Published: 11/19/2021 3:48:40 PM
Army’s offense might be the UMass football team’s worst nightmare.
The Black Knights, which host the Minutemen at noon Saturday in West Point, N.Y., boast the nation’s second-ranked rushing offense, averaging 301.8 yards per game. Air Force is No. 1 at 311.
Army has also rushed for 36 touchdowns, the most in the country and five more than anyone else. That gap is as large as the distance between the three teams tied for second and the six teams tied for 12th.
The Black Knights accomplish that running the triple option, a system that uses multiple ball carriers and choices for the quarterback depending on what the defense shows him.
Quarterback Christian Anderson leads the team with 508 yards rushing. He’s also thrown for 401 yards and accounted for 10 total touchdowns. Army has five players who’ve rushed for at least 200 yards in nine games: Tyrell Robinson (428 yards, two touchdowns), Thyier Tyler (374 yards, six TDs), Anthony Adkins (319 yards, five TDs) and Jakobi Buchanan (248 yards, team-high seven TDs). Three of them average at least five yards per carry.
“Most triple option teams are precise and don’t make a lot of mistakes,” UMass interim head coach Alex Miller said. “Well Army would be the dictionary term of that. You look up triple option, and there’s Army. In all things they do, they don’t make a lot of mistakes. They stay on track. That’s the hardest thing, they’re OK with a two-yard gain.”
UMass, conversely, has struggled to stop the run. The Minutemen allow 224.4 yards per game on the grown, the eighth most in the nation. The 5.8 yards per carry they allow are the seventh worst in the country. UMass has allowed 35 rushing touchdowns, tied for the most in the country with Kansas.
Then there’s preparing to stop the triple option, which requires a different set of rules and checks than the spread offense standard in college football. UMass is doing that down its defensive coordinator Tommy Restivo, who was fired along with head coach Walt Bell after the Minutemen lost to Rhode Island. The staff is sharing the responsibility of breaking down triple option film and installing the defense on top of their other responsibilities.
“The good thing is (linebackers) coach (Dan) Carrel and (defensive ends) coach (Jamey) McClendon have done it before they came here a lot. So they had a pretty good plan in place,” Miller said. “In all things, being down a coach or two, sure, the burden gets spread out a little more and that’s just the way we’ve got to step up and take care of business.”
The defense will also likely have to work overtime. Army usually won’t give up and punt after three downs. The Black Knights are 20-of-27 on fourth down, converting 74.1 percent of the time. They rank ninth in the country in fourth down conversion percentage. Army’s 20 conversions are the fifth most in the country, and their 27 attempts are tied for 10th.
“You’ve got to get them off track somehow early, and you’ve got to get a turnover,” Miller said. “That’s just the nature of the beast. When you want to upset a really good program you need turnovers.”
That may be one of the only ways UMass can get the ball from Army. The Black Knights lead the nation in time of possession, holding the ball an average of 37 minutes per game. The Minutemen only hold the ball for 30 minutes per game, tied for the worst average in the country.
“By the end of it, they’re probably going to have more time than us, but it’s about coming up with a timely stop,” Miller said. “They’re going to have the ball for four or five minutes, but hey, we get them stopped on the plus 40 or something like that, that’s a win. We have to realize it’s not always going to be three and out.”
Army (6-3) has won its past two games and put scares into top-20 programs Wisconsin and Wake Forest this season. The Minutemen (1-9) have lost their past four games. They’re 0-4 on the road, losing by an average of 48.8 points per game.
“You lose some games, you lose your head coach, there’s a lot of built-in excuses,” Miller said. “You can see some guys thinking about it. A lot of our leads are doing a good job keeping this team locked in. We’re still competitors. The reason there’s the term upset is because somebody competed harder than somebody that day.”
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