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it's one less "weak" team in the schedule. ACC will provide plenty of them. Not saying Navy is typically weak -- but losing by 52 doesn't help their cache this year. Quite frankly, would have been tough for ND to match that BYU performance, I'm sure - Navy tends to be a tough out.
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about Navy’s blocking technique (or lack thereof).
handled them pretty well the last few years and they were good Navy teams.
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Under Paul Johnson as well as Ken Niumatalolo, the triple option offense pushes the legality of cut blocking to the absolute extreme, and definitely crosses over into chop blocking territory.
Defenders normally don't mind when a clean cut block is executed, where the blocker typically lowers his shoulder into the defender's waist or upper thigh. This was done quite a bit in the pros, back in the heyday of the West Coast Offense, especially under Bob McKitrick's lines that routinely sent players to the Pro Bowl. This is how 265 lb linemen such as Guy McIntyre were able to control the line of scrimmage against much bigger defensive linemen, and did so without crippling them.
Navy's blockers dive at the knees and ankles. This creates a much higher likelihood that the defender is going to suffer a nasty injury.
To make it worse, they do this while another blocker is engaged with the defender up high. The only thing that allows them to still call it a "cut block" (as opposed to a chop block) is that the high blocker releases from the defender a split second before the low man dives at the knees / ankles. This is the kind of block that nearly severed Eric Jones' (our best pass rusher that year) foot from his ankle back in 1991, and also put our best defender (Bryant Young) out of commission for a couple of games. Even when he came back, he was still gimpy.
The 2014 game against Navy showed this kind of dirty play all the time, and if I recall correctly, this is what put Joe Schmidt out of commission for the rest of the year. When he did come back, he was but a shell of his former self, and probably ran a 5.2-5.3 time in the 40, instead of the 4.9 he used to run.