Former Navy football coach Paul Johnson was recently announced as part of the 2023 College Football Hall of Fame class, and his tenure in Annapolis is no small reason why he will be honored alongside legends like Reggie Bush and Tim Tebow late this year.
Johnson went 45-29 as Navy’s head coach from 2002-2007 after taking over a program that had gone 1-20 in the prior two years. Few moments during Johnson’s six-year run in Annapolis stand out as much as the Mids’ 46-44 triple-overtime victory against Notre Dame in South Bend in 2007, which snapped Navy’s 43-game losing streak to the Irish.
“It’s special, there’s no question,” Johnson said on Glenn Clark Radio Jan. 11. “I was so happy for the guys who were playing and really for the whole Academy. It had been so long.”
Navy boasted one of the top offenses in college football that year — 39.3 points per game — behind quarterback Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada. The Mids hung with Notre Dame every step of the way on that November day, with fullback Eric Kettani (88 yards from scrimmage and two touchdowns) and slotback Reggie Campbell (87 yards from scrimmage and one touchdown) leading the way.
It was Campbell’s touchdown and two-point conversion that put Navy up, 46-38, in the third overtime. Notre Dame scored a touchdown on the ensuing possession but came up short on the two-point conversion.
Johnson recalls talking with Charlie Weis, Notre Dame’s coach from 2005-2009, at midfield before the tilt against the Irish began. Weis gained notoriety for his work as the offensive coordinator for the New England Patriots from 2000-2004, then went 35-27 in five years with Notre Dame.
“He said, ‘You guys score a lot of points,'” Johnson said. “He said, ‘I don’t know how you guys score so many points. Look at your guys and look at my guys. I’m a great play-caller.’ And I just went, ‘OK.’ But he goes, ‘You guys score a lot of points. You just can’t get enough.’ And when we won the game, I couldn’t help myself. I went across the field and I said, ‘Coach, we got just enough.'”
Navy ended up going 8-5 on the season, while Notre Dame went 3-9. Johnson departed for Georgia Tech after beating Army, and Ken Niumatalolo took over for Johnson ahead of the Poinsettia Bowl. Niumatalolo ended up holding the position for 15 very successful years before the Academy opted to move on last month.
Johnson was disappointed for his former offensive line coach but tried to look at everything in a positive light.
“He was there for a long time, and he had a great run and accomplished some great things,” Johnson said. “He’ll leave a pretty good legacy there. Things change for whatever reasons, but certainly he left his mark on that place and he’ll be remembered there for a long time.”
Johnson also touched on several other topics, including …
On why his Navy tenure stands out to him:
“I think that we changed the culture there. When you can go in and do that, it’s amazing. When we got there, they had won [six] games the three years prior to us being there. My first year, we won two. We had to cut the football team down some and make sure that we had guys that wanted to play out there, weren’t just getting out of extra activities. We took away the excuses for losing. I just didn’t want to listen to them. I told those guys, ‘Everybody goes to school, everybody has hard work.’ Once we got it going, the players took over. Each class kind of took over, and they were not going to be the ones to let it slide back. After that first year, I don’t think we ever won less than eight games again while I was there. We were 11-1 against the other academies, and that’s something I was really, really proud of.”
On high expectations at the Naval Academy:
“I think that happens everywhere. I’ll take Georgia Tech, for example. We went in and won 20 games the first two years, so all of the sudden that becomes the norm. I mean, that’s what they expect. Well, mind you they only won nine games [five] times in the 35 years before we got there, but that doesn’t matter. That’s the new norm, so that’s kind of what you’re judged on for a little bit and then it goes from there. I remember when I left Georgia Southern, we had gone 62-10 the five years I was there as head coach. One of my assistants gets the job, they fire him four years later and they haven’t had anybody since who had as good a record as he had. But the standard was set where it was almost impossible to stay there. And that’s what happens sometimes. I think probably what happened with the Academy is there’s certain things that each Academy can do to help. I know in talking to Kenny he was talking about the other two academies were able to stretch their guys during COVID and they weren’t at Navy and this, that and the other. The one thing you have to do, the Academy has to beat the other academies. That’s the one big thing. That’s hard to do if you’re not on a level playing field.”
On earning a spot in the 2023 College Football Hall of Fame class:
“You think about [the possibility], but you don’t know if you really have a chance or how it’ll play out. But I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I didn’t say I had thought about it. … I think what it does is it puts validation on your career. I spent 40 years coaching and [22] as a head coach. I think at the end of that time, if you look at the whole body of work, maybe that gives you some validation for it.”
For more from Johnson, listen to the full interview here:
Photo Credits: Courtesy of Navy Athletics