Army Spring Football 2023: Younger Players To Keep An Eye On
With spring training now underway, Army fans will be looking to see which players are ready to make the transition from scout team or special teams to the regular lineup.
With the installation of a brand-new offense, a lot of fans will be focusing on that side of the scrimmage line. Here are a few of the young players on offense whose jersey numbers we should be looking for on the field as spring camp continues to unfold.
Bryson Daily (# 13) - as we noted in our Looking Forward article on Quarterbacks (For Subscribers Only), Bryson is the only returning QB on the roster with college game experience, but that experience was limited to 5 games and 26 snaps in the old offense; so he will have to establish his credentials for the new job. Daily carried the ball 12 times for 175 yards and 2 touchdowns for an impressive average of 13.6 yards per attempt in 2022, and his 6-0 height should give him a slight advantage over some of the other contenders for quarterback this spring, but he’ll have to establish his passing credentials at the college level. He is 0-1 in passing so for Army, but as a 3-year high school QB he rushed for over 4100 yds and 58 TDs, and he passed for nearly 3400 yards and 45 TDs, and those look like the Dual Threat numbers that Thatcher will be looking for
Zach Mundell (#1) - is another quarterback we were told to keep an eye on. We didn’t single him out in our Looking Forward article on quarterbacks, in part because he didn’t appear to fit the description that Thatcher said he was hoping to find. Mundell was a Rivals two-star recruit out of Arlington, TX in 2021, but we may not be the only ones who underestimated his potential. Mundell received a 5.4 rating from Rivals as a Pro-Style quarterback, and no doubt his 5-9 height limited his rating. Some of the reporters in the Arlington area felt that Mundell was highly underrated by the scouting services. We looked up his high school stats and viewed his highlight video and suspect that may be the case. Mundell was named the District 4-6A Offensive MVP as a junior, He was a three-year starter at Arlington Martin and completed 280 of his 485 career pass attempts for 3903 yards and 47 passing touchdowns with 13 interceptions. Although the Martin offense did not expect him to do much rushing, he did accumulate 1695 career rushing yards on 307 attempts with 331 rushing touchdowns. Watching his highlight video, it appeared that he scrambled for a lot of those yards. Monken and Thatcher will expect him to run the ball more often than he did in high school. Can he become the dual-threat quarterback that Thatcher is looking for? Only time will tell, but that time is coming soon.
Noah Short (#23) the 5-foot-11, 175-pounder was listed as a DB on the 2022 roster, but we learned that he has been moved to RB as a slot receiver for spring practice. Noah was a two-way player at Kings Academy in Sunnyvale, CA when he was recruited by Saga Tuitele and Greg Gasparato. Rivals awarded him a 5.3 rating as an athlete. As a junior in high school, Short rushed for 552 yards in 78 attempts (7.2 ave) with 6 touchdowns. His longest run from scrimmage was 82 yards. He also had 18 receptions for 442 yards and 4 touchdowns with his longest reception at 91 yards. He also had 362 yards on kick returns and 278 yards on punt returns; so he could become a highly versatile threat in the mold of Tyrell Robinson. Short appeared in 8 games on special teams in his plebe season at West Point recording 1 tackle and a punt return for 31 yards.
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