Lane Kiffin and the FAU Owls open against Ken Niumatalolo and Navy football. Here are three reasons he should be afraid to play the Midshipmen in week one.
FAU enters as an underdog against the Middies in the S&P+, where Bill Connelly has Navy ranked 71 and FAU ranked 99 in the pre-season rankings. So in his first game as a head coach since 2013, Lane Kiffin is an underdog at a perennial loser.
Why else does Lane Kiffin not want to face Navy in week one? Here are three reasons he should fear the goat.
1. The Navy Midshipmen are 3-1 in their last four openers
Navy and Coach Ken have come out strong in three of their last four openers to the season, with the only loss coming at the hands of Ohio State, a 34-17 defeat back in 2014. Other than ’14, the Middies have rolled in openers beating Indiana, Colgate and Fordham.
Coach Ken will have his team prepared as he always does. With Navy running a limited playbook their cohesion is more about timing than remembering plays. Zach Abbey returns to lead the Navy offense at QB after his Armed Forces Bowl outing where he threw for 159 yards and a touchdown and ran for 114 yards and 2 touchdowns giving Navy a balanced attack from the Flexbone.
Last year Navy played 3 quarterbacks on their way to a 9-win season. If Abbey stays healthy he could personally put up 35 on the Owls.
(Photo by Joseph Garnett Jr. /Getty Images)
2. Navy focuses on discipline while Kiffin focuses on controversy
Lane Kiffin focuses on controversy. Everything about him is controversial from his roles as head coach of the Raiders, Vols, and Trojans and his exits from each of those jobs. His time at Alabama under Nick Saban was rocky and rumor and innuendo. Rumors said that players loved setting Lane up to get ripped by Coach Nick Saban.
To add to that, he’s single, in the Miami area and bringing in a Kansas State type roster of JUCO kids and transfers, including one from Last Chance U. What does that mean for Lane? He’s assembling a team and not a program and those guys usually spell trouble when things get tough.
The inverse of that is the ever stoic and stable Coach Ken and his Middies. We all know about the academic, physical, and emotional toughness of someone that attends and plays football at the Naval Academy. Add that to their tough, no excuses head coach and Navy is the polar opposite of FAU.
Navy has legacy, tradition, honor, Roger Staubach, and Keenan Reynolds versus an empty spring game and a coach entering his 4th head job that should’ve been his first. Coach Ken will have his squad focused, disciplined and ready to play while Lane’s Owls will be wrought with penalties and mistakes.
3. Navy scheme is hard to defend
Talk about walking into a buzzsaw. Lane’s first game as a head coach is against a tradition laden, disciplined foe whose head coach has won 77 games as a leader of his program. Lane has won 35 games and was once fired on the tarmac. Beyond that, Lane hasn’t been a head coach since September 29, 2013, his last game as head football coach at USC. Then there’s the scheme issue (watch more about the Flexbone triple option here)- how do you defend the triple option?
Only a handful of FBS teams run the Flexbone triple option. Opening with Navy gives a time advantage in a sense, spring football and most of fall camp is focused on your offensive scheme playing against your defensive scheme. Lane Kiffin ran a multiple offense at Bama focused on zone blocking and the elusiveness of Jalen Hurts. The Owls will try to do the same and that’s not quite the Navy triple option.
Next: Ranking the top 50 players in college football in 2017
FAU will have to work on their triple option responsibilities, defending a mobile quarterback that can still throw, defending wingbacks and the play-action pass as well as midline and fullback zone dive. It’s hard to stop Navy early because they’re so good at what they do that it comes second nature to the staff and student-athletes. On the other hand, FAU and Lane Kiffin only know 15 seconds of fame, that short burst of success followed by let down.