Navy’s Ken Niumatalolo has pulled off his best coaching job yet in 2016

Heading into 2016, Navy had to replace all-time great quarterback Keenan Reynolds, its top two fullbacks, two of its top three slotbacks, and all five starting offensive linemen. One game into the year, newly-crowned starting quarterback Tago Smith was lost to injury as well.

That is a recipe for a reset if ever one existed.

At a service academy, where redshirts aren’t a thing, you’re always reliant on upperclassmen. That means you get used to replacing a lot of starters. But Navy’s facing more retooling than normal, and Reynolds was special. You don’t simply replace him.

My 2016 preview for the Midshipmen focused on conflicting narratives: that Ken Niumatalolo was doing a spectacular job and would continue doing so in Annapolis, and that the 2016 season wasn’t going to be a very good one. I was half-right.

If the 9-3 Midshipmen beat Army on Saturday and Louisiana Tech in the Armed Forces Bowl in two weeks, they will have matched their 2015 win total. They won the AAC West this fall as well, which they couldn’t pull off in 2015.

Niumatalolo has pulled off his most impressive coaching job yet. That’s a pretty impressive thing to do the year after you win 11 games and produce your program’s best AP Poll finish (18th) in 52 years.

Technically, Navy did regress offensively this year: The Midshipmen were 20th in Off. S&P+ in 2015, and this year, they fell to 25th. A pity.

Will Worth took over for Reynolds and Smith and dominated, rushing for 1,283 yards and 25 touchdowns. New top fullbacks Chris High and Shawn White rushed for 904 (6.1 per carry, a ridiculous average for fullbacks in this offense), and slotbacks Dishan Romine, Toneo Gulley, Darryl Bonner, and Calvin Cass Jr. added 1,198 (8.6).

White, Cass, and Gulley are all seniors who waited patiently for their time to shine, then took advantage. (Romine is also a senior; he produced about the same numbers in 2015 and 2016.) Three senior linemen also seized their opportunity with the first string.

That Navy absorbed this much turnover with only a tiny drop is a testament to both the recruiting-and-development machine that Niumatalolo has built in Annapolis and the work of Jasper, who is now in his 15th season as Navy’s OC. He has proven as much as you possibly can in his role, and one would hope he lands a decent head coaching gig at some point, assuming he wants one.

Regardless, as long as he’s there, he will evidently continue to prove even more.

Things got a little tricky last week, however. Both Worth and Gulley suffered season-ending foot injuries (on the same play, no less) in the Midshipmen’s disappointing AAC title game loss to Temple.

Sophomore Zach Abey took over behind center and showed promise — 11 non-sack carries for 81 yards, 7-for-13 passing for 104 — but took three sacks and threw two picks against Temple’s outstanding defense.

And while Army’s defense isn’t Temple’s, it’s strong.

The Black Knights rank 41st in Def. S&P+. They are powered by a dynamic set of linebackers -- Andrew King, Jeremy Timpf, Alex Aukerman, Kenneth Brinson, and James Nachtigal have combined for 44 tackles for loss and 18.5 sacks -- and as Army runs a similar offense, they tend to handle Navy’s option attack pretty well. They held Navy well below its season averages in 2014 and 2015, and that was with an awful defense.

“The teams that we have the hardest time against are the service academies, because we run similar offenses, so in the spring and in the summer, you go against each other, so you get familiar with it,” Niumatalolo told SB Nation in October. “And everybody says, ‘Well, they practice against it in spring,’ but you’ve got drop-back quarterbacks or you’ve got people that are trying to simulate it and don’t do it for a living. We have a hard time against Air Force and Army, but Air Force and Army run this offense.”

This is a significant test for Jasper and the new-new-look Navy offense. But they passed their last test with flying colors.

Niumatalolo and defensive coordinator Dale Pehrson perfected a bend-don’t-break approach in 2015, taking advantage of opponents’ impatience — once you’ve given up a couple of seven-minute touchdowns drives, you start to press a little bit — and baiting them into eventual mistakes.

That’s been more difficult this time around. This year’s safety corps has been led by a freshman (Alohi Gilman) and a sophomore (Sean Williams), and while they have shown upside in recording seven tackles for loss and seven pass breakups, you’re going to suffer glitches when you’ve got that little experience in the back.

The Midshipmen have gotten a lot more leaky. In 13 games last season, Navy allowed just 17 gains of 30-plus yards, 11th in the country; in 12 games so far, this year’s unit has allowed 29 such gains, 76th.

Navy’s big-play breakdowns have forced the offense to play perfect ball to keep winning; until last week, the Midshipmen had done just that, averaging 49.1 points per game in their last seven contests. But they scored only 10 against Temple, and signs point to another low-scoring battle on Saturday. Can the Navy D step up?

The Black Knights rank just 101st in Off. S&P+ and haven’t topped 21 points against an FBS opponent since the third week of the season.

(Navy’s defense, meanwhile, hasn’t allowed fewer than 27 points since that same week.)

The Black Knights’ strengths are what you would expect: They are a healthy 64th in Rushing S&P+ — 25th in rushing success rate, fourth in opportunity rate (percentage of carries gaining at least five yards), sixth in stuff rate (stops at or behind the line), and 18th in power success rate.

Quarterback Ahmad Bradshaw and his primary backs (Andy Davidson, Darnell Woolfolk, Jordan Asberry) grind out five-yard carries as well as anybody. But if they are knocked even slightly off-schedule, they don’t cope well. And they probably won’t be able to take much advantage of Navy’s dreadful pass defense.

Still, the Worth injury and defensive glitches make this matchup pretty intriguing. Four of the last five Army-Navy games have had one-possession margins, and that was with Navy mostly possessing far superior teams. Army fans have to be looking at this as their best opportunity yet at ending an obnoxiously long winning streak.

But hey, maybe this adversity is a good thing. It’s about time Niumatalolo got tested, huh? His job’s just been too easy of late.