Navy hopes to end slide against Army
Black Knights won the last 3, but Midshipmen aim to right ship with revamped defense.
The role reversal is profound: Army heads into Saturday’s rivalry game against Navy eliminated from bowl eligibility while the Midshipmen find themselves in the Amway Coaches Poll, one year after Navy limped into the finale with just three wins as Army stormed through the program’s most successful three-year stretch in decades.
The sense of disappointment at West Point is similarly deep. A team that went 13-5 in games decided by single digits across the previous three seasons is just 1-6 in such games in 2019.
not counting a 42-33 loss to Tulane on Oct. 5 that saw the Black Knights fail to convert a pair of two-point conversions in the fourth quarter. With one game left, Army is assured of its first losing finish since 2015 and cannot secure a postseason berth due to two wins against Championship Subdivision opponents.
“Well, it’s been a disappointment,” Army coach Jeff Monken told USA TODAY Sports. “It’s been frustrating. Agonizing to not continue to have success at the level that we’ve had.
“It’s been hard. Hard to endure building a program where there’s so much success and then seeing it slip.”
Saturday presents an opportunity. At a pedestrian 5-7 after winning a combined 29 games over the previous three seasons, Army heads into the rivalry game motivated by the chance to salvage a disappointing season.
“To beat Navy kind of makes it all go away,” said Army athletics director Mike Buddie. “It really gives you momentum, something to build on for the young guys.”
Army has the chance to achieve even more meaningful marker of the program’s recent rise: With a win on Saturday, Army would send out its senior class out with a 4-0 record against the Midshipmen. This year’s senior class would be the first since 1996 to complete a four-year sweep against Navy, which had previously won 14 in a row, the longest winning streak by either team in the series.
“To be the class to do that, to have those bragging rights,” said senior quarterback Kelvin Hopkins, “you meet football players who played here and the first thing they want to talk about is their record against Navy. ‘We went 2-1, 3-1.’ That’s what they want to talk about because that’s the game that everyone really remembers. To be able to come
back in 20 or so years and say, ‘We went 4-0,’ would definitely be something special.”
Beating Navy would restore some respectability to a season that once held significant promise but has crumbled under injuries and knee-buckling losses.
It’s possible to pinpoint a turning point in Army’s 24-21 double-overtime loss at Michigan on Sept. 7, which came one year after another close loss at Oklahoma — and as in the wake of that Oklahoma loss, which the team carried throughout the rest of last season, the Black Knights struggled to shake off the sense of a missed opening against one of college football’s gold-standard programs.
“Had we won the Michigan game, maybe everything would’ve been different,” said Monken. “They wanted to beat Michigan, believed they could and believed they would beat Michigan, and when we didn’t it knocked us to our knees a little bit. We lost a little something. We lost a little edge. It’s difficult to admit that, but it’s the truth. And it’s my job to control that, and it’s hard.”
After winning two games in a row against Texas-San Antonio and Morgan State, Army lost its next five by a combined 33 points, the last a 17-13 loss to fellow service-academy rival Air Force. Playing close games is standard: Army has been involved in 25 games decided by a single-digit margin since the start of the 2016 season, including each of the past three matchups against Navy.
To win with its style of football, behind an offense no longer in vogue across the Bowl Subdivision and with little room for error, the “horns and drums have to play together,” Monken said — and this season, unlike during the previous three, the rhythm is off.
Losing close games is “new to us,” said senior linebacker Cole Christiansen. “A lot of our wins have come by us making the final play. We just find ourselves this year where we’re one play short to get us over the hump.”
Navy will present a significant challenge. The 9-2 Midshipmen have been one of the great success stories in the FBS, already with six more wins than last season and a spot in the Coaches Poll and the final College Football Playoff rankings. Both losses have been understandable: Memphis, 35-23, in September and a 52-20 washout at Notre Dame in November. But Navy also owns two very impressive wins, against Air Force and SMU, with the chance to add a third against Kansas State in the Liberty Bowl later this month.
Navy also hands Army an opportunity. A win would allow the Black Knights to keep possession of the Commanderin-Chief ’s Trophy, given each year to the winner of the triangular rivalry between the service academies. Another win would give Army at least six wins in each of the past four seasons, the program’s longest such stretch since 196063.
And defeating Navy would “be a statement on what this season should’ve been,” said senior safety Elijah Riley.
“We definitely feel like it could salvage our season. It would prove to ourselves and to college football that we’re a better team than our record shows.”