Jeff Monken’s teams have been running the under-center triple option since 1997, when he joined mentor Paul Johnson’s staff at Georgia Southern. The head coach who has led Army to five bowl games and a top-20 finish over the past seven seasons believes in the old-school flexbone offense for one simple reason.
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“It’s a pain in the ass to defend,” Monken said. “You play defense against everybody else all year long, and then all of a sudden, in the middle of a season you play an option team, and it’s like playing a different sport on defense.”
But starting this fall, Army’s opponents will no longer have to defend the under-center triple option. This spring, Monken is doing the unthinkable and moving his team to a primarily shotgun offense. He felt he didn’t have a choice in the wake of an under-the-radar NCAA rules change last year that eliminated blocking below the waist — known as cut blocking — anywhere but inside the tackle box.
That familiar quarterback pitch to a running back sprinting around the left side of the line? The one that teams like Oklahoma and Nebraska once employed to win national championships? Turns out it’s a lot harder to spring the runner if a blocker can’t cut the oncoming linebacker flowing toward the perimeter.
“We kind of limped through last season,” said Monken, whose team slipped from consecutive nine-win seasons to missing a bowl. “I just didn’t feel like it was sustainable. And so I felt like we needed to make a change.
“It’s frustrating because for a team like us that isn’t in the same recruiting conversations with everybody we play, there’s an element to that offense that makes us relevant and gives us a chance to be competitive.”
Back in 2018, the NCAA rules committee eliminated cut blocking more than 5 yards downfield because of injury concerns arising from the preponderance of RPO plays. Coaches adjusted. But eliminating all perimeter and downfield cut blocks has a particularly pronounced effect on the few remaining programs — mostly the service academies — that run the triple option.
“When those rule changes came up, I don’t want to say it targeted the service academies, but there had to be something there where you’re trying to eliminate a certain approach to football,” said Air Force’s Troy Calhoun, himself a former rules committee chairman. “Because truly, who else did it impact?”
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But Calhoun’s hybrid offense has been less dependent on cut blocks than Army and Navy, which have been running the under-center option for decades.
“I was on the rules committee when I was coaching, and it was a constant battle then,” said Johnson, who retired at Georgia Tech following the 2018 season. “They say that it’s (to reduce) injuries, but they don’t have any stats to back it up. I think a lot of it is people just don’t want to play against it.”
Steve Shaw, the NCAA’s national coordinator of officials, said the committee in fact had access to extremely specific injury data justifying the change.
“Our medical data, which we’ve had for multiple (seasons) starting in 2019, tracked players that are injured — lower leg, like knee or ankle — while being blocked,” Shaw said. “What the statisticians told us was that starting immediately after we made this change, they could see — this is their word — a statistically significant reduction in knee and ankle injuries on players being blocked. That lined up with that (2018) rule change.”
Monken isn’t buying it.
“I don’t think that that cut blocking is dangerous to the health of our players,” he said. “Guys get injured playing this game, but we cut block every day in practice for 26 years — every day— and it’s not like we got a bunch of guys getting carted off to the hospital that had to get their ACLs repaired from cut blocks.”
Monken’s flexbone offense is a descendent of the old wishbone, featuring a fullback, two slotbacks and two receivers. It was first popularized by longtime Air Force coach Fisher DeBerry in the 1980s. Johnson began running it in the mid-’80s while offensive coordinator at Georgia Southern, then brought it with him to Hawaii. Two of his Hawaii GAs, Monken and Ken Niumatalolo, eventually became service academy head coaches who ran the flexbone.
Starting in 2008, Niumatalolo led Navy to its most successful era since the 1950s and ’60s. Monken’s 52 wins from 2016 to 2021 were Army’s best six-year total since the ’40s.
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But after 15 years at the helm, Niumatalolo was fired last December following his third consecutive losing season. Now Monken, whose 6-6 team in 2022 missed a bowl because two of its wins came against FCS foes, is attempting to reinvent his offense while playing an arduous schedule that includes games at LSU and Syracuse, versus Boston College and Coastal Carolina and at two-time Conference USA champ UTSA.
It feels like a crossroads moment for the service academies, and their coaches can’t help wondering whether the rules committee has something against them.
Another Johnson triple-option disciple, Kennesaw State head coach Brian Bohannon, realized two games into last season he’d need to make his own drastic change this offseason because of the rules change. After posting four consecutive seasons with 11-plus wins (excluding the shortened 2020 season), the Owls slipped to 5-6 in 2022.
“We’re more perimeter-oriented than any of the academies,” Bohannon said. “We used to get a lot of explosive plays that were turning into 8-yard gains, where we were (previously) getting 40 or 50 because we could get (defenders) on the ground.”
Monken says Army is “still gonna run it 50 times a game” and will still run option plays out of the shotgun, albeit without a fullback. He compares his new scheme to the spread-option offense run by Jamey Chadwell, formerly at Coastal Carolina and now at Liberty, which features two backs, a tight end and several option concepts. The two have talked shop in the past, though not since Chadwell got to Liberty.
“The biggest challenge I think coach Monken is gonna get hit with,” Chadwell said, “is when you’re underneath center, (the option) hits so much faster. Your linemen, they’re coming off the ball so much faster because the fullback dive is right behind them. When you’re in the gun, it’s a slower process, and so the way you choose to block is different.”
Another big difference: Chadwell’s offenses throw the ball a lot, especially with a talented quarterback like Coastal star Grayson McCall, the nation’s third-rated passer last season who completed 70 percent of his throws. By contrast, Army QBs Cade Ballard, Tyhier Tyler and Jemel Jones attempted a combined 102 passes, completing 40 percent of them.
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At Kennesaw State, new offensive coordinator Chris Klenakis has installed the pistol offense, which originated at Nevada when he was an assistant there in the mid-2000s. The running back lines up behind the quarterback and takes off running downhill, unlike the under-center slotbacks who move laterally. Linebackers could usually begin their pursuit sooner, knowing which direction the play was coming from.
“Before, we could go knock ’em on the ground and be fine,” Bohannon said. “But we can’t do that anymore.”
Interestingly, Bohannon’s former offensive coordinator, Grant Chesnut, is now at Navy under first-year head coach Brian Newberry (promoted from defensive coordinator). Unlike their archrival, Navy is not abandoning the under-center triple option.
“We’re going to function both under center and in the gun, and the ratio is going to be determined by our personnel,” Chesnut said. “I’m really excited about this era we’re in, in option football, because you’re going to see a lot of new, creative things from everyone involved.”
Army has won five of the past seven editions of its fabled rivalry game with Navy, and often, as in last season’s 20-17 double-overtime classic, the two academies appear to operate as mirror images of each other. Between the coaching change at Navy and the offensive makeover at Army, that might not be the case this year. And their seasons might become referendums on the future of the option post-cut blocking.
“I’m sure they’ll find ways to navigate it,” said Bohannon, who worked at Navy from 2002 to 2007 under Johnson. “Monk’s finding his way, and the guys at Navy will find their way, and I guess in the last game of the season we’ll find out which one of them navigates it best.”
— The Athletic‘s Nicole Auerbach contributed to this report.
(Photo: Dustin Satloff / Getty Images)
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