Bad Day in the Big Easy
The Black Knights returned to the fields of friendly strife after a 3-week layoff, relatively healthy, and presumably well-rested. Christian Anderson, the starting quarterback at the start of the season was back in action after being sidelined for the past month, but he didn’t inspire many fans with his return to the trenches, and the team as a whole didn’t look well prepared to play Tulane.
Tulane jumped out to an easy 14 point lead by stopping the Black Knight offense cold on Army’s first two possessions, while the Green Wave offense scored with relative ease on two of their first three possessions.
The Black Knights looked like they would make it a contest in the second quarter as Army scored two touchdowns and held Tulane scoreless; but by missing both PATs, Army left the field at halftime trailing by two points.
Tulane reasserted their control at the start of the second half when they took the kickoff and marched 75 yards in 9 plays to take a nine-point lead. Then after stopping the Black Knight offense on Anderson’s first interception, they added another 3 to lead 24-12 going into the 4th quarter.
Coming from 12 points behind has never been a hallmark of the triple-option offense, but Head Coach Jeff Monken made things even more difficult by trying to pull too many rabbits out of his hat. Monken’s magic just wasn’t working against Tulane, and they ended up scoring 14 gratuitous points off Army miscues to turn a reasonably close game into an apparent route late in the fourth quarter.
In this game, we did not see nearly enough Good things, too many Bad things, and a few more Ugly things than we ever like to see.
The Good
Second Quarter: It seems like just about everything good happened in the second quarter. The Black Knights outscored Tulane 12-0 in the second quarter but were outscored in each of the other three quarters. Army gained 158 of its 303 total yards for the game in the second quarter and held the ball for over 11 minutes, by far the best TOP of any quarter. The Black Knight defense also played their best in the second quarter, holding The Green Wave offense to just 23 yards and no first downs in the three Tulane possessions.
Just One Penalty: We’ve been critical of the number of penalties throughout most of the season; so it’s only fair to note that Army was only penalized once in the game, a false start call on wide receiver Michael Roberts.
The Bad
Unfortunately, that one penalty turned out to be a costly momentum changer. It came on first down with Army on its own 42 with 2:56 left in the second quarter. The five-yard setback was followed up by a 2-yard loss that made it a second and 17. Frosh wide receiver Isaiah Alston was unable to haul in a pass from Anderson, and a 10-yard completion to Brandon Walters left Army 7 yards short of a first down. It broke the momentum that Army had built in its two previous possessions, and the Black Knights were unable to regain control after that.
Triple Option?: What we saw on Saturday didn’t look much like Army’s usual triple-option offense. In addition to calling considerably more passing plays than we would normally expect or want to see, we didn’t see many, if any the three-option plays that give the offense its name. Instead what we saw was a lot of plays designed for the quarterback to keep the ball, handoffs to the fullbacks, and a few counter plays and pitch plays tossed in for a little variety. We counted only two pitches to a slotback, and both of them were tossed behind the runner. Freshman slotback Tyrell Robinson was unable to haul in the first of those and had to take settle for recovering Anderson’s fumble. Later on, AJ Howard had to turn around to catch the pitch, which broke his momentum and gave the defense more time to run the playdown. Most of the pitches we saw were designed pitchouts, in a couple of cases to the fullback rather than a slotback. Robinson carried the ball 5 times mostly on counters, and he did not have many opportunities to show off his open-field running skills. No doubt, Brent Davis modified the offense due to Tulane’s familiarity with the triple option, but the result was not very effective.
Special Teams Play: This is an area in which Army West Point has performed well for most of the season, but that was not the case on Saturday.
The problems started with a 23-yard punt at the end of Army’s first possession that put Tulane in excellent field position for their first touchdown. It was Zach Harding's worst punt of the season.
The problems continued with the blocked PAT after Army’s first touchdown, which then led to the choice of going for a two-point conversion that failed after the second touchdown. The two-point differential at the half may well have influenced some of Monken’s later decisions in the game.
The game was put out of reach by a couple of ill-advised special teams plays that we will cover in our Ugly category.
Not all special teams' play was bad. Despite the 23 yard punt to start the game, Zach Harding still managed to average 40 yards per punt and the kick coverage team did a good job of containing Tulane’s kick returns.
Passing Effectiveness: For someone who despises passing the ball as much as Jeff Monken does, he let Offensive Coordinator Brent Davis call several ill-advised pass plays in the game. As several observers have noted, Christian Anderson is not someone you want to put the ball in the air too frequently.
Anderson’s Pass Effectiveness rating for the game was a dismal 52.7 which speaks for itself, but it was foreseeable, considering his rating for the 2020 season is just 63.9, and his 2019 rating was only slightly better at 94. Anderson threw incompletions in each of the first two possessions, which contributed to the 2 three-and-outs to start the game. Army averaged just 2.5 yards per passing attempt for the game, which was a drag on momentum. Of the 5 completions in the game, only the touchdown pass to Robinson had much of a positive impact. The incompletions and interceptions had much more of a negative impact on the outcome.
The Ugly
Three Trick Plays That Did Not Work: Trick plays can be fun to watch when they fool the opponents and work. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for any of the three trick plays Monken pulled out of his hat on Saturday.
The fullback pass play by freshman Tyson Riley may have looked good on the drawing board, and perhaps even in practice, but it was truly ugly to watch unfold in the game. Riley stopped to pass but couldn’t spot his receiver until one of the defenders got close enough to get a hand on his arm. Then the wobbly ball bounced off two Tulane defenders before Brandon Walters caught it for a 2-yard loss.
The fake punt certainly didn’t fool Tulane. Anyone who knows Monken could have predicted that he’d try something in that situation. Instead of keeping Army’s drive alive, it set up an easy score to put the game out of reach.
The final trick play that failed was the lateral by Robinson on the final kickoff. We were actually fairly impressed with the lateral itself, other than the fact that it went straight into the hands of a Tulane kick coverage man. The score was meaningless except for making the loss seem even bigger than it was.
First Interception: We can’t really fault the defense for not getting any takeaways in the game. We never saw Pratt throw the ball up for grabs, and the running backs had good ball security. However, we did think that the first interception that Anderson threw was a bad play call coupled with even worse execution. The play came on a third and four situation in the third quarter when the Black Knight offense appeared to be moving the ball fairly well. There was no compelling reason to dial-up a pass play at that point, but Davis called for the pass, and Anderson threw it up for grabs to put Tulane in good field position for the field goal that gave them a 12 point lead going into the final quarter.
Notable Performances
Noteworthy performances were much shorter supply in this game, both on offense and defense.
• Sophomore FB Jacobi Buchanan was not the leading rusher on the team, but we thought he was the most effective with 60 yards in 10 carries for a 6.0 average.
• Christian Anderson led the team in rushing yardage with 77 yards in 17 carries that included a 19-yard touchdown run.
• Sophomore QB Tyhier Tyler contributed 51 yards in 8 carries for a commendable 5.7 average.
• Freshman slotback Tyrell Robinson scored the only other touchdown on a 10-yard pass reception.
• Junior LB Arik Smith led the team in Total Tackles with 8 while senior Jon Rhattigan finished with 6 tackles including a team-leading 2.0 TFLs.
Up Next - The Black Knights play host to the Eagles of Georgia Southern
Jeff Monken came to West Point from Georgia Southern accompanied by OC Brent Davis. Monken once said he did not want to play his former team; so it should be an interesting reunion.
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