Down by seven with under a minute remaining, Navy faced fourth-and-1 near midfield. Blake Horvath took a shotgun snap and ran up the middle.
After one key block right at the line to gain, the senior quarterback
slipped through a seam in the defense and was gone.
For a team that doesn't exactly load up on five-star recruits, Navy can make long scoring plays look comically easy. That 51-yard run by Horvath was followed by a 2-point conversion that gave the Midshipmen a 32-31 win over Temple two weekends ago. Now Navy comes out of a bye week as one of six remaining unbeaten teams in the FBS — and the only one outside the Power Four conferences.
In some ways, the aesthetic is what you'd expect from a service academy. The Midshipmen run more often than they pass, and option concepts are certainly involved. But this is not a team that’s content to move down the field at a glacial pace, holding the ball for 14 minutes at a time. Navy’s modern version of an old-school offense is downright explosive, with a combination of shifts, fakes, motion and misdirection that can cause chaos on the defensive side of the ball.
“We need the explosion plays. That’s a big part of what we do,” offensive coordinator Drew Cronic said. “The ability to run the ball and then be able to hit some things off of that, they work together.”
Navy was coming off three straight losing seasons when it fired Ken Niumatalolo, the well-respected coach who is the winningest in the academy's history. Defensive coordinator Brian Newberry took over, and after a 5-7 campaign in 2023, the Midshipmen hired Cronic.
Running what Navy called its millennial Wing-T offense, the Midshipmen took off last year, going 10-3, with victories over Army and Oklahoma to close out the season. Now Navy is 6-0 entering Saturday's home game against Florida Atlantic. A victory would run the team's overall winning streak to 10, tying a Navy record last set in 1960.
Navy has had seven offensive plays of at least 60 yards this season. That's tied for first in the nation with UT San Antonio and fellow service academy Air Force — which has leaned on its own passing game a little more this year. When Navy played Air Force earlier this month, the Midshipmen won 34-31 in the highest-scoring game between two of the major service academy teams since 2017.
In that game, Horvath took a shotgun snap with a back to either side of him and three receivers in the formation. As one of the receivers came across behind the line, faking a jet sweep from right to left, Horvath faked a handoff to one of the backs going left to right. Two defenders who were initially in the middle of the field drifted over to the same side, so when Horvath kept the ball and ran right up the middle, there was nothing but empty space. He went untouched for a 59-yard touchdown.
The following weekend against Temple, that same type of action yielded a similar result. Only this time, instead of keeping the ball after the fake, Horvath threw deep to Cody Howard, who had lined up as basically a slot receiver and run straight through the middle of the befuddled defense. He was about 10 yards behind the nearest defender when he caught the pass, and it was smooth sailing for a 50-yard TD.
“I don’t know of another quarterback in the country who fits their particular offense any better than Blake does,” Cronic said.
Horvath had multiple runs of at least 90 yards last season, and with the Midshipmen trailing in the final minute against Temple this year, a simple power run up the middle opened up for that long TD. There wasn't even any real misdirection during that play. Navy had lined up with three receivers, spread the defense out a bit and then blocked the run to perfection.
“We’ve got to keep people on their heels. I think we have a system where we’re able to do that some, because we’re different, and not letting them find us," Cronic said. “Whether it’s the shifting or the movements or the motions. You’ve got to have counters. You’ve got to have all those different things. But the bottom line is, somebody’s still got to whip somebody.”
Horvath finished the Air Force game with a school-record 469 yards of total offense, and Eli Heidenreich had eight catches for 243 yards and three touchdowns.
“It’s not me,” Horvath said afterward. “I mean, I’m throwing wide open to Eli Heidenreich, wide open to Eli Heidenreich, wide open to Eli Heidenreich.”
That modesty is impressive, but the question Navy coaches are now fielding is why Horvath isn't more prominent in the Heisman Trophy discussion. He is averaging 6.5 yards per rush and a whopping 12.1 per pass attempt. Army quarterback Bryson Daily finished sixth a year ago, so there's precedent for an academy player earning respect from Heisman voters.
The best chance for Horvath to do that may be when the Midshipmen play their annual showdown against Notre Dame on Nov. 8. Or perhaps down the stretch in the race for the American Athletic Conference title — with a playoff spot potentially at stake.
“If we continue to take care of business and we're able to do some of the things that I hope and think we can do, then maybe he gets more into that discussion, which would be outstanding," Newberry said. "I think he's well deserving of that.”
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