Navy pursues a new offense...The Wing T is back !

[OptionThis]

Though he was hired in early January, it took reading this and listening to his interviews for me to recognize that Navy's new offensive coordinator Drew Cronic (great FB name) will install an offense that will have only a slight resemblance to their traditional triple option offense. Seems that Navy is in some ways trying what Army sought to do in 2023. Let's see how that works for them.

Here's an article in full that gives a sense of Navy's new offense:



"COLLEGE FOOTBALL
Navy introduces a new offensive coordinator and a change of scheme


The triple-option offense has become synonymous with Navy football over the years, and the tradition continued even after Brian Newberry was promoted from defensive coordinator to head coach before this past season. The idea was for the scheme to remain the base of the offense, with new offensive coordinator Grant Chesnut implementing some wrinkles.

.
That lasted just one season before Chesnut was fired last month after the team finished 5-7 and averaged just 17.7 points per game, its second-lowest output in the past 15 seasons.

Welcome to the next era of Navy football: Drew Cronic has been hired as offensive coordinator, and he intends to implement what he labeled a “hybrid wing-T” offense.

“I want to be creative,” Cronic said Thursday during his introductory news conference. “There’s certain things you’ve got to be good at. At the same time, you’ve got to be able to adapt. So there’s been many seasons where we’ve started with our base and then it evolves a certain way based on who you have, what you’re doing well. You’ve got to have answers. Whatever you’re doing, what are people taking away from you? What are the answers?”



Cronic, 49, arrives in Annapolis after four seasons as the coach at Mercer, where he compiled a 28-17 record at the Football Championship Subdivision school. He was previously coach for two seasons at Division II Lenoir-Rhyne, where he was named national coach of the year by the American Football Coaches Association in 2018, and for two seasons at Reinhardt of the NAIA. In between those two jobs in 2017, Cronic served as offensive coordinator for a season at Furman.


He takes over an offense that averaged 300.3 yards per game in 2023, which ranked 123rd in the Football Bowl Subdivision.

Cronic “has had success everywhere he’s been in a lot of different ways,” Newberry said. “A guy that’s been able to adapt to his personnel. A guy that’s been able to do more with less. A guy that’s taken programs that were not doing well and turn them around quickly.

“He understands what we need to do here at the Naval Academy to be successful.”

The wing-T typically features a tailback, fullback and wingback to go along with a wide receiver and tight end, though Cronic prides himself on being creative while evolving the scheme he learned from his father, a high school coach in Georgia. He said there will be a lot of shifting, motions, movement and formations. Mercer faced Alabama in 2021, and Nick Saban spoke then about the challenges of the scheme.

“The easiest way to categorize it would be there’s a lot of three-back runs, even though it isn’t what people would recognize as the wishbone,” Saban told reporters at the time. “Between the motions and so forth you know it’s kind of a combination of running three-back-type runs that are not in spread out formations.

“There are a lot of bunch formations, and there’s a lot of motions and adjustments that players have to make. So this is totally unique to anything that we’ve played against and will play against the rest of the season.”

Cronic said the Mids will still run some traditional Navy option schemes, but he wants to be versatile and take advantage of his players’ strengths. There will be a lot of similar looks and principles to what Navy fans are familiar with. Ideally, Cronic said, he would like to throw the ball 20 to 25 percent of the time, but that will depend on the skill set of the quarterback.


“Obviously we all want the biggest, fastest, most elusive quarterback that can throw it and hit every target,” Cronic said. “You want a kid who can do different things. With what we’ve done over the past, I think we’ve adapted to different quarterbacks pretty well. Wing-T offense, that quarterback can be a good runner, he can be a good thrower, he can be a good game manager. He doesn’t have to be a great runner, but we’d like for him to hurt people with his legs. So some of it’s just getting the best football player and then building it around him."

[ARMORMAN]

I'm not impressed and I'm not a fan.

Motion, shifting, adjustments, deception, etc, etc is a whole lotta razzle/dazzle with not a whole lotta basic, smashmouth football.

