Navy Will Go to Wishbone Next Season
“It’s a beautiful day to practice,” said new Navy football Coach Elliot Uzelac with smile.
It was a beautiful day and Uzelac is allowed to smile now. It’s spring and there are not yet any games against Penn or Delaware on the horizon.
Uzelac had just about finished his first spring practice since replacing Gary Tranquill last December after the Midshipmen concluded a 3-8 season in which they beat just one Division I-A team (Virginia) and lost to two Division I-AA teams (Penn and Delaware) at home.
They were scheduled to conduct the annual Blue-Gold game at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium Saturday. At Uzelac’s suggestion, Naval Academy Superintendent Rear Adm. Ronald F. Marryott were scheduled to be on the field coaching the Gold squad, while academy Commandant Capt. Howard W. Habermeyer coached the Blue squad.
“I’m going to have the admiral and the commandant explain all their calls afterward,” Uzelac said with a smile.
As he promised when he took the job, Uzelac installed the wishbone, something Air Force and Army have used successfully the past few seasons. The offense relies on quick decisions and aggressiveness, qualities the academies try to instill in their officers-to-be. It doesn’t demand huge offensive linemen, which the academies have traditionally had trouble attracting.
Navy loses 32 letterman and 18 starters. Among the returnees is running back Chuck Smith, who after a sensational start finished with 933 yards. However, Smith pulled a hamstring in the seventh game of the season and is still recovering. Part of the reason for the slow recovery, Uzelac said, was that a hip flexor muscle injury was impeding the progress of the hamstring.
Senior John Nobers (6-0, 198) is the top quarterback at the moment. He is the only one of four quarterbacks on the depth chart to have played in games, but that amounted to just seven plays in three games.
“We started with about 12 quarterbacks . . . but we got it down to three or four,” Uzelac said of the competition to replace last year’s duo of Bill Byrne and Bob Misch. “John surfaced as the best at this point. He’s an excellent coach on the field. He understands his limits and makes the right decisions. In this offense, the quarterback has to make the right decisions and give the leadership that’s required. He reads the option well, puts us in the right play and throws the ball well.”
By “limitations,” Uzelac means speed, or lack of it.
“John is not a 4.6 or 4.7 (in the 40-yard dash),” Uzelac said. “But he understands that if he is a technician and mentally into it, we can make the play.”
Some of Tranquill’s critics questioned whether he raised his voice enough to his players. That doesn’t appear to be an issue with Uzelac.
“I can jump all over him,” Uzelac said of Nobers, “get up in his face and put the pressure on him and he’ll go right back in and lead the team down the field. I like that.”
But Nobers is not the only one with whom Uzelac and staff chat.
“I get on all of them,” he said. “In spring, you have to challenge them two ways. One is to give them a lot of scrimmage situations that let them identify with games. The second is that, as a coach or assistant coach, you have to put on pressure one-on-one to the young man to see how he’s going to react to the pressure.
“There’s no filled stadiums in the spring, and I don’t want any unpleasant surprises come fall because I didn’t put pressure on him during the spring. I want them to believe it will be easier in the game than in practice. We’ve been very aggressive and demanding in the spring so I think the result will be much better in the fall.”