Navy and Notre Dame will meet this coming Saturday for the 97th time, but few meetings in this classic series have carried the importance of this one, with weighty implications for the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff.
The teams kick off at noon Oct. 26 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. (CBS), and for the first time since 2019 and just the second time in 45 years, both teams enter the game nationally ranked.
“We want to be relevant,” said Navy ascendant quarterback Blake Horvath, who has entered the Heisman Trophy discussion with a spectacular first half of the season. “You want to be a game that is relevant within the national standing of college football.”
Navy is absolutely relevant: 6-0, ranked No. 24 in the latest Associated Press poll, and one of the stories of the year in college football under second-year head coach Brian Newberry. The buzz around this team began in earnest after the Mids upset American Athletic Conference preseason favorite Memphis, 56-44, and grew after they throttled Air Force, 34-7, in Colorado Springs two weeks later. They head to New Jersey as one of nine undefeated teams left in Football Bowl Subdivision football.
Notre Dame (6-1) is ranked No. 12 and has won five in a row. The Irish, led by transfer quarterback Riley Leonard, are a 12- to 13-point favorite in many sports books. They have a pair of wins against nationally ranked teams; they opened the season by winning at then-No. 20 Texas A&M, 23-13, and outlasted No. 15 Louisville, 31-24, in South Bend four weeks ago.
“They’re Notre Dame. They’re super talented. They look like an NFL team,” Newberry said earlier this week. “They’re big, they’re long and they’re athletic.”
Both teams find themselves in contention for a spot in the new 12-team College Football Playoff, but a loss would be more costly to Notre Dame. After being shocked by Northern Illinois, 16-14, in the second game of the season, Notre Dame as an independent would almost certainly see its playoff hopes extinguished with a second loss.
Navy, however, still has a potential path to the playoff through the American Athletic Conference championship regardless of what happens against Notre Dame.
Entering play this week, 23rd-ranked Army (6-0 AAC) and Navy (4-0 AAC) sit atop the league and could be in line to play in the AAC title game on Dec. 6. The game will be hosted by the top seed.
The service academy rivals have their regularly scheduled game the next week in Landover, Md. — it was prearranged when Army joined the AAC that their rivalry game would continue, at the end of the season, as a nonleague contest — which could lead to a bizarre scenario in which Army and Navy play on consecutive weekends.
First things first, though: Navy this week faces a Fighting Irish team that steamrolled the Mids, 42-3, in the season opener last year, Notre Dame’s sixth straight win in a series that dates back to 1927. (The teams have met every season except 2020 because of COVID.)
This Navy team, though, bears little resemblance to that one. First-year offensive coordinator Drew Cronic installed a system known as a hybrid or millennial Wing-T that has turned this offense into a powerhouse and Horvath into a dark-horse Heisman Trophy candidate.
The Mids average 44.8 points a game, the fourth-best mark in FBS football, and have scored at least 34 in every game this year. Behind a strong offensive line, this team still features a rock-solid ground game associated with service academy football — they rank fourth in the country with 274 rushing yards a game — but Horvath has injected a potent passing element as well.
Horvath, a junior who had started one game before this season, and Alabama’s Jalen Milroe are the only quarterbacks in FBS football with at least 10 touchdowns both rushing and passing.
Horvath burst onto the national scene when he ran for 211 yards and four touchdowns on just 12 carries and threw for 192 yards and two more scores in the Mids’ win against Memphis, then ranked No. 22 in the coaches’ poll. He’s averaging nearly 8 yards per carry, and fullback Alex Tecza is averaging better than 6 yards a carry and has scored seven touchdowns.
Bite on the run in this deceptive offense, though, and Horvath can make you pay through the air. Eli Heidenreich has 23 catches for 485 yards and five touchdowns.
Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman said “eye discipline” is critical against a Navy offense that has already produced eight plays of 50 yards or more.
“This week, more than any week, lack of eye discipline can truly result in explosive plays,” Freeman said at his weekly news conference earlier this week. “[Navy] has had more explosive plays than probably anybody else in the country.”
Navy has also operated with remarkable offensive efficiency. The Mids have scored on all 23 red-zone trips this season, with 22 touchdowns and one field goal. They have not lost a fumble all season, and Horvath has thrown 10 touchdowns to one interception.
Among the challenges staring down Horvath this week will be Notre Dame safety Xavier Watts, the reigning Bronco Nagurski Award winner as the best defensive player in college football. He has 10 interceptions in his career, including three this season. Notre Dame, though, lost top cornerback Benjamin Morrison, considered a first-round NFL draft pick, to a season-ending hip injury two weeks ago.
Notre Dame has allowed just 11.9 points a game, the fifth-lowest average in FBS.
The Navy defense, meanwhile, figures to face its stiffest test of the season. Like Horvath, Notre Dame dual-threat quarterback Riley Leonard has 10 rushing touchdowns this season. Through the air, Leonard is 118 for 177 for 1,182 yards, with six touchdowns and three interceptions.
“We’ve seen a lot of dual-threat quarterbacks,” Newberry said. “He’s a really good one, though. … You gotta account for him on third down when you drop into coverage, because he’ll put his foot in the ground and take off.”
Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love has seven rushing touchdowns and another one receiving, and Clemson transfer Beaux Collins (26-317) leads a rebuilt receiving corps.
Senior linebacker and co-captain Colin Ramos leads Navy with 68 tackles, and cornerback Dashaun Peele is coming off a career game; in the Mids’ 51-17 win against Charlotte this past week, he became the first player in Navy history with two pick-six touchdowns in the same game.
One potential wild-card: Notre Dame could be without its starting kicker, Mitch Jeter, who is dealing with a hip injury. Junior walk-on Zac Yoakam went 1-for-2 last week in a 31-13 win against Georgia Tech, converting from 42 and missing from 46.
Newberry and the Mids know well the stakes this week, and the caliber of the opponent, and there’s little doubt Newberry will have his team ready.
“These are the kind of games you want to play in,” Newberry said.
“These guys believe they can go win this game,” he added, “and we’re going to play this game to win it, not for a pat on the back, not for a moral victory, we’re going to play this game to win it.”
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