Gimme an under-center triple any day, with a violent O line and a QB who has the instincts and authority to read/react and guys like Udoh, Reed, Rendina and T-Rob to carry the mail.

Gimme ARMY FOOTBALL.

[wpgrad]

I am 100% in favor of us playing under center triple option, new rules be darned. My favorite game in my 25+ years of Army is the AF 21-0 game not because we won, but because we didn't throw a pass.

That said, as I posted in another thread, we sure went from "the under center option can no longer work and we need to do a shotgun based offense" to "the under center option is just fine, rules be damned" in like 10 months.

[WrekDivr]

I am curious to see how different this new Navy offense really is. Cronic didn’t say anything about being in shotgun. The article describes 3 backs, including a fullback. Saban likened it to a TO offense. May be the TO being run from a different formation.

I would say good luck to them, but I would love to see them fall flat on their face again and start looking for a new HC. And then go through that process about 10 more times in the next 20 years.

[PrideandDream]

Drew Cronic îs a really good football coach. And he comes from a good football family. HIs dad was a heck of a HS Coach in GA and was a smash mouth, tough, physical, and execution based coach. His dad coached 30 seasons and won 222 games in GA coaching at the highest level through the late 70's, 80's, 90's, and 2000's. He had 5 losing seasons. 3 of those in his first 4 years and one his final year at a small school where he started a program. People that played for his dad will tell you that he was a tough demanding SOB but also a winner.

Drew played for his dad at East Coweta south of Atlanta where his dad had his most success. Then played at the University of Georgia under Ray Goff and Jim Dornan. He was an assistant at West GA, James Madison, Furman, and Rheinhardt, before becoming a head coach at Rheinhardt. He won at Reinhardt (NAIA) and in year two took them to the NAIA semifinals. He won at his next stop Lenoir Rhine (NCAA D2) and they went to the semifinals both years he was there. Lastly he won at Mercer which is a relatively new FCS program and went 9-4 last year with a loss in the 2nd round of the FCS Playoffs. Overall as a head coach he's 75-23. This isn't by accident. He has deep experience as a player and a coach. He's been around a lot of good football coaches as well. As a side note while at Furman as an assistant he was on staff when the Army OC Cody Worley was a player.

IMO, this is a major win for Navy. ON the flip side I don't think he will stay long if they have success. His track record suggests he's climbing the ladder and always on the lookout for bigger opportunities.

We beat Mercer in 2020 his first year as head coach there. But he had really solid success later that year and beyond.

I'd expect Navy to get better and better each week with him leading the offense. Don't let this hire go under the radar.

PD

[USMA76]

I'm sure Navy got a good hire but wasn't our OC the guy that Navy really wanted?

[wpgrad]

I'm sure Navy got a good hire but wasn't our OC the guy that Navy really wanted?

I can confirm from my inside source that while it was not the only reason, one of the reasons they hired our new OC was a concern that Navy would if we didnt (if we tried another year of the shotgun stuff). There are just so few guys that can call this offense

[WrekDivr]

I wanted to learn a bit about the Wing T after reading these posts. It looks like a hybrid of the Wishbone and Flexbone with the QB under center. The fullback is directly behind the QB, the tailback is to one side of the fullback (similar to the wishbone except that the halfback is even with what fullback) and the wingback is just outside the tight end (similar to the flexbone). Here’s a link to an overview if anyone is interested:

https://www.football-tutorials.com/wing-t-offense/

[LoneStarPhan]

Delaware used the wing T for decades. Dave Nelson wrote a book on wing T football while head coach at Delaware. This book was in the USMA library, probably in the 1970s. Google will point you to multiple books on the wing T offense including one titled The Delaware Wing-T: An Order of Football by H. R. “Tubby” Raymond and Ted Kempski. Raymond coached the offense under Nelson in the 1960s and later became head coach at Delaware under AD Nelson. Kempski was the quarterback of an undefeated Delaware team in 1963.


Fun fact: Raymond’s son was the original Philadelphia Phillies Phanatic.