The Tulsa Debrief

In the preview, I said that the trip to Tulsa had the potential to turn into a trap game. It was the Mids’ first road trip and first night game of the season. On top of that, Tulsa does some unusual things offensively and has a defense that could challenge the Mids at the line of scrimmage. Weird things happen when you take people out of their routines, and we definitely saw strange things in the first quarter on Saturday.

On the radio postgame show, Joe Miller told Scott Wykoff that the first quarter gave him a similar feeling to last year’s Notre Dame game, in the sense that the Mids kept making inexplicable mistakes. Their first three offensive possessions ended with an interception, a fumbled exchange, and another interception. After a little more than 12 minutes of game time, they found themselves in a 14-0 hole. Unlike the game against the Irish, though, Navy got its act together, scoring touchdowns on six of its next seven possessions.

In the end, the Mids returned from their first road trip with a 42-23 win over the Golden Hurricane. The offense had 461 yards, with 367 coming on the ground. The defense tallied three sacks and forced two turnovers in addition to getting two fourth-down stops. Tulsa was only 4-13 on third down. Quarterback Baylor Hayes was 7-8 passing at the end of the first quarter, but he went only 6-16 over the next two. For the game, Tulsa averaged only 8.6 yards per completion thanks to good downfield coverage and pressure from a Navy defensive line that seemed to get better as the game progressed.

There are two ways to look at the Navy offense’s disastrous start. On the one hand, it was obviously bad. There are teams on Navy’s schedule that won’t let them come back from a 14-0 deficit. On the other hand, it didn’t turn into the Notre Dame game. Having a veteran offense doesn’t mean that things will never go wrong, but you hope it means the players won’t let it rattle them when they do. The Mids kept their composure, got back to business, and by the fourth quarter, they had the game more or less in hand.

Early on, we got the gist of the Tulsa plan on defense. A lot is going on in this play. You have the defensive end shooting the gap at the snap, which happened a few times through the game. The outside linebacker played the mesh point, which occurred sporadically through the evening. But more important was the play of the linebackers and the safeties. Here, the linebackers were influenced by the threat of the jet sweep on the power read. The safeties rotated toward the motion; the playside safety played run support, while the backside safety played the middle third of the field in pass coverage.

It’s similar to what UAB did, and we saw similar playcalling as a result.

Throughout the game, the Mids ran the toss sweep as a way to beat those linebackers to the corner.

They also tried to block them. On the Mids’ second possession, they ran the counter trey option. The counter trey pulls the backside guard and tackle to the playside, and the linebackers follow them. But in this instance, Blake Horvath got a give read. With the linebackers following the pull, it left the backside uncovered when Alex Tecza cut back the other way.

Two plays later, the Mids ran a more conventional triple option out of the shotgun. After getting burned earlier, now the linebackers stayed home. That just opened up the option outside. Eli Heidenreich stalked the playside safety, and Horvath picked up a nice gain.

Horvath threw his second interception on Navy’s next drive. Following that series, the Mids returned to the power read. After Navy’s earlier success running outside, the playside ILB again scraped outside. Tulsa adjusted in the secondary, though, bringing the backside safety over to play run support. That makes sense, since the backside safety didn’t have a frontside blocker assigned to him. But when Horvath got a keep read, that safety ran himself out of the play. Horvath cut behind the inside-out pursuit, and the middle of the field was wide open.

Once again, that made the linebacker less aggressive, which opened up the power read sweep on the next play. The tight end didn’t have a problem getting outside leverage on him. Meanwhile, the backside safety went back to patrolling the middle of the field, and Tecza stalk blocked the playside safety.

On the next play, the Mids used twirl motion from the snipe to influence the linebackers, then ran the option the other way.

After that, Navy took to the air to attack the same look. With the backside safety and linebackers following the direction of the play, Drew Cronic called crossing routes in the opposite direction. Both the Z-snipe and the tight end were wide open on the play.

(An underrated part of Horvath’s game is how well he carries out these fakes.)

Right after the defenders got burned by their aggression following the play outside, the Mids went back to the jet sweep.

You may be sensing a pattern here, like a pendulum swinging back and forth.

Navy’s next possession came with 1:44 left in the half. In two-minute situations, the safeties usually worry more about the pass and not letting the ball go over their heads. That’s what happened here. The lack of run support from the secondary opened up option plays on the outside, and the Mids quickly moved into Tulsa territory using the RPO, center trap option, and belly option.

After halftime, Navy went back to the air. On their first play of the third quarter, they ran the power read sweep again. Earlier in the game, the safety was getting stalk blocked by a snipe lined up in the slot, or by a running back out of the backfield. This time, Navy used a two-for-one block, with the wide receiver blocking the safety while taking the cornerback with him. You’ll notice that the safety had his eyes in the backfield and wasn’t worried about the receiver coming over the middle. On the next play, the Mids ran play action using the same pattern. When Josh Guerin cut across the middle, there was no safety help inside. With the cornerback using outside leverage, he was beaten the moment the ball was snapped.

And once again, with the secondary on its heels, the Mids went back to the sweep on the next play.

Navy ended their next possession by mixing things up a little bit. Earlier in the game, the Mids used inside runs to set up chunk plays on outside option runs and jet sweeps. Here, the Mids ran the option outside, then once the linebackers and secondary started cheating that way, they returned to the power read, with Horvath running up the middle. He wasn’t touched until he was 15 yards downfield.

You get the idea. Anything the linebackers or secondary did was wrong. Or, at the very least, it wasn’t right more than once.

In the preview, I talked about Tulsa defensive coordinator Josh Reardon and how well his defenses have performed against Cronic’s offenses in the past. However, one key difference between those Mercer teams and today’s Navy team is at the quarterback position. Navy runs a lot more option than Mercer did, and Horvath is far more of a primary ballcarrier. Mercer’s starting quarterbacks in 2022 and 2023 combined for only 485 rushing yards. I’m not sure if it’s accurate to say that Tulsa wasn’t ready for Horvath, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he was Navy’s leading rusher with 159 yards.

Navy got off to a rough start defensively too, although some of that was due to starting with lousy field position. Three of Tulsa’s first five drives began in Navy territory, with a fourth starting at the Tulsa 42. Still, not everything can be blamed on the offense’s turnovers. The Golden Hurricane did some unorthodox things offensively. They huddled only two yards from the ball, then broke the huddle quickly, hurrying into formation. They also used some unusual formations and varied their tempo. All of this is designed to disorient the defense, and early on, it seemed like the Mids were having difficulty fitting up Tulsa’s runs. On this play, it looks like Seth English was caught with his eyes in the backfield, leaving the cutback lane uncovered.

It didn’t take long for that lesson to be learned, though. Tulsa averaged 4.5 yards per carry in the first quarter. It was 3.9 in the second quarter, and only 2.8 in the third.

The Mids also did a good job containing Baylor Hayes. Against New Mexico State, he completed 14 of his 17 passes, but a big part of that efficiency was due to his mobility. Navy took that part of his game away. On this play, you can see Julien Moutome forcing Hayes to stay in the pocket, while Landon Robinson stunts around the other end, fights past a double-team, and gets the sack.

Of Hayes’ 189 passing yards, 77 came in the fourth quarter when Tulsa was down by three or four scores.

In the end, Navy’s first road trip was a success. What could have turned into a disastrous night instead became a reminder of what veteran teams can overcome. As Brian Newberry likes to say, there’s still plenty of meat on the bone; the Mids aren’t playing at the level they’re capable of. They will need to get there soon. Still, if you can walk away from a conference game on the road with a 19-point win, you’re doing something right.