This article is from Irish Sports Report during Johnson's 1st year at Navy. Incredible insight into the amazing Paul Johnson:
Can Johnson get Navy beyond that sinking feeling?ND VS. NAVYBy BILL WAGNERSpecial To ISR
Navy coach Paul Johnson has installed a powerful offense, but the Middies’ defense continues to struggle.
Photo Courtesy of the U.S. Naval Academy
He has been dubbed an offensive genius. He has been likened to Steve Spurrier.
Not bad for a good old boy who would have been quite happy coaching high school football in his hometown.
Paul Johnson's innovative spread offense has piled up points, yardage and victories at every stop of his 20-year coaching career. Now the 45-year-old native of Newland, N.C., is hoping his patented triple-option attack can help turn around a Naval Academy program that has hit rock bottom.
Early returns have been mixed.
As advertised, the spread has produced prolific numbers, however not nearly enough to overcome a woeful defense that ranks among the nation's worst.
Navy, 1-7 entering its annual mismatch with Notre Dame, has been assured of its fifth straight losing season. The Midshipmen are 2-27 the past three seasons as a result of numerous problems that extend beyond the football field.
Johnson, who compiled a stellar 62-10 record and captured a pair of Div. I-AA national championships during a five-year stint at Georgia Southern, has pushed the academy administration to better support the program.
So far, the response has been favorable.
Navy recently revealed that it will alter the mandatory five-year military obligation for graduates who are professional sports prospects. Football players who make an NFL roster can serve two years on active duty and six years in the reserves.
Members of the Navy brass are also considering giving football players who suffer season-ending injuries an extra year to graduate. Service academy rival Air Force has been taking advantage of NCAA-issued medical redshirts for years, but Navy has frowned upon the practice.
Finally, Johnson and athletic director Chet Gladchuk have discussed downgrading Navy's schedule to include more beatable opponents. Div. I-AA schools, which former head coach Charlie Weatherbie refused to play, have been reinstated to future schedules.
For instance, a scheduled game at Washington next season has been replaced by a home contest against Virginia Military Institute. Gladchuk has stated emphatically that Navy will never drop Notre Dame.
"I can understand playing Notre Dame every year. That game has a lot of history and meaning," Johnson said recently. "But you don't need to play Boston College and N.C. State on top of it. How are you going to have a successful season when you schedule yourself six losses before you start? It's all right to play Notre Dame. I think that's a great rivalry. But be smart. In between, play Buffalo and somebody from Div. I-AA."
Johnson feels there's a bit of the old chicken-and-egg theory at work. In order to start winning, Navy needs to recruit better talent. But the key to getting good players is winning.
For now, reality is that Navy may not have a single player on its current roster who received a scholarship offer from another Div. I-A program.
"You can't recruit against Georgetown and play against Notre Dame," Johnson told the Washington Post.
What's amazing is that Johnson has his offensive engine humming, despite subpar parts. Navy is averaging 22.8 points and 446 yards per game, despite not starting a single skill position player who runs the 40-yard dash in under 4.6 seconds. The Midshipmen rank third nationally in rushing offense, grinding out 282 yards per game.
Quarterback Craig Candeto (team-highs of 622 yards rushing, nine touchdowns) has been the catalyst. Fullback Kyle Eckel (448 yards rushing, four TDs) and slot back Eric Roberts (696 total yards, five TDs) are the other primary weapons.
Opposing coaches have been effusive in their praise of Navy's unique attack, which produced season-highs of 678 total yards and 40 points against Northwestern.
"Navy has moved the ball on every team it's played, including N.C. State," Duke coach Carl Franks marveled. "Paul has put together a very dangerous offense that is extremely challenging to face. I don't think you can completely stop that offense, you just have to try and slow it down."
Tulane coach Chris Scelfo said the triple-option element forces defenses to be assignment-oriented. Defenders who aren't disciplined get caught out of position, and that leads to big plays.
