Your Army Black Knights got a hugely important win yesterday against a talented, well-coached Temple team despite maybe not having their best overall stuff. Honestly, this game shows how much this team has improved over the course of the season. Good teams beat the teams that they’re supposed to beat, even when they don’t necessarily play their best or have all of their best players available. We saw that yesterday. Even in the face of adversity, the Black Knights found a way to win in convincing fashion. They beat a well-prepared team that came into Michie Stadium with a winning record, both overall and in the American Conference. The Black Knights now have every chance to qualify for a bowl game and to go into Army-Navy with a winning record.
BIG MICHIE WIN!! pic.twitter.com/2hdU7mMTKW
— Army Football (@ArmyWP_Football) November 8, 2025
Army definitely didn’t have all of its best players available yesterday. We saw Briggs Bartosh, the team’s best fullback, on the sidelines in shorts. FB Jake Rendina played arguably the best game of his Army career in relief, but the Black Knights still missed Bartosh’s explosiveness at times. Moreover, When Rendina later pulled himself after it looked like he’d tweaked his knee, we thought we might see plebe QB Godspower Nwawuihe come in for his first extended action ever as a substitute running back. Injuries also forced the Black Knights to play their nominally #4 tight end in extended action. He mostly played pretty well, too, but he also drew one critical holding penalty that killed an important drive early in the game’s fourth quarter. Finally, we saw cow G Paolo Gennarelli go out in the game’s first half, forcing firstie G Braden Bartosh into the lineup. Thankfully, Bartosh played really well, so the offense overall didn’t lose anything despite missing a former All-American up front.
Army also struggled through parts of the first half yesterday, especially on defense. They missed quite a few tackles early and wound up allowing nearly 7 yards/carry on the ground through the game’s first thirty minutes. They struggled with both the outside running game and against Quarterback Keepers in the read-option. They also had no answer for Temple’s tight ends in the passing game. Thankfully, Temple QB Evan Simon flat missed at least two touchdown passes to his tight ends. Simon finished with 157 yards passing yesterday and one touchdown pass, and Temple as a team finished with 111 yards rushing on 21 carries. In total, they put up 268 yards of total offense. 200 of those yards and 10 of their 13 total points came in the game’s first half. These teams went into the locker room nearly tied on time-of-possession.
Despite all of that, the Black Knights never let this game get away from them. Early in the year, they’d have gone down 21-7 or maybe 17-7 after a half like that. In this game, they forced a punt and then a crucially important missed field goal in the first quarter, put together a good-looking 11-play drive to score a touchdown in the second, and then forced a field goal as time expired in the half. The Black Knights went into the locker room having lost the game’s first two periods, but the scoreboard read just 10-7.
That three point deficit hardly proved decisive.
Army got the ball to start the second half and immediately embarked on a 75-yard, 8+ minute drive, keyed on a 26-yard pass to TE Parker Polosky up the sideline on 4th-and-1. This made the score 14-10, Army.
Hellums hit Parker Poloskey on a key pass on 4th down to keep the drive alive for a TD. https://t.co/NvUHnK8jGU pic.twitter.com/nnKJMA3tt0
— Army Football (@ArmyWP_Football) November 8, 2025
Generally, this game saw Temple’s defense key their front seven on Army QB Cale Hellums while using their talented secondary to string out pitch plays and perimeter runs to the sidelines. They also did a very nice job covering downfield, but they’ve been good against the pass all season. Hellums finished with 118 yards and a touchdown on 38 (!) tough-running carries. That’s a meager 3.1 yards/carry. SBs Noah Short and Samari Howard finished collectively with 8 carries for 30 yards (3.8 yards/carry) with a long of just 9 yards on the day. But while Temple’s strategy kept Army from breaking anything explosive at all in the running game, it also left Army’s fullbacks free to have their best game of the season by far. Rendina finished with 9 carries for 42 yards (4.7 yards/carry) and a touchdown, and FB Carson Smith took 5 carries for 30 yards (6 yards/carry), all in the game’s second half. Temple did a good job slowing down Hellums and Short, but they had no answer for Rendina up the middle, and they never developed one. Army’s O-Line just kept blasting their D-Line back, and then Rendina would hit the pile and keep driving forward. We must’ve seen that on all nine of Rendina’s carries, including his 7-yard touchdown run.
