Getting a punt blocked and returned for a touchdown makes it hard to win a football game. Getting two punts blocked and returned for touchdowns in the same contest makes it almost impossible, and Air Force learned that the hard way in this week’s “Diamond in the Rough”.
1. DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH: NAVY 33, AIR FORCE 27
Despite playing without their starting quarterback, the Navy Midshipmen improved to 4-2 and took a big step toward retaining the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy with a hard-fought 33-27 win at Air Force on Saturday afternoon.
As a journalist, I’m not going to complain about only having to type “Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada” once; but Navy fans had to be understandably concerned about competing without their senior playcaller due to a hamstring injury.
Enter backup Jarod Bryant. Executing the triple-option almost flawlessly, Bryant led the Middies with 101 rushing yards on 24 carries from his quarterback position. In case you haven’t seen a lot of service academy football lately, the teams actually boast virtually identical run-heavy offensive schemes, and combined for a whopping 112 rushing attempts on the afternoon.
I’m hoping tickets to the game were cheap, because the dependence on the ground game sure speeds things along and shortens the action. A fan that left to get a pretzel at the concession stand might miss a whole quarter before he got back to his seat! Bryant completed exactly one more pass than I did in the contest, if that tells you anything about the disparity between run and pass plays.
Yes, you read that correctly. The winning quarterback threw two passes in the game and connected on half of them.
As mentioned earlier, one of the huge stories in this game was special teams. Navy’s Blake Carter did most of the damage: Carter ran the first blocked punt back for a touchdown and blocked the other one himself (Bobby Doyle scored on the second Middie return).
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