By following the odds, Army has somehow broken my math

Jeff Monken’s fourth-down friendly Black Knights should ride odds, a strong quarterback, and a cakey schedule to another big season in 2019.

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• On fourth-and-1 from its 17, leading a strong Buffalo squad 21-7 in the second quarter, Army went for it and converted.
• On fourth-and-1 from their 34, trailing eventual Playoff semifinalist Oklahoma 21-14 in the second quarter, the Black Knights went for it again and converted.
• On fourth-and-1 from their 42, leading Air Force 7-0 in the second quarter, they went for it and converted. On fourth-and-1 from their own 49, leading the Falcons 17-14 in the fourth quarter, they went for it again and converted again.
• On fourth-and-1 from their 46, leading Miami (Ohio) 14-7 in the second quarter, they went for it and converted.
• On fourth-and-1 from their 49, leading Hawaii 21-14 in the fourth quarter, they went for it and converted.

Since 2005, college football offenses have converted on fourth-and-1 70 percent of the time. With odds like that, teams should be going for it in those situations far more than they do. And yet, it’s safe to say that, in the five scenarios above — fourth-and-1 on your side of the field, in a pretty tight game — only a small handful of teams would have gone for it twice. A much larger handful would have punted five times.

As a rule, college coaches are quite good at staying on 12 with the dealer showing a three. Monken, however, hits pretty much every time. In 2018, his Black Knights went for it 23 times on fourth-and-1 and punted just twice*. There are a couple of remarkable things about that:

1. Since 2005, no one else had gone for it even 20 times on fourth-and-1.
2. They converted 21 times! That’s a 91 percent success rate, more than 20 percentage points higher than normal. Teams running the triple option have the perfect playbook for fourth-and-1 conversions, but even by triple-option standards, Army’s 2018 success was ridiculous. While Army went 21-for-23, fellow optioneers Air Force, Georgia Southern, Georgia Tech, and Navy went a combined 40-for-52. That’s a 77 percent success rate, still better than normal, and far below 91 damn percent. In recent history, only 2015 Navy (18-for-19 on fourth-and-1) came anywhere close to Army’s frequency and proficiency.

* In case you’re curious, and I sure as hell was, here are the two punts: 1) from their 12, up 10-0 on Navy with nine minutes left, and 2) from their 29, up 14-0 on Air Force early in the third quarter.

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It probably isn’t a surprise to learn that Army is a loyal Championship Analytics customer.

Army is among dozens of Division I football schools that subscribe to Championship Analytics, which provides weekly customized statistical breakdowns for each team based on opponent, with recommendations on when to kick, go on fourth down, go for 2 and more. [...]

When presented with the statistics that showed Army should be more aggressive on fourth down, Monken quickly embraced a by-the-numbers approach.

“It made way too much sense to me to argue with,” he said, adding. “I think it really fits what we do.”

It would fit what a lot of teams do, but it’s safe to say that, of Championship’s clients, no one followed the book more than Army. And few, if any, won more games.

The Black Knights were even more limited in the big-play department than your standard service academy offense. They were last in FBS in Isolated Points Per Play (which measures the magnitude of your successful plays), and they almost never moved the chains before third down. This was something that hurt them pretty considerably in the overall S&P+ ratings — they finished 84th, behind three teams they beat — but it didn’t matter because they used fourth downs as an S&P+ cheat code, and they won 11 games in the process.

It might be difficult for even this offense to replicate last year’s fourth-down success. Overachieving national (and triple-option) averages by so much reminds me of when a baseball team hits .320 or something with runners in scoring position in a given season. Even with great hitters, that number will probably fall a bit the next year. S&P+ certainly thinks so.

Still, 2018 was merely the latest step forward in what has been a stunning Army rebuild.

Monken inherited a moribund program in 2014, one that had fallen behind the times even by service academy standards. While Air Force and Navy had won eight or more games a combined 16 times since the turn of the century, the Knights had done so just once in 25 years. They had also won the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy just once in that span. Now they’ve done so twice in a row.

With quarterback Kelvin Hopkins Jr. back and an experienced line in front of him, Army will have a solid shot at a three-peat. But the Black Knights have questions to answer in both the offensive backfield and on defense, where defensive coordinator Jay Bateman and five starters in the front seven are gone. But one of the cushiest schedules you’ll ever see, combined with Monken’s blackjack math, will probably keep that win total propped up even if the Knights regress a hair.

Offense

Army’s absurd (and maybe unsustainable?) fourth-down success masked what I would almost call some deficiencies in the run game. The Black Knights were 31st in rushing marginal efficiency, which is solid but maybe not quite as good as you’d expect, and they were a downright alarming 101st in average yards per play on first down with 5.3. For comparison, Air Force was 27th and 54th, respectively.

They made up for this, and the lack of big plays, with relentless consistency. They were stuffed at or behind the line on just 11 percent of non-sack carries, first in FBS. It was like they gained five yards on every first down, then gained a few more on second. They never moved backward, and they never strayed from the script.

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After losing quarterback Ahmad Bradshaw after 2017, it was easy to fear that the Knights might lose an edge behind center; Hopkins assuaged those concerns pretty quickly. His rushing success rate was even better than Bradshaw’s (52.2 percent vs. 49.2), and he passed infinitely better.

