Unless they reopen conference play in the spring, it will be a very short football season for the Mercer Bears. The game at West Point on Saturday was the second of their three-game fall schedule, and the Bears came determined to make the most of it. Mercer brought a young but enthusiastic defense and a novel approach to the offense to Michie, and made it a contest, at least through the first quarter.

If you only looked at total yardage statistics, you might wonder why the score was skewed so highly in Army Black Knight’s favor at halftime. The simple answer to that question is field position. Army started 3 of its 5 first-half possessions from inside the Mercer 40 yard line; so they didn’t have to gain a lot of yards to score three touchdowns.

Mercer had plenty of time to prepare for the game, and no doubt they carefully studied every scripted play run by Army’s two young quarterbacks in the UTSA game. The Bears held the Black Knights to 1 successful conversion in five third-down attempts in the first half, but Monken responded with 3 of 3 successful fourth-down conversions to put 21 points on the board.

The Black Knight defense appeared to be a bit unprepared for the rapid shifts in the Mercer formations on the opening drive of the game, but they stiffened in time to hold the Bears to an early field goal and ended the next 4 Mercer possessions with 2 interceptions and 2 punts forced.

If there was any doubt about the outcome of the game at halftime, the Black Knights ended it with a quick touchdown drive to start the third quarter. It was another drive that started in Mercer territory due to a spectacular 39-yard kickoff return by speedster Tyrell Robinson with a 15-yard face mask penalty tacked on for good measure.

What little hope might have remained for the Bears was dashed with 4:39 left in the third quarter when cornerback Jabari Moore picked off a Frost pass and ran it 29 yards into the end zone to give Army a 39 point lead. Monken started to clear the bench after that and Mercer followed suit. Freshman Carter Peevey came in to replace Frost at quarterback for the Bears and led them into field goal range only to have their final scoring attempt fail.

By the start of the fourth quarter, we were having problems identifying players on both sides of the football as a lot of young players and one notable senior were enjoying an opportunity to get some playing time and be seen on national television. By our count, Monken got 74 players into the game, including 14 freshmen. Mercer had 60 participants. Notable among the plebes were Jordyn Law making his first career start at Left Tackle along with quarterback Christian Parrish, and fullback Tyson Riley, both of whom emerged from very deep spots on the depth chart to give us an early glimpse of the future.

28 different players registered tackles on defense, and 13 different players had rushing attempts. We can’t do justice to all the players who were getting an early taste of the future, but we suspect that a lot of proud moms and dads are saving their recordings of the game, and the rest of us got a preview of the bright future of football at West Point.

When the Black Knights win by 46 points, it’s not difficult to find a lot of Good things to say about the game, a lot tougher to find things Bad to say, and almost impossible to find anything we could claim was Ugly. There weren’t much in the way of the usual bonehead penalties to complain about in this game, and the only two fumbles were both recovered before any real damage was done.

Three Interceptions: Interceptions played a major role in Army’s scoring without running up a lot of yards. The first interception by cornerback Cam Jones at the Mercer 39 yard line set up a short touchdown drive for Army’s second score of the game. Middle Linebacker Jon Rhattigan stepped up to stop one of the few scoring threats by Mercer at the end of the second quarter. Rhattigan nearly broke loose for his second pick-six of the season but was caught short after his 50-yard return was stopped on the Mercer 22. There was not enough time for the offense to turn that good field position into a touchdown, and Salyers missed a 39 yard field goal attempt with time running out in the half. Malkelm Morrison returned the third interception for a 29-yard touchdown to put the game well out of reach late in the third quarter, but his defensive touchdown also deprived the Army offense of another chance to add any offensive yards in one of Army’s 10 official possessions.

Blocked Punt: The blocked punt by Reikan Donaldson in the second quarter set up another of the short field opportunities for the Army offense at the Mercer 38 yard line. Blocking kicks is becoming a trademark of Army West Point’s special teams as they lead the country in Blocked Kicks with 4, and the blocked punt in Saturday’s game put Army in a tie for 6th in Blocked Punts.

Special Team Play: The blocked punt was just one of the highlights of the Black Knights special teams play on Saturday. Tyrell Robinson returned only one kickoff, but it was a thing of beauty out to the Army 45. A face mask call moved it into Mercer territory at the 40 as noted previously.

Army only needed to punt twice in the game, but Zach Harding boosted his already good season average with a 53-yard kick to the Mercer 34 after they had halted one of the Black Knights few successful possessions on the Army 20. Later in the game, junior Brooks Hosea got off a 46-yard punt to put Mercer back on their own 35.

