Welcome, friends, to our very last Army Football Preview of the 2025 Season. Despite having an up-and-down season, your Army Black Knights earned an invitation to the Fenway Bowl, one the American Conference’s better bowl tie-ins in terms of both exposure and payout. They’ll face the resurgent University of Connecticut Huskies. A win this week earns the Black Knights a winning record for the season overall, a new trophy for their trophy case, and a very real claim to college football supremacy in the Northeast.
Let’s go!
It's a @FenwayBowl Game Week!
— Army Football (@ArmyWP_Football) December 22, 2025
Tix → https://t.co/K7430jN2DS pic.twitter.com/HMHe91SFMK
The UConn Huskies
The Huskies finished the regular season 9-3, and as a team, they’re coming into this game quite fired up by the idea of earning their program’s first-ever 10-win season. However, the Huskies have lost their head coach, their starting quarterback, and both of their starting tackles to the transfer portal, and if lots more of their players plan to play, they’re still about to lose almost all of their stars next season.
Perhaps more importantly, UConn’s season served as one of the primary arguments in favor of the American Conference over the ACC in 2025. UConn played tough against ACC Syracuse in the Dome but ultimately fell, 27-20. They then won on the road at Boston College and at home against eventual ACC Champion Duke but LOST at Rice (5-7, 2-6 in the American) in overtime and barely squeaked out a win at FAU (4-8, 3-5 in the American) to close out their season.
Friends, UConn played every bit as streaky as the Black Knights did this year, though they played astronomically better at home than they did on the road. At a minimum, the fact that they’ve had to travel for this game will bear watching this weekend.
Sights and sounds of bowl game prep 🔊@UConnFootball | @ArmyWP_Football pic.twitter.com/Sli2KShwte
— Wasabi Fenway Bowl (@FenwayBowl) December 19, 2025
Offense
The Huskies use a run-heavy read-option offense anchored by RB Cam Edwards and WR Skylar Bell. Former starting QB Joe Fagano ran just enough to keep defenses honest. On the season, Fagano hit just under 70% of his passes for almost 3500 yards and 28 touchdowns against just 1 interception, though he did take 15 sacks. Having that kind of accuracy made Fagaon an invaluable dual-threat under center, especially for a team that wanted to pound the rock as much as possible.
This week, though, we’ll likely see 2024 starting QB Nick Evers, who went 10/15 for 105 yards and a touchdown in two games’ limited action this season. Last year, Evers finished 97/180 through the air in 9 games’ worth of work for 918 yards (53.9%) with 5 touchdowns against 5 interceptions and 9 sacks. Evers also carried 80 times last year for 245 yards and 3 touchdowns.
Evers is a junior, but he’s been playing college ball since 2022, having started his career at Oklahoma. We should expect him to run UConn’s offense the same way that Fagano did, and with an additional year in the system, he will likely improve with his execution. However, he’s unlikely to display Fagano’s next-level accuracy with the football.
The key to stopping this offense therefore becomes containing Cam Edwards in the running game without allowing Evers to pick up enough first downs with his legs to endlessly prolong UConn’s offensive drives. Edwards finished with 1132 yards rushing on 5.7 yards/carry and 14 rushing touchdowns. That’s outstanding. He also caught 19 balls for almost 200 yards and a receiving touchdown. The Black Knights will also need to keep Skylar Bell from getting loose over the top. Bell finished with 101 catches for 1278 yards and 13 receiving touchdowns.
Matched with a good running quarterback, Bell and Edwards provide quite a lot for opposing defenses to consider with this offense. However, these two guys literally make this offense go. It seems unlikely that another player will step up and win this game for UConn.
Skyler Bell is UConn’s first ever Consensus First Team All-American 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/2BgxRAJOp1
— UConn Football (@UConnFootball) December 19, 2025
Defense
Most of UConn’s starting defense has opted into this weekend’s game. However, this defense still ranks 114th nationally against the run, allowing 185.5 rushing yards/game on every bit of 4.5 yards/carry. In fact, this team gave up 300 yards rushing to Rice’s new-school triple-option attack on a whopping 5.4 yards/carry earlier this year. UConn’s D-Line doesn’t make a lot of stops, but the Huskies have a couple of standout linebackers. We’ll see if the Black Knights can make something with that.
LBs Bryun Parham & Oumar Diomande lead this team in tackles. Both guys have looked good this season. They have 227 combined tackles; Parham added 10.5 sacks! More importantly, this defense has been excellent on third down, allowing just 35% opponent conversions. That’s good for 35th overall in FBS college football. Moreover, since UConn’s offense never turns the ball over — they threw just one pick and lost just one fumble all season — the Huskies finished +14 (!) on turnover margin with 11 interceptions plus 5 fumble recoveries. That put them 4th overall on turnover margin.
Army’s offense will need to get good play up front from its O-Line, setting up at least a handful of explosive plays in the running game this week. More importantly, they’ll need to find a way to stay on the field. If the season as a whole provides any insight, we should expect the Black Knights to have success early and perhaps get a lead. However, the Black Knights will still need to finish on offense in order to avoid losing yet another winnable game. Alas, that’s been Army’s biggest challenge this season. It looks especially tough against a defense that’s been truly excellent at getting off the field late in games.
Special Teams
PK Chris Freeman has gone a perfect 51/51 on points-after this year. He’s 22/25 on field goals with a miss from 30+ and two misses from 40+ yards out. However, we probably shouldn’t expect either team to try any long field goals this week based solely on this week’s weather forecast. At a minimum, it’ll be cold out there.
UConn P Connor Stutz has a MONSTER leg. Dude averaged a whopping 57.7 yards/punt against FAU. That’s incredible! With just that, the Huskies ought to be able to flip the field even if they wind up punting from their own ten yard line.
This Week in Army Football is moving from the Firstie Club to Boston this week!
— Army Football (@ArmyWP_Football) December 22, 2025
Tune in this Friday at 5 p.m. for a special Fenway Bowl edition with @richdemarco and @CoachJeffMonken. pic.twitter.com/sFH3KXNOSK
Final Thoughts
Saturday’s weather forecast no longer calls for snow in Boston, but the high temperature may only reach 27℉ with winds gusting up to 10 mph. Kickoff will go at 2:15 pm, which means that it’ll start getting dark just as we’re heading into the third quarter.
Friends, it’ll be cold out there.
The line on this game opened at Army (+2.5) but has slid wildly since then. As of this writing, you can get UConn (+9.5). That is insane! I want Army to win as much as anyone who’s not actively on the team’s coaching staff, but even I would bet on the Huskies to cover that line. If Army wins this week, they’ll almost certainly win a close contest.
The Over/Under opened at 50.5. It has since fallen to 43.5. I might still take the Under.
ESPN has coverage of this weekend’s contest. That makes the play-by-play potentially pretty wacky for this one. If ESPN proved anything this week, it’s that they hate all Group of 5 football and have a particular loathing for the service academies. Might we therefore suggest sync’ing your TV to Rich DeMarco’s radio call using The Varsity Network? AFF cannot in good conscience recommend this week’s TV coverage except in the sense that visually, the four-letter network will be the only way to actually watch this game if you can’t be there in person.
Enjoy the game, friends! After this, we’ve got a LOOONG layoff before there’s more Army Football. Let’s finish strong and put more hardware into the trophy case!
Go Army! Beat UConn!!!
