have you guys with us. Thanks so much for dropping in. I really appreciate you taking the time For this sports update. I wanted to start things off by talking about the Navy water polo team. This is a group of guys that we don't talk a whole lot about, but trust me, their matches I've watched a lot of them on ESPN Plus and they're pretty exciting. Trust me, their matches I've watched a lot of them on ESPN Plus and they're pretty exciting. But anyway, the mids are currently 11-5 with a 2-2 conference record so far this year. One of their non-conference wins was a 19-18 thriller over Air Force about a month ago. It was a tight game from start to finish. In fact it ended up going into overtime and that's when freshman center Maddox Geraghy scored his fifth goal of the game to seal the win. It also meant that Navy can hang on to the Freedom Vase for another year. That's the hardwood that's up for grabs when these two teams play each other every season. The Mids won their most recent outing against Mercyhurst to even up their conference record. In that game 13 different players scored, and leading them all were Quinn Bartlett and Henry Williams, with three goals apiece. One thing I didn't realize is how many games these guys play. After 16 games, the team is barely halfway through the season. They've got 13 left to go, plus the playoffs. Last year ended with a tough loss to Fordham in a conference championship game. So the clear goal here is to get back there and see what they can do about bringing home the trophy.

Karl: 2:17

Okay, now let's move on to men's and women's cross country. Both teams have wrapped up their invitational seasons and all that remains before the Patriot League Championships is their star meet against Army. That will take place on October 19th at noon. Last year the men came away with a win at West Point, but the women weren't able to make it a sweep. This year could be pretty tough as well, because, from what I remember about the outdoor track season last spring, the Army women have a fair amount of depth at the middle to long distances.

Karl: 2:43

Now, in the most recent Invitational for the men up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, senior Murphy Smith led the team by finishing fifth overall in the field of 374 runners. Smith ran the 8K course in a time of 23 minutes 33.2 seconds. That was good enough to earn him Patriot League Athlete of the Week honors. His teammate Patrick Gandini picked up Rookie of the Week for his efforts. Gandini rounded out the top five for Navy with a time of 24 minutes 36.8 seconds for the 8K race. That's a season's best for him and it helped lock down the fourth place finish for the mids out of 44 teams. The women finished exactly in the middle of a 42-team field. In the same meet, senior Alex Wercinski was the top runner for the mids, finishing 70th out of 371 competitors. Her time over the 6k course was 21 minutes 10.1 seconds. So I know it seems like it's kind of a short season for cross country, but remember, just about all those runners are going to be rolling right into indoor track and that gets going really, really soon.

Karl: 3:38

Okay, I also wanted to give a quick shout out to the Navy Rifle Team. They are 2-1 on the year so far, with a couple of wins over VMI. The team is led by sophomore Isabella Baldwin, who's coming off an All-American freshman season. Baldwin scored a team-high 587 points in the small-bore competition. She also led the mids in the air rifle with 596 points, giving her an aggregate score of 1,183. Senior Marleigh Duncan was right behind her with 1,179 total points and, for the men, parker Haydin returned, after missing last season, to post a score of 578 in the small bore and 593 in the air rifle. That was good for a total of 1171, and that's a strong score for not having shot competitively in over a year. Next up for the mids will be Nebraska, ole Miss and Memphis. That match will take place on the weekend of October 19th and 20th. Okay, that gets you caught up on some of the other fall sports teams in action, and I will be mentioning a few more of those in my posts on the Navy Sports Nation group Facebook page over the next couple of weeks. As for today, we have just started to scratch the surface in this episode, so please stay with us. Our deep dive segment is next.

Karl: 4:59

Prior to this last Navy Air Force football game, it had been five years since the Mids last beat the Falcons, and that was in Annapolis. They took a 21-9 lead into the fourth quarter, but after missing a field goal, air Force ended up getting one of their own. Then a fumble in the three and out possession led to two Falcon touchdowns. Suddenly, the mids were down 25-21 with just over three minutes to go, and a field goal wasn't going to cut it. They needed to get into the end zone. They were staring a pretty crushing loss right in the face after being in control of the game for three quarters, but the Mids didn't flinch. That was a record-setting offense in 2019, and they overcame a potentially drive-killing holding penalty and connected on two key pass plays to get into the red zone. After that, Malcolm Perry got just the yardage he needed on a fourth and one from the 15, and he scored two plays later. The Mids now led 28-25 with 23 seconds left. Air Force couldn't move the ball on their last possession, though, and on 4th and 10, they fumbled the attempted lateral, and linebacker Tony Brown took it in for the touchdown. The final score was 34-25.