Landon Salyers missed his one FG attempt but booted 4 of his 8 kickoffs through the end zone for touchbacks. Mercer only returned one kickoff beyond the 25 and that one was called back to the 23 on a holding penalty.

Efficient Passing Game: We are fond of citing Pass Efficiency Ratings as our favorite measure of passing success at Army West Point. Quarterback Cade Ballard offered us an illustration of that with his one completion in one attempt for a 53-yard touchdown. Our NCAA Passing Efficiency calculator rates him a whopping 875.2 for the game and 355.2 for the season. It was the first touchdown pass for the freshman quarterback and the first touchdown reception for freshman slotback Tyrell Robinson. Later in the game, sophomore QB Maurice Bellan registered his first career pass completion, to sophomore Cole Caterbone for his first career reception. It was a key third-down conversion that kept Army’s final 91 yard drive alive. Tyhier Tyler failed on his first career pass attempt, but the combined pass efficiency rating for the three quarterbacks was an impressive 353.1 on Saturday

Reserve Strength: Army West Point was missing its top 3 quarterbacks in Saturday’s game but still had 4 different quarterbacks see action, including the tag team of Ballard and Tyler. We don’t know where Maurice Bellan and Christian Parrish stand on the depth chart, but they must be somewhere around 6th and 7th at the moment. Not many teams can afford to have that kind of depth at quarterback. Freshman Tyson Riley made his third career game appearance and was in at fullback for the entire 4th quarter. With Anthony Adkins sidelined he figures to be fourth on the depth chart at fullback for the time being but probably 5th once Adkins returns. The Black Knights also had 10 offensive linemen in action on Saturday, including 2 plebes and 4 sophomores.

1 of 5 on Third-Down Conversions in the first half: This could have rated as Ugly, except for fullback Jakobi Buchanan converting on all 3 of his fourth-down attempts to keep three touchdown drives alive. Mercer came prepared to defend the triple option and made the Black Knights work for all three of their 3 touchdowns in the first half. Some of this is likely due to having a couple of young quarterbacks running the offense, but it was more due to the success of the Bears in defending against the fullback dive. Sandon McCoy and Buchanan were both held to an average of 2.4 yards per carry on their 16 combined attempts, and Cade Barnard was held to 2.5 yards per carry on his 6 attempts. Two sacks for a loss of 10 yards contributed to the problem as well, demonstrating one downside of attempting to pass when the opponent knows it’s going to happen. The Black Knights improved to 8 of 14 third-down conversions for the game, but the low third-down conversion rate in the past few games should still be an area of concern.

Missed Field Goal: Salyers missed his first field goal attempt of the season when he hooked a 39-yard attempt with 5 seconds left in the first half. The miss had no impact on the final outcome, but we agree with one observer who suggested that Monken might have called a time out to give Salyers a better chance to prepare. Kickers like to prepare mentally for those closing second field goals, and Salyers didn’t have a whole lot of advance notice to mentally prepare after Rhattigan had that 50-yard return to get the ball in range. Salyers might have missed it anyway, but a timeout might have given him a better chance.

It was a good day all around for the three components of the Army team. We’ve already mentioned some individual notable achievements in our main narrative so we won’t repeat them here.

• Senior FB Sandon McCoy scored another hat trick with 3 rushing touchdowns on the day to boost his season TD total to 8 and his career total to 16.

• Junior Cade Barnard scored his first rushing touchdown of the season.

• Sophomore QB Tyhier Tyler led all rushers with 10 carries for 77 yards.

• Freshman FB Tyson Riley finished second in rushing with 9 carries for 48 yards.

• Sophomore WR Raekan Donaldson had a big day with a blocked punt and a 29 yard carry for a key first down in the game.

• Freshman LB Spencer Jones registered a career high 7 tackles, including 1.5 TFLs to share the lead in tackles with senior linebacker Jon Rhattigan.

• Freshman tackle Jordyn Law made his first career start and received the highest rating among offensive linemen by PFF with an 82.1.

• We would be remiss not to mention the final touchdown of the game scored by senior WR turned SB Jordan Blackman. We can’t describe it any better than Jeff Monken did in the post-game conference:

The Black Knights have a week off to give them an extra week to prepare for their first challenge in the CiC trophy race against Air Force on November 7. GoBlackKnights.com will be providing plenty of additional coverage of that upcoming battle in the next two weeks.

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