The VMI Debrief

It’s hard to find much to complain about when you win 52-7. Statistically, there were all kinds of standout performances on Saturday. Blake Horvath was 6-7 passing with a touchdown. Braxton Woodson ran for 180 yards on only seven carries. Eli Heidenreich had 135 yards from scrimmage and two touchdowns. The team had five sacks, with Landon Robinson accounting for half of them. The Mids had 556 yards of total offense and limited the Keydets to 15 rushing yards. It was a complete performance.

But what does such a performance mean when it comes over a struggling program like VMI? That’s what’s supposed to happen. It certainly would’ve been a cause for concern if the Mids had misfired out of the gate, but they didn’t. Navy put on the show that everyone expected.

In a game like this, rather than get wrapped up in the result, it’s important to look for the details. We talked in the preview about how past Navy games against overmatched FCS opponents have been harbingers of bad things to come. But that can work both ways. Sometimes, you see signs of growth that can make you excited about the future.

Let’s start with Horvath’s touchdown pass to Heidenreich. VMI spent the entire first half lining up with three safeties, and they did again on this play. It’s a look that usually indicates cover 3, and it did here. But in this case, they had a corner responsible for the deep third on the field side, while the safety on that side played a shorter zone. The middle safety, lined up on the right hash, went to cover the middle of the field at the snap. On the other side, the Mids ran a wheel-post. This left the safety on that side in no-man’s land. When he broke toward the wheel route, Heidenreich found the soft spot between the deep zones. Horvath read the coverage and delivered a pass with just enough touch to be out of reach of the linebackers in the underneath zones.

The opponent doesn’t matter on a play like this. The ability to read coverage, run a good route, and deliver a perfectly placed ball is universal.

I also saw a lot to like from Woodson. That seems obvious when talking about a guy with touchdown runs of 68 and 74 yards, but those weren’t his only impressive plays. Anyone who has been to practice the last two years knows that Woodson has big-play ability. What he needed to develop was consistency, and there were encouraging signs on Saturday.

Young quarterbacks often tend to cut upfield too soon. They get antsy, not wanting to get caught in the backfield. Against VMI, though, we saw Woodson show patience with the ball in his hands. On these off-tackle runs, he could have turned upfield sooner, but instead, he trusted his blockers and followed them outside.

It’s plays like these —getting 4-5 yards instead of 1-2 yards — that keep the chains moving. As Coach Newberry likes to say, consistency is a superpower, and this is the kind of consistency you need from a quarterback.

Consistency also sets up bigger plays. When the defense finally did cheat outside a little too much, Woodson made them pay.

As for the overall Xs and Os of the game, it played out more or less the way we expected it to. As we mentioned in the preview, VMI defensive coordinator Rich Yahner was on the Delaware staff when the Blue Hens faced Navy in 2022, and his game plan was very similar to that one. He lined up in a 3-3-5, with the deep middle safety and sometimes the inside linebacker following the pitch.

The only difference is that VMI took their outside linebackers and brought them up into the A gap, I assume to overwhelm the center and try to get into the backfield. This just caused the Mids to run around them. Against this defense, the Mids did three basic things. One, they ran inside, although not usually between the tackles. They ran off tackle, both with the running back and the quarterback. They ran outside zone. They also ran power, allowing the line to down block the most of the line and pulling a guard around to lead the ball carrier.

Forcing the defense to respect the middle of the field made it easier to run other plays designed to beat the safety to the edge. They did this by throwing quick out patterns against soft coverage, jet sweeps, and rocket tosses.

Third, they gave the defense a mix of both, running motion one way and countering the other way with power and the counter trey.

One thing we didn’t see was too much option. There were a couple of RPOs, and Woodson ran a zone option in the third quarter that resulted in a sketchy pitch. For the most part, though, it was a simple plan. The Mids used a multitude of formations– some they haven’t shown before– but they tended to run the same play out of each one. I suspect that was intentional, setting the table for different plays from the same looks in the future.

Defensively, the Mids were similarly basic. As expected, VMI concentrated on getting the ball out of the quarterback’s hands as quickly as possible. While the Mids had five sacks, none of them came with more than four pass rushers. In the third quarter, we did see a cornerback blitz, but for the most part Navy kept things simple. There was one mixup in the secondary that led to VMI’s lone touchdown, but Coach Newberry fell on his sword in his weekly Zoom call, saying that was a coaching error in how the play was relayed to the players.

Robinson was an obvious standout for the defense. I thought Phillip Hamilton also played a good game, getting two pass breakups while matched up against 6-4 receivers. There was a lot of rotation among the defenders, too, with guys like Adam Klenk, Kush’i Abraham, and Matthew Seliga getting plenty of time with the ones. Getting different pieces operating from the same page is important as depth becomes a factor down the road.

Taken as a whole, this was exactly the kind of opener you want to see. You don’t hang banners for winning your FCS opener, but Navy went about their business the way they needed to. If nothing else, they set a standard to build on as the competition ramps up.