"I think every team that plays Navy is worried about that spread. It's something you don't see very often, and they execute it so well," Scelfo said. "Paul Johnson is kind of the guru of option football these days. He's running that style of offense better than any other coach in the country."
Some have compared Johnson to Spurrier, the former Florida and current Washington Redskins head coach. Both are the architects of high-powered offenses only they truly understand. Other teams might line up the same way, but none are running the spread to the level of Johnson.
"This is Paul's offense. He designed it, he tweaked it, he knows it inside and out," said Navy assistant Ken Niumatalolo, who played for Johnson at Hawaii and has assisted him on three different occasions. "Just like Spurrier invented the Fun-and-Gun, Paul invented this version of the spread. Nobody runs it the way he does."
On the surface, the spread seems simple. It's based on triple-option principles and features one setback, two slotbacks offset from the line of scrimmage and two wide receivers. There is no tight end, although one of the wideouts will often move inside and line up in a three-point stance.
What's different and confusing to defenses is the myriad of plays Johnson has created out of the basic formation. He'll run the fullback on dives, traps, draws and tosses. He'll utilize the slotbacks on sweeps, reverses, option pitches and play-action passes.
If opponents aren't respecting the quarterback, Johnson will call for plays designed to gain yardage on keepers. If opponents stack the line of scrimmage to stop the run, Johnson will throw.
"This offense is a combination of things I've picked up over the years. It's a little bit of Wisbhone, a little bit of I-formation, a little bit of Veer, a little bit of Run-and-Shoot," Johnson explained. "I've grabbed and took bits and pieces from different sets and gradually evolved it into what we're doing today."
While the average fan focuses on formations and plays, the most important element of the spread involves blocking schemes. Johnson's system is based largely on misdirection and running plays to an area where there are more blockers than defenders.
"The whole point is that you don't have to block everybody. It's about angles and gaining a numbers advantage," he said.
Yet Johnson's true genius lies in play-calling. He has an uncanny knack for figuring out what the opponent is doing to defend the spread, then adjusting the gameplan accordingly.
"Not many guys know how to make split-second decisions about what plays will work based on what's happening on the field," Niumatalolo said. "Paul is one of the few coaches who can call a game by the seat of his pants."
After 20 years of running the spread, Johnson has seen every imaginable defense designed to stop it. In the season opener against SMU, Johnson went to a stack alignment that overloaded one side of the line with blockers. The Mustangs never figured it out and were toasted to the tune of 38 points and 399 yards.
"I think if you're going to do something, you better know how to fix it when it breaks," Johnson said. "If our offense isn't working for one reason or another, I usually have a pretty good idea why and know how to get it going again."
Johnson's spread has put up record-setting numbers at Lees McCrae junior college, Georgia Southern (twice), Hawaii and now Navy for the second time. He was offensive coordinator in 1996 when the Midshipmen set numerous school records en route to a 9-3 record that included a victory over California in the Aloha Bowl.
Interestingly, Johnson had no intention of criss-crossing the country as a collegiate assistant. His goal after graduating from Western Carolina in 1979 was to become head coach at Avery County High, his alma mater.
Johnson did indeed return to Avery County and served as an assistant to longtime head coach Elmer Aldridge.
"I figured I'd wait for coach Aldridge to retire and then, if I was lucky, I could be the head coach for 15 or 20 years," he said.
This Saturday, at Ravens Stadium in Baltimore, Johnson will probably think about how far he's come since those days as a high school assistant. A head coach at the Div. I-A level for the first time in his career, Johnson will be attempting to upset the most storied program in college football. And he'll be using a style of offense that Notre Dame fans found distasteful toward the end of the Bob Davie Era.
Want evidence that Johnson has become the leading authority on triple-option offense? It comes from sources who report that former Notre Dame head coach Davie once contacted Johnson about serving as the team's offensive coordinator.
Johnson would neither confirm nor deny that, saying only that Notre Dame officials contacted him once while he was head coach at Georgia Southern.
