A third straight loss to Army and an uncharacteristic absence from the bowl season might suggest that Navy needs to make some changes. A deeper look says that the Midshipmen are really not that far away from their recent glory.
by Dick Weiss
PHILADELPHIA- Army-Navy is one of those storied rivalries that has always been a game that manufactures heroes.
This one was no different.
Quarterback Kelvin Hopkins Jr., a junior from Charlotte, N.C., threw for 61 yards and rushed for 64 yards and two touchdowns and was selected MVP as Army defeated Navy, 17-10, Saturday in the 119th meeting between these two service academies before a crowd of 66,729 at Lincoln Financial Field that included President Donald Trump.
Army (10-2), which has cracked the AP top 25 for the first time since 1966 and is currently ranked 22, has won eight straight games since an overtime loss to Oklahoma and has received a bid to play Houston Dec. 22 in the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl.
Navy, which finished the season an uncharacteristic 3-10, will be home for the holidays.
“It would be arrogant on my part to say we’re status quo,” Navy coach Ken Niumatalolo said. “You always do things in the off season to see how you can get better. We’ve got to go back and see what we’re doing.”
Navy had won 14 straight games against the Black Knights, but now finds itself with a three-game losing streak to its rival. Navy, which is used to contending in the American Athletic Conference, had been bowl eligible nine times since Niumatalolo’s first full season in 2008 before this season’s uncharacteristic setback.
Niumatalolo is the all-time winningest coach in academy history, but this has been his most difficult, frustrating season in 11 years.
“It’s been hard on all of us,” Niumatalolo said. “I don’t want to make this about me. I’ve been coaching a long time. To put it like it’s been hard on me, like I’m the only guy that’s been suffering through this — it’s been hard on all of us, on players, the coaches, the staff our school.”
Niumatalolo admitted he may need to do some serious soul searching during the off season. “We’ve got to look at what we can do to continue to improve,” he said. “We like to win, and we’ve been winning a lot of games. It’s hard because our program hasn’t been accustomed to what’s happened this year. Losing sucks.”
Navy initially surprised The American with its innovative offensive style of play when it joined the league in 2015. The Mids tied Houston for first place in The American’s West Division in that debut year in the conference and was ranked as high as No. 16 in the regular season. That preceded a 2016 season in which Navy won the West, hosted the American Athletic Conference Championship Game, and was in contention for a potential New Year’s Six bowl.
Navy again cracked the top 25 after a 5-0 start in 2017, but the Mids ended up with a 4-4 finish in conference play before suffering a heartbreaking loss to Army and bouncing back with an emphatic 49-7 win against Virginia in the Military Bowl.
This year, Navy found itself using three different quarterbacks to showcase different skill sets. The Mids averaged 26.3 points in a high-scoring league where teams routinely score over 40 points, and their problems were compounded by the fact their defense gave up an average of 34.0 points and 438.3 yards per game.
Navy entered the Army game ranked third in the country in rushing at 288.5 yards per game. But the Mids generated only 14 yards on the ground in the first half Saturday and the Army defense limited them to just 127 for the game. The Mids committed four costly turnovers, a pair of interceptions and two fourth-quarter fumbles, including one that stopped a potential scoring drive at the Army 1-yard line early in the fourth quarter.
The turnovers and offensive struggles offset a stout performance by the Navy defense, which limited Army to 289 yards of offense. Linebacker Taylor Heflin turned in 14 tackles with 2.5 tackles for loss, while hard-hitting safety Sean Williams had eight stops with one tackle for loss and a pass breakup.
“It’s tough because these guys (at Army) come out and they want it just as much as we do,” senior fullback Anthony Gargiulo said. “It’s frustrating because you know they’re giving their all. We’re giving it our all. You just wish that one of our guys would have had an extra step, an extra yard. Maybe if I would have had a better block on this guy it would have made a difference.”
The Navy seniors, playing their final game, had to watch the Corps of Cadets celebrate, bouncing in the stands in front of the president, who officiated the coin toss at midfield then sat on the Army side for the first half before crossing the field to the Navy side at halftime.
Trump was the 10th sitting president to attend the Army-Navy spectacle, a tradition that started with Theodore Roosevelt in 1901. Trump also attended in 2016 when he was president-elect. Both he and Secretary of State James Mattis stood at attention during a moment of silence for former President George H.W. Bush, who died last week at age 94.
Army-Navy has always been filled with pomp and ceremony. it is one of — if not the greatest -- spectacles in college football. There are cheers for the winners, tears for the losers but there is rarely any hint of bitterness between this band of brothers as they gather together to sing each other’s alma maters at the end of the game before the seniors graduate in the spring and go on to serve their country.
These games are always heart-wrenching. They can also be heartbreaking as we saw last year when Army survived Navy’s bid for a last-second field goal in the snow to prevail 14-13.
Army was largely in control of the 2018 matchup, as the Black Knights scored on their opening drive and kept the balance of play in the Navy half of the field for the first half. A third-quarter field goal gave Army a 10-0 lead that looked like it would be enough.
But Navy found a spark when Garret Lewis stepped in at quarterback in the fourth quarter. Lewis scored on a 1-yard run with 7:10 left in the game after Malcom Perry finally broke loose for a 43-yard run to the Army 5-yard line.
The Mids had a chance to steal the game when they regained control of the ball at their own 34. But four plays later, Army’s Kenneth Brinson registered a strip-sack on fourth-and-12, allowing Army to create the cushion it needed with a 1-yard touchdown run by quarterback Kelvin Hopkins with 1:28 to play.
The Mids got a 46-yard field goal from Moehring with 29 seconds left to make it a one-score game, but Army recovered an onsides kick to end the suspense.
“I’ve had this question a lot about the Army-Navy game — what makes it so different,” Army coach Jeff Monken said.
“It seems like on every play, the whole outcome of the game, is hanging in the balance on that play. It was the same tonight. It was just that kind of game - that on every single play, you’re hoping it goes your way.”
Monken is right. The average margin of victory in the last five Army-Navy games is 4.6 points, with all five decided by no more than a touchdown.
For Navy, there are plenty of reasons for optimism, chief among them that this year’s season is a relative outlier. Bowl games and Commander-In-Chief’s Trophies have become the norm in Annapolis under Niumatalolo and his staff. Next year’s schedule will include the standard nonconference games against Army, Air Force and Notre Dame, as well as a challenging lineup of eight American Athletic Conference opponents, but the road will be much more forgiving for a team that logged more air miles in 2018 than any other on the mainland United States.
While Niumatalolo does his soul-searching, then, to review the state of his program. He might find that fine-tuning is a better path than a complete overhaul.