Around the Yard: Army Football Getting All Kinds of Love this Week

It’s time to take a look at what’s being said about our three favorite teams this week as we prepare for another Saturday of service academy football!

Before we jump into team specific links, I would encourage everyone that loves service academy and triple option football to read this piece by Ross Dellenger at SI on the past, present, and future of the triple option. It is a fantastic look at the TO, how it has evolved, and how each service academy team employs it!

Army:

It was the Army-Oklahoma game that provided the latest reason for John Feinstein to ponder about what it is that makes service academy football so special. In one of several instances this week, this is a must-read as he explores why win or lose, the players that we get the chance to cover here at Against All Enemies are already heroes!

There was plenty of great coverage of the Oklahoma game, even if watching it was near impossible. We’ve already mentioned several times the $54.99 you would have to pay in order to watch the game live, but that made this guy’s epic Twitch stream the go-to source as 32k people flocked to watch when the game came down to the wire.

After all was said and done , maybe the biggest coverage the Army football team got was not from anything that occurred on the field, but for how they left the Oklahoma locker room on the way out.

As you can see, over 50k likes and numerous articles later, this was exactly the type of thing Feinstein was talking about in his article. This shows best of all what it really means to play for Army, Air Force, or Navy. This is who we are and what we are about!

But if you want something to read about the actual game, and you missed our recap explaining how this was triple option football at its best, then take a look at our dot com’s Alex Kirshner explaining why Army keeping this game close and forcing OT against the Sooners wasn’t actually THAT big of a surprise.

Looking ahead to this week’s game, we’ve already laid out our study of upstart Buffalo and their 4-0 record on the season. But if you underestimate the importance of this matchup or why this will be the best G5 matchup of the week, here’s a sneak peek from Bull Run at why this is such a high stakes matchup.

It seems the fans in upstate New York understand this as well, as Buffalo is inching closer and closer to Saturday’s contest being a sellout.

In what is a cross over post between Army and Navy, Army’s Kenneth Brinson, who is a dual-sport athlete and four year starter for the Black Knights and carries a 3.98 GPA in Chemical Engineering has been named a semi-finalist for the Campbell Trophy. This trophy is given to the top scholar-athlete in college football each season.

Navy’s offensive tackle Andrew Wood has also been nominated for the Campbell Trophy for the second year in a row and named a semifinalist as well. Here’s to hoping one of these two can bring home the trophy for excellence on and off the field!

Navy:

Speaking of Navy, they are coming off a heartbreaking overtime loss of their own to SMU and have a bye week to regroup and get healthy before taking on Air Force in the first leg of the CIC trophy.

Take a look at what our own contributor Gavin Jernigan has to say about where Navy stands at this point in the season as he pens some bye week thoughts on where they stand and where they are headed.

Looking back at the loss to SMU, Bill Wagner of the Capital Gazette explains that Navy is still looking for consistency from its usually steady-going triple option offense.

As far as the injuries go, Wagner also has received indication from Coach Niumatalolo that standout quarterback Malcolm Perry is probable to play against Air Force and goal-line force Zach Abey is somewhere between probably and questionable.

If anyone watched the end of the Navy-SMU game, you know that they went for two in OT rather than forcing a second overtime and ran this game-winning trick play to a tight end that Sonny Dykes found on...checks notes...Google.

Air Force:

Let’s not forget about the Falcons, who were unable to complete the comeback against Utah State even though they had a furious late rally for the second straight game.

Brent Briggeman points out that Air Force, who is now 1-2 on the season, is still looking for its identity. An area they have been incredible at so far is scoring on defense and special teams. They have had a non-offensive touchdown in each of their first three games and will be looking to keep that going while they search for the consistency that has been desperately missing on offense.

As they search for consistency, one person who could benefit and see an expanded role is senior Ronald Cleveland. Adding some plays at tailback out of the Z-receiver role could be a way to get the playmaker more involved on offense.

I’ll add another plug for the Air Force men’s soccer team who is now up to #8 in the country and showing no signs of slowing down. They beat UIW 4-0 last night to get them to 2-0 in the WAC and on track to continue climbing in the polls moving forward.

In other non-football news, it’s never too early to start talking Air Force hockey, and the Falcons were picked to finish 1st yet again in the preseason Atlantic Hockey coaches poll.