Lunch with Coach Ken in Annapolis

This being a holiday from work, Craig and I went to Annapolis for the Coach's Lunch at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. It was a nice place to visit on Veterans' Day, and it was an opportunity to hear what Coach Niumatalolo is thinking about how this season is going, and the Notre Dame game coming up this weekend. By the luck of the draw, we ended up sitting with Navy Athletic Director Chet Gladchuk and Annapolis Capital sports writer Bill Wagner.

Coach Ken is a neat guy -- smart, polite, and kind of quiet, but you can sense that he's not someone to mess with. He wasn't giving away anything about Saturday's game -- "One game is just like any other game. . ." He did say that Jarod Bryant will start, and everyone is hoping that Kaipo will be back in form for Army.

He did talk a little bit about Ricky Dobbs, who apparently has really bad practices, but then goes out on the field in a game and blows everyone away. He mentioned that during the one day between Paul Johnson leaving and the announcement that Niumatalolo would be head coach, Dobbs made a point of phoning and talking to every one of the kids at the Naval Academy Prep School, and not one of them jumped ship.

When we were watching the game film, Bill Wagner remarked about how Dobbs unleashes passes with hardly more than a flick of the wrist. Coach Ken also commented on that -- that Dobbs has a very short windup, from about as far back as the ear. He can throw long, but he also has the gift of touch, so that he can thrown over the line, but drop the ball in front of the secondary.

With Navy's win over Temple 10 days ago, the team became eligible to play an ACC opponent, to be determined, in the EagleBank Bowl in DC on Dec. 20. When asked, Coach Ken admitted that he's thought about playing Georgia Tech, coached by Paul Johnson. That would be an interesting match-up, for sure.

I had an opportunity to ask Chet Gladchuk if Navy is going to stick with ACC officials. (Since Navy isn't in a conference, they contract for officials to work home games.) He said yes, that he has to respect their integrity. Those of us in the upper deck, though, have found the crews this year to be frustrating in a lot of ways. It seemed that in the Temple game, almost every other play was reviewed from upstairs. It makes it seem that the guys on the field don't quite know what they're doing, and it makes for a very long game if you're sitting in the stands. Oh, well...

So, this Saturday is Notre Dame in Baltimore. I just hope that Navy comes out on the field playing as well as they did in the fourth quarter against Temple, and that they sustain that level for the duration.

GO NAVY!