Honestly, Offensive Coordinator Cody Worley could’ve fed Redina more, especially on the game’s final drive. If he’d done that, though, the Black Knights probably would’ve scored and then given the ball back. As we later realized, that’s not necessarily what they wanted to do.
With that in mind, we don’t know what this game felt like for the players, but it proved nerve-wracking in the extreme up in the stands. The team ran with power yesterday, but they had absolutely no explosiveness, so any mistakes whatsoever pretty much killed their offensive momentum.
Army only punted twice in this game, but one punt came in the fourth quarter, and it set Temple up to take a late lead and then give the ball back with very little time remaining. The Owls knew it, too, and so they came out trying to run the ball to run the clock, starting from their own 8-yard-line. To this point, they’d been averaging something like 6 yards/carry on the ground and having particular success on the edges. But the Black Knights’ defense stonewalled them, stopping a run for one yard on first down and then forcing a one yard loss on second down. This brought up 3rd-and-10 from the Temple 8, and Army got pressure, forcing Simon to throw the ball away.
Rendina won't be denied 💪 pic.twitter.com/nChmiHyiS7
— Army Football (@ArmyWP_Football) November 8, 2025
Friends, this was Army’s best series of the day, and it came at the game’s critical moment. The Black Knights got the ball back and ran a game-clinching 18-play, nearly 10-minute drive that could’ve ended in a touchdown but instead ended with the Victory formation on Temple’s 1-yard-line. The Black Knights converted two crucial fourth downs on that drive, one of which required an absurd measurement considering that we could see from the Supe’s Loge that the ball had gone over the line-to-gain by at least a foot.
Army finished 7/14 on third down and 4/5 on fourth down while holding Temple to just 2/8 on third down, though they allowed the Owls to convert two fourth downs. Still, the Black Knights’ third and fourth down success rates proved decisive, especially since Temple struggled to sustain drives in the first and fourth quarters. With both teams trying hard to control the clock and Army effectively eating the last two-thirds of the game’s final quarter, this game saw maybe the least total offense of any FBS game all season. Temple put up just 268 yards of total offense. Army had just 250. The game itself saw a mere 518 yards of total offense overall. That is nuts! The Black Knights ran for all of 224 yards on just 3.6 yards/carry, and they hit exactly one pass.
Friends, that is doing it the hard way.
But a win is a win, and as we noted, Temple has a good team. They came in with a solid game plan. Army won this week with their power running, with the strength of their O-Line, and with a few crucial stops by their defense in the game’s critical moments. All of that counts, and we’ll take the win, especially since it came against a good team that also desperately needed this game.
Photos via Lynn Fern. Check out the whole gallery on Patreon.
Looking Forward
The Black Knights now stand 5-4, 3-3 in the American Conference. They’re above .500 for the first time all season and have gotten to within one win of qualifying for the postseason. They have a bye this week. They’ll then host Tulsa (2-7, 0-6 in the American) at Michie Stadium for another must-have game on November 22nd. The Golden Hurricanes beat a truly miserable Oklahoma State team earlier this year and took Temple to overtime at home a few weeks ago. Mostly, though, they’ve had a hard road this season. They lost at FAU yesterday, 40-21, in a game that probably wasn’t as close as the scoreboard made it seem. They’ll host Oregon State next week, and honestly, who knows how that one will turn out?
For now, the Black Knights need to get a little healthier, and they need to try to find a way to make their offense just a touch more explosive. Running for even just a half-yard more per carry would keep them out of a lot of these gotta-have-it fourth down situations, and this in turn would probably double their offensive efficiency.
ON BRAVE OLD ARMY TEAM! pic.twitter.com/q7NoVqDTyo
— Army Football (@ArmyWP_Football) November 8, 2025
Still. This team has come a Hell of a long way. They’re no longer beating themselves, nor are they losing games they could’ve won. They’re now finding ways to beat good teams in games they’ve gotta have. As fans, that’s all we can ask.
Go Army! Beat Tulsa!!!
