Mids win storm-delayed home opener
Despite Tai Lavatai’s career passing day, coach calls victory one ‘you just feel OK about’
It wasn’t exactly the overpowering performance the Navy football team wanted to completely wash the bad taste out of their mouths.
Coming off a blowout loss to Notre Dame in the season opener, Navy had an opportunity to gain much-needed confidence by dominating struggling Wagner in Saturday’s home opener.
Instead, the Midshipmen were sluggish and sloppy against a Football Championship Subdivision program that is now 1-25 under third-year coach Tom Masella.
Quarterback Tai Lavatai completed 8 of 13 passes for a career-high 161 yards and the defense forced two turnovers in its own territory as Navy gradually pulled away to beat Wagner, 24-0, in a game delayed twice by thunderstorms.
While not the most inspiring performance, it was enough to hand first-year coach Brian Newberry his first career win.
“Glad to get a win. To be totally transparent, I told the players in the locker room there are wins you feel ecstatic about and wins you just feel OK about. I think that was a win we feel OK about,” Newberry said.
Lightning in the Annapolis area caused the contest to kick off a half-hour later than the scheduled 3:30 p.m. start. More electricity forced a second postponement shortly after the second half got started.
When play resumed following a delay of more than an hour, most of the announced crowd of 29,798 had departed Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.
With the American Athletic Conference opener against Memphis looming on Thursday night, Navy went with a rather vanilla offensive package. The Midshipmen employed the traditional triple-option formation with double slots almost exclusively and did not show a whole lot of the new concepts installed by first-year offensive coordinator Grant Chesnut.
Overall, it was a rather uneven offensive display with the Mids producing just two touchdowns and a field goal through nine possessions. A couple missed field goal attempts didn’t help the cause as Navy only led 17-0 early in the fourth quarter.
“We kind of sputtered down in the red zone a few times,” Newberry said. “Missing two field goals hurt us. We’ve got to put points on the board, especially when we get down in the red zone. When we get those opportunities, we’ve got to punch the ball in. We’re a work in progress offensively and have a ways to go. We just didn’t execute as well as we would have liked to today. We have to go back to work and get better and we will.”
Navy’s defense was solid but not overly disruptive, basically allowing Wagner to repeatedly self-destruct. The Seahawks hurt themselves with costly penalties (six false starts), dropped passes and turnovers in being shut out.
Wagner moved the ball fairly well early under the direction of starting quarterback Steven Krajewski but was mostly out of sync after he left the game for good early in the second quarter. Backup Damien Mazil had his moments but was unable to make enough plays to sustain drives as the Seahawks mustered just 227 total yards.
Defensive tackle Clay Cromwell recorded a career-best eight tackles to lead the Navy defense, which recorded its first shutout since 2008 against archrival Army. Cornerback Elias Larry totaled seven tackles and two pass breakups as the Mids posted a shutout at home for the first time since 1994.
“I thought we did some really good things defensively,” Newberry said. “I don’t care who you’re playing, a shutout is hard to do these days. So hats off to our defense and the defensive staff.”
Navy’s opening offensive possession was impressive as Lavatai led a seven-play, 77-yard touchdown drive. Lavatai threw a dart to Anton Hall along the right sideline and the junior slotback turned the midrange pass into a 45-yard gain.
Hall, a converted fullback, ran a precision wheel route and the safety was slow to react, Lavatai said.
That set up first-and-goal from the 6-yard line and consecutive 3-yard runs by fullback Daba Fofana produced a touchdown that gave the Mids an early 7-0 lead. That seemed to portend good things to come, but the Midshipmen were unable to build on that momentum, managing only one first down on the next three possessions.
“Defensively, Wagner had a good plan. They came out with a different look we hadn’t practiced against and you have to kind of go to your option bible when that happens,” Newberry said. “I don’t think we handled it all that well in the first half. We had some missed reads, had some confusion on the perimeter blocking stuff and missed a couple shots [downfield].”
