Navy Offense Will Have Some New Wrinkles This season
Three words are synonymous with Navy football: triple option offense. Regardless of coach and regardless of the year on the calendar, the Navy midshipmen have used the triple option offense as an equalizer. The throwback, Wing-T formation has allowed Navy’s undersized and under recruited allotment of players to compete at the FBS level.
Navy's quarterbacks have operated as the ultimate game managers while running the old school look. The pre-snap read of the opposing nose guard signals either a dive to the fullback or maybe an outside veer. A defensive end crashing in his face off the edge dictates a pitch to one of their slot backs.
As long as the ground and pound approach works, passing has been an afterthought. That’s expected to change this season and when Notre Dame opens the 2023 season against Navy on Aug. 26 in Dublin, Ireland, the Irish are likely to see a Navy offense that puts the ball in the air with more frequency.
"The offense obviously it's not been up to the Navy standard, and there's a lot of reasons for it,” longtime Annapolis Capital Gazette and Baltimore Sun Navy insider Bill Wagner recently told Irish Breakdown. "The triple option will always be the bread and butter for Navy, but they needed to add other elements to keep teams honest. Number one, which a lot of people had been advocating for years, was some sort of short passing game. Because the Navy passing attack had basically been play action deep balls, and that doesn't always work.”
Ken Niumatalolo led Navy for the past 15 years but was fired after last year’s 4-8 campaign marked his third consecutive losing season. Last year’s 241 rushing yards per game ranked No. 4 in the nation, but the Mids were a lowly No. 84 in 3rd down conversions, well behind fellow service academy option attacks Air Force and Army West Point at No. 30 and 33, respectively.
Nimatalolo’s reluctance to refresh the offense led to his dismissal and the promotion of Navy defensive coordinator Brian Newberry to head coach. Insert former Kennesaw State offensive coordinator Grant Chesnut in the same position and the plan for Navy is to still run the triple option, but with more passing wrinkles incorporated.
"People have been saying for years, I am one of them, that you (have) got to develop some sort of short passing game,” Wagner explained. "Incorporate some screens, some short crossing routes, ways to get the ball to playmakers out in space, but with not high risk passes and also knowing that you're not very good pass blocking team that you're not built that way, not ask the offensive lineman to have to block long on pass plays.”
Wagner witnessed much more passing at Navy’s practices that he was able to watch this spring.
"What we were seeing is more short passing concepts,” Wagner recalled. "Flares, crossing routes, screen passes, that type of thing. That's the biggest change I've seen. I think they just want to be a little more versatile and be able to attack teams differently. You know it to just shake things up and also give them more to think about and, and more to prepare for.”
Navy’s new look offense won’t just see more balls in the air, though. They will also add a new personnel look with the addition of tight ends in the offense.
"That's something that Air Force has done for years, is always had a tight end who could be a downfield pass threat,” Wagner detailed. "So yes, they're going to incorporate tight ends. I think it may take a while because right now all they have is basically converted defensive players and they're blockers at this point. It may be a few years. This current recruiting class is the first time they recruited tight ends who were brought in to be more skillful guys that can run routes and catch passes. So maybe a few years before they get to the point where they're utilizing the tight end the way they intend to.”
The more immediate question is who Navy’s quarterback in Dublin will be. Tai Lavatai was Navy’s quarterback for the first eight games of 2022 and finished the season with 785 passing yards and 309 rushing yards, but missed Navy’s last four games, including Notre Dame’s 35-32 win over the Mids on Nov. 12, due to a torn ACL.
Xavier Arline took the helm the rest of the way, finishing with 376 rushing yards, but just 85 passing yards while playing in nine total games. Neither Arline nor Lavatai is currently expected to start the season at quarterback after sophomore Teddy Gleaton took the lion’s share of reps there this spring.
"Tai did not participate in spring camp,” Wagner said. "Obviously, he's recovering from an ACL injury. Xavier Arline had very limited participation because he was playing lacrosse for Navy men's lacrosse and he got injured playing lacrosse, so he was not able to play lacrosse or football for a lot of when spring football camp was being held.
"So those guys are behind," continued Wagner. "I mean, we're talking about a new offense being installed here. Completely new offense, new language, new everything. And those guys weren't taking any reps in the spring whereas Teddy Gleaton got a lot of reps. So right now, Teddy Gleaton's ahead of the game and I'd put him as the odds-on favorite to start against Notre Dame in the season opener, unless Arline or Lavatai do something really dramatic during the summer training camp.
“Teddy Gleaton is the starter and both Tai Lavatai and Xavier Arline are going to have to beat him out during the summer camp,” Wagner continued. “Because Gleaton got all of the reps during the spring along with another classmate of his named Blake Horvath. But Gleaton clearly was the better of the two, and they really, really like him for this specific reason he throws the ball really well.”
Lavatai completed just 46% of his 91 pass attempts last season, while Arline was 4 for 11 (36%). Gleaton is a sophomore who spent the 2021-2022 season playing for the Naval Academy Prep School after graduating high school in 2021. He completed 55% of his passes for 1,482 yards and 23 touchdowns in his high school senior season in Maryland.
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