Well friends, that sucked.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Your Army Black Knights came into this week’s game fired up. They played good complimentary football for a half and got up by two scores. But then the offense bogged down in the second half, allowing the other team to slowly but surely claw their way back into the contest. Army’s opponent then took the lead late on some kind of freak defensive collapse, though it’s hard to blame the defense given that they needed exactly *one* commanding offensive drive in either the third or the fourth quarter to secure victory, and they just never got it. As a result, the Black Knights lost yet another winnable game. They had their chances, but bottom line, they just couldn’t finish.
Final score: Army 16, Navy 17
— Army Football (@ArmyWP_Football) December 13, 2025
We’ve seen this a few times, am I right? We saw it at home against Tarleton State. We saw it late in the Tulane game. We saw it at home four weeks ago against Tulsa. And now we’ve seen it in the biggest game of the year with this weekend’s loss to Navy.
Friends, we’ve had a season with some incredible highs. They can’t take Kansas State away from us, nor can they take the outstanding wins at Air Force or at UTSA. Keep those moments in your hearts. In those games, the Black Knights *did* finally get climactic drives that sealed victory. However, this still leaves our favorite team with no fewer than FOUR second half collapses, and honestly, FOUR is a lot of second half collapses in a single football season. In the press box, I said that the story of this Navy game told the story of the season. Maybe that’s not fair, but that’s how it felt. Having been in attendance for the Tulsa game, I very much felt like I’d already seen this movie. I didn’t like it the first time. I didn’t like it the second time. I didn’t like it the third time. I don’t particularly care for it now.
Army has a systemic problem. They can’t finish on offense. Someone smarter than me can perhaps explain why. Perhaps the other teams make adjustments, and Army’s staff can’t counter-adjust. Perhaps the offense has too many young players, and they’re just not making the right decisions in the heat of the moment. Perhaps they’re just not making the key plays physically because those plays are really hard plays to make. I could believe any or all of that. Regardless, four instances marks a trend. The Staff needs to find a solution and either teach these kids to make the reads they’re supposed to make, or they need to have something on hand to counter-adjust when Navy starts suddenly breaking D-Linemen into the backfield. Or they need to practice the critical stuff that’s really hard to execute until the players can actually execute it. One of those things has to happen, or we’re gonna keep seeing this. What can you do?
Jones from 45 yards to give us the 13-7 lead at the half.pic.twitter.com/nzqTkngFxt
— Army Football (@ArmyWP_Football) December 13, 2025
We can make arguments on every side. The adjustment argument looks obvious because we so often see this issue materialize after the halftime break. However, we certainly saw some player decision issues in this game, too. Plus, this game’s critical play was open, Army just couldn’t hit it.
This particular game turned on a crucial downfield interception. Navy flushed Army QB Cale Hellums out of the pocket late in the second half. He scrambled and found WR Brady Anderson open down the field in one-on-one coverage. But Hellums needed to make a LONG, very difficult throw to get Anderson the ball, and as he’s been wont to do this season, he laid the ball in there short and behind the receiver. Navy made the interception, and although the Black Knights had some chances for late game heroics, they never really recovered.
Was this a bad play call, or was it a bad decision, or was it just bad execution?
Army’s receiver got open for a big play. However, Hellums needed to make an INCREDIBLE thirty yard throw on the run to get the ball where it needed to go. Perhaps Hellums should have tucked the ball and run. Or perhaps, seeing his quarterback in trouble, Anderson should have come back to the football and given Hellums an easier target, especially given that he had one-on-one coverage and a step on his man. Or perhaps the Staff expected Hellums to make that throw, and they just didn’t give him enough reps to dial it in during the week. Whatever the case, Hellums made an aggressive decision that could have gone right with better execution. We don’t typically fault mistakes of aggression, but without knowing more, it’s hard to know how the Staff cleans this up. More to the point, Army never gets into this position if they can rush for more than 20 yards total in the second half and/or convert even one second half third down. This particular play merely marks an extreme example of a consistent second half problem.
Gallery via Lynn Fern. We’ll have a fuller set once she gets a chance to process everything.
Overall, As For Football had a decent weekend. USAA invited us to participate in their Media Row event, and I feel like we did a good job. We did a bunch of interviews and got a lot of good feedback from Army fans overall. We tried as hard as we could to help sell the importance of the Army-Navy Game as well as the opportunity afforded to would-be cadet candidates by West Point as an institution. We are a fan advocacy LLC, and we’re all-in on helping our constituent institution. AFF’s mission is to improve your personal Army fandom. That’s literally why we’re here.
However, in the final analysis, we have no choice but to write about the game we came here to cover, and the reality is that our team, the team we love, lost this game because they just couldn’t get it done on offense late. They went 0/4 on third down in the second half and wound up with a grand total of just under nine minutes time-of-possession in that half. Because they couldn’t maintain offensive possession, they gave an excellent offensive team entirely too many chances. As a result, they lost yet another game that they should have won.
Let me tell you, friends, the Navy press guys did not much care for the way this game played out live. Army did an excellent job slowing down and then stopping Navy’s incredibly explosive offense. The Black Knights forced key turnovers that led to points. They had the chance to force more. They needed to fall on the ball late instead of trying to scoop and score, and maybe that would have changed things. I personally don’t believe that it would have, but that play still marked a missed opportunity. Regardless, Navy sweated this one, and they had a radically better team coming into this game. Army had no chance this week, I can’t tell you how many times I heard that, and yet they kept it close anyway. I’d be all in on the moral victory if this wasn’t both the Army-Navy Game and the fourth time we’ve seen a collapse exactly like this one.
It’s a young offense. We know this. They still need to learn and improve. However, they needed to do that last week because now it’s too late. They’ve lost Army-Navy, and especially this year, this particular game served as something like a referendum on the season.
As we say all the time, we’re just fans. We don’t block, we don’t tackle, we don’t catch, and we don’t kick. We’re just sitting on the sidelines hoping for the best. That will continue into this season’s bowl game and into next season as well.
I don’t know what else to tell you. I’m still all in on Army even though the end of this game sucked. I’d like to see a few specific things improve before next season. However, I’ll be out there either way, and I’ll be cheering my ass off.
Go Army! Beat UConn!!!