Karl: 5:55

From that point forward, navy lost four in a row to Air Force, and it hasn't been pretty either. During that stretch from 2020-2023, the Mids were outscored 93 to 26, including a 40 to 7 thumping in Colorado Springs four years ago. In the following year, the Navy defense kept the team in the game for basically three quarters, but they were on the field way too long. I think. Air Force had like a seven or eight, maybe even nine minute advantage in time of possession, so the Navy defense just ran out of gas. Eventually, air Force tacked on nine points on a safety and a touchdown in the fourth quarter to close things out, and the final score was 23-3.

Karl: 6:29

Two years ago, the Navy defense played another outstanding game, but the offense really struggled, and even though they managed to tie it at 10 in the fourth quarter, the Falcons tacked on a field goal late in the game to win it 13-10. Now, last year was really ugly. Once again, the defense played great, except for one play that came on a 94-yard touchdown pass that gave Air Force their early lead. Their offense never saw the end zone again after that. The Falcons' only other score came on a pick six. The only problem, though, was that the Navy offense was non-existent. Air Force completely shut everything down, holding them in to just 124 total yards. Only a meaningless touchdown with less than a minute to go in the game prevented a shutout, and the final score was 17-6.

Karl: 7:07

Now, as painful as it was for me to do that recap, I thought it was necessary. So you guys would have the right context as we break down the mids big win this past Saturday. These are two completely different teams compared to last year. Now I will get into what happened with Air Force later on in this segment, but we all know the reason for Navy's big improvement. It all came down to getting the right guy for their offensive coordinator. Some of you may have heard recently that Coach Newberry actually wanted to hire Drew Kronick when he took over as head coach following the 2022 season, but the timing just wasn't right. On his end and after the offense took a step backwards last season, despite showing some flashes of solid play and nice execution, newberry decided to move on from Coach Chestnut and he took another shot at bringing Coach Kronick to Annapolis.

Karl: 7:46

In this case, the second time was a charm, so let's go ahead and take a look at a couple of things going into this game. The Mids were favored by nine points. That seemed reasonable to me. I knew the Falcons were having trouble scoring in their first few games and I thought the Navy offense was more than capable of putting up at least 21 points. The bottom line was as long as the team came ready to play, I expected them to win easily, and I would say that the result was even better than anticipated. That's been the case with pretty much all the games so far.

Karl: 8:11

One of the reasons is that Coach Cronic constantly looks for ways to use all of his offensive weapons. Obviously, one of them is Blake Horvath, but in this hybrid wing tee offense, horvath operates a lot like a point guard. Whether it's a traditional option, play being run or something else Coach Cronic has called, based on what he's seeing. Defensively, the goal is to get the ball into the hands of the playmakers. Both Eli Heidenreich and Brandon Chatman are dynamic runners who happen to be really good receivers too, and Alex Tecza and Daba Fofana are capable of taking it to the house from just about anywhere on the field. Just like Horvath, the tight ends are being used very strategically and, of course, we've seen what Nathan Kent can do once he gets his hands on the ball. So when you have a quarterback who's very comfortable in the system and has a whole bunch of weapons at his disposal, the outcome is usually going to be a pretty good one.

Karl: 8:53

Here's another reason for the Mets' terrific improvement on offense, and it has to do with both coaching and mindset. First of all, the two coaches who haven't gotten enough credit this year are Jay Guillermo and Tommy Laurendine. Both of them coach the offensive linemen, and you know what I'm going to go ahead and throw in Matt Gonzalez's name too. He's the team's strength and conditioning coach. All three of these coaches are responsible for the consistent offensive play. When Coach Cronic first arrived, he was asked about what he thought the biggest challenge would be for the offense as they learned the new system. Kronick said it was teaching the offensive lineman the proper footwork and the correct blocking angles that his version of the wing tee required. It's pretty clear that Coach Guillermo and Coach Laurendine have been successful there, but that's been magnified by the fact that the offensive line has been pretty dominant physically.

