Down by seven points with less than a minute remaining on the game clock, Navy faced fourth-and-1 near midfield.
Blake Horvath took a shotgun snap and ran up the middle.
After one key block right at the line to gain, the senior quarterback slipped through a seam in the defense and was gone. First down. Touchdown. Ballgame.
For a team that doesn’t exactly load up on five-star recruits, Navy can make long scoring plays look comically easy. That 51-yard run by Horvath was followed by a 2-point conversion that gave the Midshipmen a 32-31 win over Temple two weeks ago. Now they’re returning from an open date as one of six remaining unbeaten teams in NCAA Division I’s upper-tier Football Bowl Subdivision — and as a member of the American Conference, the only one outside the Power Four of the Atlantic Coast, Big 12, Big Ten and Southeastern.
In some ways, the aesthetic is what you’d expect from a service academy. The Midshipmen run more often than they pass, and option concepts are certainly involved.
On the other hand, this is not a team that’s content to move down the field at a glacial pace, holding the ball for 14 minutes at a time. Navy’s modern version of an old-school offense is downright explosive, with a combination of shifts, fakes, motion and misdirection that can cause chaos on the defensive side of the ball.
“We need the explosion plays. That’s a big part of what we do,” offensive coordinator Drew Cronic said. “The ability to run the ball and then be able to hit some things off of that, they work together.”
Navy was coming off three straight losing seasons when it fired Ken Niumatalolo, the well-respected coach who is the program’s all-time leader in head coaching wins. Defensive coordinator Brian Newberry took over, and after a 5-7 campaign in 2023, the Midshipmen hired Cronic.
Running what Navy called its millennial wing-T offense, the Midshipmen took off last year, going 10-3 with victories over Army and Oklahoma to close out the season. Navy is 6-0 this year, including 4-0 in the American, entering Saturday’s home game against Florida Atlantic (3-4, 2-2). A victory would run the team’s overall winning streak to 10, tying a Navy record most recently matched in 1960.
Navy has produced seven offensive plays of at least 60 yards this season. That’s tied for first in the nation with the University of Texas at San Antonio and fellow service academy Air Force — which has leaned on its own passing game a little more this year. When Navy played Air Force earlier this month, the Midshipmen won 34-31 in the highest-scoring game between two of the major service academy teams since 2017.
In that game, Horvath took a shotgun snap with a back to either side of him and three receivers in the formation. As one of the receivers came across behind the line, faking a jet sweep from right to left, Horvath faked a handoff to one of the backs going left to right. Two defenders who were initially in the middle of the field drifted over to the same side, so when Horvath kept the ball and ran right up the middle, there was nothing but empty space.
He went untouched for a 59-yard touchdown.
The following weekend against Temple, that same type of action yielded a similar result. Only this time, instead of keeping the ball after the fake, Horvath threw deep to Cody Howard, who had lined up as basically a slot receiver and run straight through the middle of the befuddled defense. He was about 10 yards behind the nearest defender when he caught the pass, and it was smooth sailing for a 50-yard touchdown.
“I don’t know of another quarterback in the country who fits their particular offense any better than Blake does,” Cronic said.
Horvath had multiple runs of at least 90 yards last season, and with the Midshipmen trailing in the final minute against Temple this year, a simple power run up the middle opened up for that long touchdown. There wasn’t even any real misdirection during that play. Navy had lined up with three receivers, spread the defense out a bit and then run-blocked to perfection.
“We’ve got to keep people on their heels. I think we have a system where we’re able to do that some, because we’re different, and not letting them find us,” Cronic said. “Whether it’s the shifting or the movements or the motions. You’ve got to have counters. You’ve got to have all those different things. But the bottom line is, somebody’s still got to whip somebody.”
Horvath finished the Air Force game with a school-record 469 yards of total offense, and Eli Heidenreich had eight catches for 243 yards and three touchdowns.
“It’s not me,” Horvath said afterward. “I mean, I’m throwing wide open to Eli Heidenreich, wide open to Eli Heidenreich, wide open to Eli Heidenreich.”
That modesty is impressive, but the question Navy coaches are now fielding is why Horvath isn’t more prominent in the Heisman Trophy discussion. He has averaged 6.5 yards per rush and a whopping 12.1 yards per pass. Army quarterback Bryson Daily finished sixth in the 2024 voting, so there’s precedent for an academy player earning respect from Heisman voters.
The best chance for Horvath to do that may be when the Midshipmen play their annual showdown against independent power Notre Dame on Nov. 8. Or perhaps down the stretch in the race for the American Conference title — with a playoff spot potentially at stake.
“If we continue to take care of business and we’re able to do some of the things that I hope and think we can do, then maybe he gets more into that discussion, which would be outstanding,” Newberry said. “I think he’s well deserving of that.”