AcademyWars.com

So I had some time on my hands this afternoon, and nerded out a little bit. After losing to BC coming off a bye-week last week, I was curious to go back and look at Army's record after bye-weeks under Monken. It is not a good picture:

Setting aside the Navy game (which has come after 1 or 2 bye-weeks the entire Monken era), Army has had a total of 15 bye-weeks from 2014 through last week. Caveat: that number also includes the 2 canceled games during the 2020 COVID season, which were de-facto bye-weeks.

The record: Army is 4 - 11 under Monken coming off of bye-week. 3 of those 4 wins came in the 2017 and 2018 seasons when Monken had his 2 best teams. The other victory coming out of a bye-week was during the 2021 season against AF, an overtime victory. 1 of those victories in 2018 was a 20T game that shouldn't have been that close.

The losses include: 3 to AF (making Army 2-3 vs. AF after bye-weeks under Monken), Duke, 2 losses to Tulane, Hawaii, Cincinatti, Wisconsin, Georgia State and last week's loss to BC.

I think this is very telling. Granted, a couple of those games Army was going to be an underdog regardless: Cincinnatti, Wisconsin. But, a number of those games were winnable. A bit counter-intuitive, but a week off doesn't seem to be something that translates to wins very often for Monken and staff.

One potential explanation is when these bye-weeks tend to fall. Lining up the season results side-by-side from 2014 through 2023, weeks 5,6 and 8 (starting from last week of August and counting forward) are the only weeks that Monken has a losing record across those seasons. There seems to be something about the early October timeframe that is poison for Army...Thayer weeks, injuries/fatigue? Whatever it is, Army seems to struggle at that time of year most years.

Interested in anyone else's thoughts?

Isnt this smack dab in middle of midterns?

Correct...mid-terms = "Thayer week". That's why I mentioned that...thinking the same thing as you, that Army seems to be prone to letdowns this time of year more in more seasons than not, and it very well could be academics. Except for the special years of 2017 and 2018, that early October time period seems to spell trouble.

But the 4-11 record coming out of bye-weeks is curious. Why is this Army team so poor when given a chance to rest and 2 weeks to prepare? You'd think the record would be 50-50 if the bye-week was just a neutral effect, but at 4-11, it seems as if it is actually a net-negative for this team---they do better when just being in rhythm and going into game-week mode every week.

well you get more time to prepare, but you also lose that focus on in-game precision in execution I would think.