Karl: 9:33

In the Memphis game the broadcast team made several references to how the O-line was just pushing the Tigers defensive lineman all over the place, and I heard the same thing in the Air Force game. That all comes down. They've developed a program that makes sure the team is physically ready to play every game and recover in time for the next one. Now I want to talk about the mindset part. We've all heard the phrase play for the guy next to you plenty of times, but while that's pretty easy to say, it's usually a little tougher identifying specific examples during the game. But not this season, and if you want to know just where to look, the offensive line would be a good place to start, especially during an explosive play.

Karl: 10:10

I'm going to use Navy's second touchdown in the Air Force game as an example. That was the one where Nathan Kent scored on a reverse from 34 yards out on the fourth and two. First of all, that play was perfectly executed. By the time Kent got the ball, the entire Falcon defense was on the left side of the field. But there was one Navy player who got downfield really fast and that was the left tackle, Connor McMahon. He briefly teamed up with Ben Purvis on a block right there at the line and then he released and sprinted downfield towards the goal line, looking to clear the way for Kent in case he needed it.

Karl: 10:37

I'll put a link to the highlights in the show notes so you can see it. The play starts at about the 118 mark. You can see at the end of the play that McMahon sort of nudges an Air Force defender out of the way at about the two-yard line. But Kent was going to score regardless. There's no way that the defensive back was going to bring him down in the open field a couple of yards short of the goal line. But when you watch the play, focus on what Kent does. After he scores. He turns around and points right at Connor McMahon as if to say, hey, thanks for hustling all the way downfield to make sure I got in, and then they celebrate together. That's not the first time one or more Navy teammates have been right there with the ball carrier as he reaches the end zone on an explosive play. The linemen and receivers take pride in getting down the field and delivering one more block to get their guy across the goal line. It is really cool to see everyone doing their part and celebrating the team's success together. Besides a touchdown by Kent, horvath and Teske each had two behind some really good blocking by the offensive line. Heidenreich had 100 yards rushing and he also picked up 101 yards receiving, and to tell you the truth, I don't think that's ever happened in the triple option era. So that's a pretty significant accomplishment.

Karl: 11:36

Now on defense, coach Volkert called another excellent game. He was bringing pressure from all kinds of different angles to keep the Air Force offense off balance pretty much every possession. Kyle Jacob led the team with 10 tackles, while Jackson Campbell had two sacks to go along with two tackles for a loss. The Mids seemed to be a step ahead all day. They registered three three-and-out possessions, turned the Falcons over on downs twice and tacked on an interception by Deshaun Peel. So the defense got their six points for this game and we know that this almost always results in a win. This time it was a pretty convincing one. Now, on Monday, I mentioned on our group Facebook page that Navy's 34 points were eight more than they put up in the previous four games combined. It's also the most they've scored in Colorado Springs since 1978, when they won 37-8.

Karl: 12:17

So what's the reason for Air Force taking such a significant step back this year? I think the answer to that lies in the fact that, for the past few years anyway, they stopped being a developmental program, and it all had to do with an academy policy that many, including me, thought that the Falcons used to game the system during the pandemic. It's called the turnback policy. The purpose is to allow cadets who experience a hardship to take a semester off to deal with it and then return to the academy. I don't have any issue with the policy itself. I guess I just have a problem with how it was applied this time.

Karl: 12:46

So when the pandemic hit in 2020, the Mountain West Conference canceled their fall football schedule, and when that happened, 36 members of the football team used the turnback program to skip that semester. It was tacked on to their final semester, which gave them the opportunity to graduate in December, and that in turn, gave them another year of eligibility for football. Then the Mountain West did a 180 and decided to play an abbreviated six-game schedule. With that reduced squad, the Falcons ended up going 3-3. Now, to be fair, the 36 players in the turnback program were not part of the 2020 squad, so it wasn't like it was a true redshirt season where they could be practicing with the team and sitting in on meetings, but, seriously, there's no way that those players still weren't connected to the team.

Karl: 13:28

I'm pretty sure they followed the equivalent of an off-season program, which included strength and conditioning as well as staying up to speed on the offensive and defensive schemes that they used, and when they came back for the following season, these players had matured one more year without having to deal with the wear and tear on their bodies. The Falcons went 10-3 in each of their next two seasons, and then last year, they won their first eight, before losing their next four in a row to close out the year. They did win their bowl game, though. So in the three years following the pandemic, Air Force had a record of 29-10, with three bowl wins, but all that came with a pretty heavy price.