Curiously, the coaching staff inserted sophomore Blake Horvath for its second offensive possession despite the success Lavatai had on the initial drive. Horvath, seeing his first varsity action, narrowly avoided disaster on his second possession by recovering his own fumble for an 11-yard loss deep in Navy territory.
“We decided we wanted to do that before the game started. Blake’s had a really good couple weeks of practice and we felt he deserved to go in early,” Newberry said. “Because of some of the things they were doing defensively and looks they were giving us, we just felt more comfortable with Tai being a veteran getting us into certain plays and running the offense.”
Fortunately for the home team, Wagner’s offense wasn’t any better and mustered just 104 total yards in the first half. The Seahawks got into enemy territory twice and both possessions ended with turnovers.
A personal foul on safety Rayuan Lane for drilling the punt returner well before the ball arrived gave Wagner great starting field position at the Navy 39-yard line. The Seahawks advanced to the 20-yard line before tailback Ricky Spruill fumbled. Linebacker Will Harbour punched the ball out and it was recovered by defensive end Jacob Busic.
Navy was unable to capitalize on the turnover, going three-and-out for the second straight possession. However, after Wagner also failed to pick up a first down on the ensuing possession, Lavatai led a 12-play, 57-yard drive that produced a 27-yard field goal by Evan Warren that made it 10-0 with 2:20 left in the second quarter.
Wagner reached the Navy 38-yard line on its final possession of the first half, but this time Lane picked off a poor pass from Mazil in the end zone.
“We work a ton on red zone defense. To get two takeaways down there is huge,” Newberry said. “If we can continue to play red zone defense that way we’re going to be all right on defense.”
That gave Navy the ball at its own 20-yard line with 48 seconds left and Lavatai did a superb job of directing the hurry-up offense. Lavatai stepped up into the pocket and found speedy wide receiver Nathan Kent open in the middle of the field for a 35-yard gain into Wagner territory.
Lavatai followed with four straight completions, three of which produced first downs. He tossed a quick out to Camari Williams along the left sideline and the 6-foot-2, 210-pound wideout bowled over two defenders on the way into the end zone to increase the lead to 17-0 at halftime.
“I loved the way we ended the first half with the one-minute drive. I thought that was huge,” Newberry said. “It was a big momentum drive to end the half. It was good to see us operate in the one-minute situation. I thought Tai made some really nice throws. We operated really well going quickly.”
Navy had a good opportunity to pad that lead on the opening possession of the second half after Lavatai executed play-action to perfection and connected with wide receiver Cody Howard for a 32-yard completion. It was the first career catch for Howard, a Northern-Calvert graduate whose mother and stepfather live in Odenton.
That drive stalled at the Wagner 14-yard line and came up empty when a 31-yard field goal attempt went awry because holder Kellen Grave de Peralta mishandled the snap and could not get the ball down on the turf.
“I think we came out flat in the second half. The delay probably didn’t help with that,” Newberry said. “We’ve got to be able to take what people give us and that’s not something we did a great job of today. We definitely need to be a more efficient functioning offense.”
The Midshipmen managed only one first down on their next two possessions before finally finding the end zone again. Sophomore slotback Eli Heidenreich announced himself to the home faithful by ripping off a spectacular 46-yard touchdown run.
Heidenreich went in motion and took a direct handoff off a jet sweep then made multiple cuts to avoid defenders in weaving his way downfield to pay dirt — extending the Navy advantage to 24-0 at the 10:44 mark of the fourth quarter.
Freshman quarterback Braxton Woodson led the offense for the final two possessions as Navy finished with 408 total yards.
Navy has a quick turnaround with the American Athletic Conference opener at Memphis coming Thursday night at the Liberty Bowl.
“We have Memphis on Thursday night, so it’s a short week to get prepared for [that game],” Newberry said. “We’ll make corrections, move on and start getting ready for Memphis on Monday.”