Moral Victory... at What Cost?

I've heard all week things like, "Wow! Army gave Stanford a game! You gotta be happy with that!"

It's games like these that shred me though, because I WANT to take away positive things like the emergence of Terry Baggett, I want to be happy for hanging with Stanford for 3 quarters... but it's games like these that are often talked about as "moral victories" a week later starts to seem a lot more like a Pyrrhic victory.

Ray Maples and Larry Dixon are both in question for Saturday's crucial game against Wake Forest. It's great that guys can jump in and step up, but that same kind of cost has tended to multiply as the team navigates the season and the schedule.

Still there are guys that have stepped up and played well and deserve the praise. Credit Sal Interdonato for the personnel writeups Here's Terry Baggett's interview (video) with Rich DeMarco from Army Football Report.


Here's a hilarious piece hailing Stanford's multiple formations while dismissing Army's dynamic T formation attack as "the triple option". It's just hilarious to me that the article calls Stanford's scheme "anything but complex" and rattles off 9 of the ways they tried to outsmart/outman Army with complex formations:

• A pro style shotgun, with one back, one tight end and three wideouts.
• A pro style I, with two backs, two wideouts and a tight end.
• An empty-backfield shotgun, with four wides and a tight end.
• A pistol (the shorter version of the shotgun) with sidecar backs on either side of quarterback Kevin Hogan and three wides.
• A pistol, with one back, two wides, and a tight end and slot tight end next to each other.
• A heavy formation, with three tight ends and two backs.
• The Weird Wildcat (my words, not Shaw’s): a back taking the snap, three tight ends, and a guard, 316-pound Joshua Garnett, as another (slot) tight end to demolish anything in his path.
• A classic old-time power I, with three backs and two tight ends. (Get the point? David Shaw loves the tight end.)
• And something I don’t know what to call: Before the snap, the tackle, tight end and slot tight end shifted to the right (sort of what Chip Kelly did at Washington in Week 1) to create a huge gap outside the guard.

Yet Army's attack is simply the "Triple Option" nothing more to describe the misdirection and gamesmanship run out of such a classic formation as Army's straight up T-formation.

Rich Ellerson's presser quotes are up. He talks a little bit about Terry Baggett, Maples and Dixon, the QB position, and looks ahead to Wake Forest.



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