Karl: 13:58

The younger players in the program weren't getting developed at the same rate as they otherwise might have been. That's because of the players who had entered the turnback program staying an extra season. The Falcons had a ton of players with lots of experience those last couple of years and they were getting the lion's share of the snaps. Now just about all those guys are gone and as a result, air Force has one of the least experienced teams in the country and they'll need to manage their way through that. Meanwhile, navy's program is on pretty solid footing. There's no turnback program at the academy, so when they lost some key players through the transfer portal a couple years ago, it was just basically the next man up. These players took their lumps at first, but now they have the benefit of all that experience. Most of their playmakers this year are underclassmen. Horvath, heidenreich, chapman, kent and Teske are all juniors, and so are Landon Robinson, kendall Whiteside, luke Pierce and Jackson Campbell on defense. At the end of the day, it all boils down to staying true to the developmental nature of the program. To me, it seems like Air Force took advantage of an existing policy to reap some quick rewards. Sure, they won some extra games, but they only came away with one CIC trophy during that period, and now they have a pretty decent mountain to climb to get everything back on track.

Karl: 15:02

Okay, we're going to go ahead and take a short break now, but before we do that, I did want to give you all a couple of ways to stay up to date on Navy sports. The first is to join the Navy Sports Nation group Facebook page. I've got a link to that in the show notes. Just click on it, answer a couple of questions and you'll be good to go this podcast right now. It can be Apple Podcasts, spotify, iheartradio, it doesn't matter. Once you do that, every episode will be downloaded to your directory when it's released and you can listen to it whenever you're ready. So please consider becoming a member of our group and you can actually tap that follow button right now to show your support for the podcast. I'm looking forward to having you join us. We'll be right back. Thanks for staying with us on Navy Sports Central.

Karl: 15:59

Karl Darden, here with you and as we finish this deep dive segment, I wanted to spend some time doing a little exercise comparing how much this Navy football team has improved compared to last year, and I'm going to call it with this game. Now. Ideally, it probably makes more sense to do this after the sixth game, since that would mark the halfway point in the season. But five games is close enough for you all to see the difference, so let's go ahead and get started. With this game against Air Force, the Mids have scored 218 points. They only scored 212 all of last season. The team is currently averaging just over 43 points per game, compared to just over 17 in 2023. They are ranked 7th in the country in scoring offense, compared to 125th a year ago. By the way, that improvement of over 25 points per game ranks as the best across all of Division I.

Karl: 16:47

With this game, the Navy offense continues to be perfect in the red zone. They are 18 for 18 and every score has been a touchdown. That compares to just 14 all of last year. And, by the way, that 18 for 18, with all of them being touchdowns ranks first in the FBS. With this game, the team ranks second in the country with 303 rushing yards per game. This is over 100 yards more compared to last year, and the 21 touchdowns they've scored on the ground is already five more than the 16 they put up all of last season. With this game, the mids are averaging 8.2 yards per play, which ranks first among all FBS teams. Last season, they were all the way down at 118th, with just 4.6 yards per play.

Karl: 17:24

With this game, the Navy offense continues to maintain their high standards with respect to ball security. They've only put the ball on the ground once and they got that one back. They're ranked sixth in the country in fewest fumbles per game. In 2023, they were at 115th. Now let me go ahead and throw in one for the defense, because the defense was pretty good last year, but I did want to find one metric that applied to them. With this game, the Navy defense added another turnover to their total and so far this year, they have a turnover margin of plus 1.8, which ranks them third in the country. This is a stat where the team ranked pretty high last year, finishing seventh overall, so the defense has even managed to improve on this number over the first five games. So there you go. Those are a handful of stats that show the huge improvement in Navy football year over year, and I think the Mids will continue to get better. If they can steer clear of any significant injuries, this team could rank among the best ever.

Karl: 18:12

Okay, that takes care of our deep dive for this episode, but stick around because we still have our question of the day segment by going back to our last one, which actually was in episode 67. That was a little over a month ago, and that one had to do with, uh, navy's opening game of season. So here's the question Since 2002, what is the most number of years in a row that Navy has won their first football game of the season, either at home or on the road? Is it A 3, b 4, c 5, or D 6? And for this one, everyone who answered went with either four there were 60% of you who chose that answer or five 40% picked that one, so the correct answer was actually A three years.