Granted, it only matters so much when you’re running the ball more than anyone else on the planet, but Hopkins completed 55 percent of his passes (Bradshaw in 2017: 33 percent), at 20.1 yards per completion, and he avoided negative plays here, too — Army was eighth in sack rate allowed.

It probably won’t be used any more than it was last year, but the passing game should again produce when asked. Leading receiver Jordan Asberry is gone, but with QB-turned-RB-turned-sometimes-receiver Kell Walker and actual wideouts Glen Coates, Kjetil Cline, and Christian Hayes all returning, there’s plenty of continuity there.

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Losing fullback Darnell Woolfolk hurts. He was the resident road grader, carrying 221 times with a 48 percent success rate. But in Connor Slomka, the Knights still have a known entity at FB, and in Walker, they have at least one veteran slot back. There’s some turnover on the second string, but there won’t be any drop-off among the starters.

There probably won’t be any drop-off up front either. Center Bryce Holland, a starter for more than three seasons, departs, but guards Jaxson Deaton and Peyton Reeder return, as do tackle JB Hunter and senior utility man Mike Johnson. You almost literally can’t top last year’s Army offense when it comes to preventing negative plays, but I don’t expect too much regression, if any, here.

Defense

Here’s some symmetry for you:

• Last fall, Army’s offense ranked 130th in its percentage of first downs that came before third down in open-play situations (51.6 percent). Army’s defense ranked 129th (77.4).
• Army’s offense ranked first in average third-down distance in open-play situations (5.8 yards). Army’s defense: also first (8.9). Consequently, Army’s offense ranked first in third-down success rate as well (57.5 percent). Army’s defense ranked fourth (27.3).

With Bateman in charge, Monken somehow found the perfect stylistic complement for his offense. On both sides of the ball, Army was designed to win third (and fourth) downs, plain and simple, and 21 wins over two years suggests that’s a pretty good design.

We’ll see if anything changes now that Bateman is at North Carolina. I doubt it.

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Perhaps not surprisingly, Monken promoted from within to replace Bateman. John Loose, his safeties coach for the last five seasons and Lafayette’s defensive coordinator for 14 years before that, takes over as DC. Army will likely continue to attempt bending without breaking, pouncing on whatever mistakes you make to create a third-and-long and get off the field.

If there’s a problem with this recipe for 2019, it probably comes in the “creating third-and-longs” category. With a secondary that returns ultra-aggressive cornerback Elijah Riley (one of only seven FBS defenders, and one of only two cornerbacks, to combine at least 7.5 tackles for loss with at least 10 passes defensed) and senior safeties Jaylon McClinton and Cameron Jones, I’m expecting more of the same from the pass defense.

Granted, the two best pass rushers (linebackers James Nachtigal and Kenneth Brinson) are gone, which could cause some issues, but their departures, along with that of tackles Raymond Wright and Wunmi Oyetuga, will have as much or more impact on the run defense. And considering Army was already deficient in that regard (104th in rushing marginal efficiency allowed, 105th on standard downs), you could see how a little more imbalance there might throw everything off.

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The Knights still have Cole Christansen, at least. The senior from Suffolk, Va., led the team with 12 TFLs and was second behind Nachtigal with 13 run stuffs. His supporting cast is far less proven, but he’s a solid center of gravity. Takes a good picture, too, evidently.

Special Teams

Army graded out poorly, ranking 123rd overall in Special Teams S&P+. They were dragged down primarily by their place-kicking (108th in field goal efficiency) and punting (119th in punt efficiency), and with the loss of punter Nich Schrage and kicker John Abercrombie, that probably won’t improve.

Good thing they neither punt nor attempt field goals, then, huh?

2019 outlook

Though recruiting rankings are included in the S&P+ projections (and recruiting rankings for service academies are notoriously impossible to measure accurately), S&P+ itself isn’t fatally biased against service academies. The 2015 Navy team that went 11-2 also ranked a robust 29th, the nine-win 2016 Navy team ranked 52nd, and five Air Force teams in the last 12 years have ranked in the top 60.

There’s something about Army’s recent recipe in particular that S&P+ hasn’t liked, however. Teams aren’t supposed to gain that few yards on first down and still convert that high a percentage of their third downs. And when they fail on third downs, they’re evidently supposed to give up and punt, not convert on fourth down. Army has mastered a strange balance of low-efficiency high efficiency. I called it a cheat code above, and maybe it will continue to be one.

Even with just a No. 80 projection in S&P+ — which obviously feels low considering the recent success — Army is projected to win a lot of games this year. Hopkins’ return will help, obviously, but so will one of the easiest schedules in the history of FBS.

Army plays at Michigan in Week 2 ... and doesn’t play a single other opponent projected better than 90th. The Knights get two FCS opponents and three of the six lowest-projected FBS opponents. With what seems like an artificially low ranking, they are projected to win 9.4 games on average. It’s not hard to see that becoming 10 or 11. We’ll see if Army can continue to defy my numbers, but with this schedule, the Knights don’t even need to.

Team preview stats

All 2019 preview data to date.