In a season that has seen more than enough words wasted on athletes behaving badly, this year’s Navy football team offers a refreshing tonic. This Saturday will mark the 88th iteration of the historic rivalry between the Fighting Irish and the Naval Academy’s Midshipmen and will take place under the lights at FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland. For the Redskins fans in attendance, it’ll be nice to watch competent quarterback play by the home team for once. While the Irish lead the series 74-12-1, Navy has certainly given Notre Dame fits recently, most famously beating the Irish in triple overtime, 46-44 in 2007, to end Notre Dame’s forty-three year winning streak.
Coming into Saturday’s match, the 6-1 Irish are riding a wave of national praise generated by its last-gasp loss to reigning national champion, Florida State. Everett Golson’s name continues to burble into Heisman talk, despite his penchant for turning over the football in the last three games. The defense, too, is enjoying good press, with a better-than-expected season a big reason why the Irish are ranked in the Top Ten and very much in the discussion for this year’s inaugural playoff.
Navy is 4-4, but is coming off back-to-back eleventy billion yard rushing performances and their junior QB, Keenan Reynolds, amassed 251 yards rushing and scored three touchdowns ths weekend against San Jose State. Navy itself scored on six straight possessions, which should cause Irish fans to remember the 2010 game, in which Navy scored five touchdowns in its first six drives. In the game before, against VMI, a Reynolds-less Navy put up 51 points against the over-matched Keydets.
On offense, Navy is committed to the triple-option. So far, the Mids have only thrown the ball 86 times for 733 yards, or what Chip Kelly calls “a solid first quarter.” Navy’s bread-and-butter, clearly, is the run, which they’ve attempted four hundred and fifty times. Their 2,818 rushing yards are second-best in the country.
Honestly, when you play Navy, you’ll need to throw out the record books, the stat books, and if you’re a North Carolina student-athlete, you’ll need to hit me up on Twitter so I can explain to you what a “book” is. Defending the triple-option depends on quick reads and discipline and Tex did a great job of explaining the task here. After 2010’s debacle, Coach Kelly and his staff have done a great job getting, and keeping, Navy off the field. Because the triple-option can wear a defense down, and the 2014 Mids are averaging 6.26 yards per rushing attempt, the opposing offense has to keep them off the field, score touchdowns, and protect the football.
This game will go one of two ways. If Notre Dame protects the football, the offensive line opens running room for the backs, and the Irish score some defensive or special teams points, e.g. Tuitt’s epic fumble scoop and score in 2012, the Irish will win going away. If, though, Notre Dame turns the ball over a couple of times and the defense can’t stop Navy on third, or forth down, we’re in for a nauseating, Nantucket sleigh-ride.
Hating Hurricanes Since 1990.
Bayou Irish is a Jersey boy and Double Domer who fell under New Orleans' spell in 1995. He's been through Katrina and fourteen years in the Coast Guard, so we cut him some slack, mostly in the form of HLS-subsidized sazeracs. But, when he's not face down on the bar and communing with the ghosts of Faulkner and Capote at the Carousel Bar in the Hotel Monteleone, he's our man in SEC-land, doing his best to convince everyone around him that Graduation Success Rate is a better indicator of success than the number of MNC's won in the last five years.
- Finding Flaws in a Diamond: Clemson’s Rushing Offense - December 17, 2018
- Why Nobody Will Cotton to Notre Dame - December 3, 2018
- Irish Finish Regular Season Perfect 12-0 - November 26, 2018
Worst thing about playing Navy is the inability to trash talk. All the respect in the world for what these young men have committed to doing after graduation. That said; Go Irish.