Karl: 19:17

And the mids have done that on three different occasions in the last 23 years. The first was from 2002 to 2004. And you'll recall that 2002 was Paul Johnson's first year as the head coach. Now, interestingly enough, they won their very first game of the year against SMU and the mids just absolutely hammered them. Now, remember, in the previous year Navy had not won a single game the entire season, so they're riding a pretty long losing streak. They came into the game 10 and a half point underdogs and gave the Mustangs a 38-7 beatdown, but then they lost their next what 9? Before they thrashed Army 58-12 in the last game of the season. So it was kind of a bookend year and, of course, after that the team just took off. The next time was from 2006 to 2008. And remember that Coach Johnson left after that 2007 season, so that 08 win was Coach Ken's very first one as a head coach. And then, finally, the last time was from 2015 to 2017. So that's our recap.

Karl: 20:17

Now let's go ahead and take a look at this episode's question. Blake Horvath has opened a season with five consecutive games where he's passed for 100 yards or more In the last 23 years. What is the record for the most number of games in a season where a Navy quarterback has had 100 or more passing yards? Is it A 5, b 6, c 7, or D 8? You can take your time on that one and get back to me either by texting the show or responding to the poll question on the group Facebook page. So I'm looking forward to seeing what you have for me there.

Karl: 20:46

Okay, it is time to check in with our athletes on the mid-watch, so let's go ahead and start with the women. You'll recall that we are tracking senior midfielder Amanda Graziano from the soccer team. The mids are currently 8-6-1 overall and 2-1-1 in the conference. Meanwhile, graciano is their leading points producer. She's got four goals and six assists to give her a total of 14 points overall. Remember, for statistical purposes a goal counts as two points. Three of those assists came in a 4-3 win over Loyola a couple of weeks ago.

Karl: 21:15

Graziano delivered a perfectly placed corner kick to the front of the goal that Alexa Riddle headed in for Navy's first score of the game, and it was about a month ago that Graziano scored on a pretty cool free kick. After being fouled, she made her attempt from about 18 yards out. The rest of the players were lined up about halfway between Graziano and the goal, but there was a break in the line and Graziano decided to go low. When she kicked it, the ball curved right through the gap and found the back of the net just inside the left post. It was a terrific shot. I'm going to go ahead and put a link in the show notes for you, because you really got to check it out. It was pretty cool. Anyway, the mids have five more conference games, including the star match against Army, and that's going to be played on October 19th on the road. That's going to be a tough one and I'm thinking that Graziano's got to play a pretty pivotal role if the mids are going to win.

Karl: 22:01

Now let's jump over to the men. We are following two guys named Luke, and both of them happen to play on the sprint football team. First we have Luke Wagner, who is a senior, and he was actually listed as a running back at the beginning of the season, but now he's playing quarterback. And it looks like Luke O'Connell, who's a sophomore and at the beginning of the year was playing quarterback, is now playing running back. So basically they've just switched roles. The mids are the three-time defending college sprint football league champions, but they're only two and one.

Karl: 22:33

After a disappointing loss to Army last week in the star game, the offense just really couldn't get anything going. There was a couple of costly turnovers and I don't know. It just wasn't their day. So they've got four games left and they're probably going to have to win all of them to get back into the championship game, where they'll most likely just face Army again. I mean, that's the way it's been for the last God knows how many years. In any case, luke Wagner is second on the team in rushing, averaging about six yards per carry. He's got 149 yards through the first three games and his best game throwing the ball was against Cornell. He passed for 144 yards and a touchdown and led the Mids to a 49-0 win. The change to running back means less touches for Luke O'Connell, since the team is pretty deep at that position. So far this season, the Darien Connecticut native has only seen action in the Cornell game. He did make the most of it though, picking up 32 yards on just two carries, including one touchdown. Now we'll see how things go over these last four games. The nice thing is, with O'Connell just being a sophomore, he's got two more years to make a significant impact. That's going to do it for this edition of Navy Sports Central.

Karl: 23:33

Thank you all so much for joining us Now. If you like what you've heard, please be sure to hit that follow button wherever you get your podcasts, and remember to get the word to all the other Navy fans out there. Our question of the day continues to be a show favorite. You can get in on that by joining the Navy Sports Nation group Facebook page and giving your answer to this week's question. You can also respond by sending us a text. All you need to do is click on the link in the show notes. 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.