Nov. 4, 2011
The quarterback's appearance was unusual, if not unique, starting with the placement of his feet, which left him detached from his center by several yards.
Except for an instance earlier this season at South Carolina, when Kriss Proctor took a fourth-down snap and pooched a punt downfield, this was a pose unseen in the last decade of Navy football.
Ever since Paul Johnson branded the Midshipmen with his signature version of the triple-option in 2002, Navy quarterbacks never stared down the barrel of opposing defenses from either the shotgun or pistol formations.
But here, in the sixth game of his first and only season as a full-time starter, Proctor extended his hands from a pocket of field turf in Piscataway, N.J.
The opponent, Rutgers, was prepared as well defensively as anyone the Mids confront -- "one of the most disciplined teams against our offense," according to Proctor -- making it the appropriate place and time to unleash what he calls "a change-up." Perhaps something new would knock the Scarlet Knights off balance.
Beyond cosmetics, Proctor's pre-snap retreat from the line could expand his field of vision and/or extend his already broad range of mobility.
And though it's unlikely head coach Ken Niumatalolo or offensive coordinator Ivin Jasper thought of it this way, a different look might just stir some different luck. They were, after all, trying to avoid a fourth straight loss for the first time in nine years.
Niumatalolo and Jasper trusted Proctor to make it work. He had earned their confidence as early as his sophomore year, when he spot-started a win over Wake Forest, and validated it again with a junior victory over Central Michigan.
Those performances, highlighted by 201 yards rushing vs. CMU, clearly positioned him as heir apparent to Ricky Dobbs. Now, midway through a trying 2011, Proctor was deployed in the so-called `gun.
"The confidence (our coaches) had in me to throw that in, a new set, means a lot to me, and to the offensive line," he admitted.
When DeMell shoveled the ball between his legs back to Proctor, the left-hander rolled hard to the right and threw even harder in that direction. The result was a fastball to slot back Gee Gee Greene along the sideline.
Throwing on the move and against his body, it was a difficult pass to complete. Especially from someone accustomed to delivering pitches mostly on rushing plays. In a season to date of what-ifs, it was a glimpse at what could be.
How Proctor looked, unfortunately, was also an ominous sign of tough times about to turn worse.
He was playing with a padded sleeve pulled halfway up his left arm, the one used to fire the strike to Greene. Three weeks earlier, in the second quarter of the Air Force game, Proctor dislocated that elbow.
The same injury had jeopardized his final high school season in Big Bear City, Calif., before afflicting him again the following year as a Naval Academy plebe.
Whatever physical pain he was experiencing opposite Rutgers -- in his arm, his legs, his ribs and wherever else one aches after a month and a half of repeated body blows -- Proctor played through it.
No wonder defensive captain Jabaree Tuani asserts, "I have the utmost respect for Kriss Proctor."
What Proctor couldn't fend off, though, was the emotional strain to that Saturday's ending.
Navy held a 17-7 lead, eventually to fall behind, 21-17. Midway through the 4th quarter, it pulled within one. A minute or so later, an interception put the Mids deep in RU territory. But three plays led only to a field goal attempt, which was blocked.
When Proctor touched the ball again, in the final half-minute, he completed a pass, threw one away and was sacked at his own 26-yard line. At, 21-20, it was Navy's second one-point loss in three games.
Several days later, Proctor spoke of a sense of urgency gripping him and his teammates to turn outcomes like that around, fully aware of time slipping away. For the team, on this season. For him, on his career.
"I really have to take advantage of the opportunities that I have, because they're really becoming fewer and fewer," Proctor said. "The amount of snaps that I will take for the rest of my life are dwindling down here. It's a game I've played all my life, and a game I love.
"It sits in the back of your mind. You've got to work as hard as you can now. You've got to play as hard as you can now. Because in a short few months it's all going to be over."
In what must have seemed a few short hours -- though actually another few days -- those words proved prescient, if not prophetic.
Rutgers behind him, Proctor was on to East Carolina. Absent from Navy's repertoire was the shotgun set. Missing from Proctor was the body armor protecting his elbow.
The game was tied at 7-7 with nearly seven minutes left in the 1st half. On 3rd-and-9 from the Mids' 30-yard line, Proctor dropped back to dump a screen pass to Alexander Teich. As the ball was released, defender Matt Milner wrapped his arms around Proctor's legs and dropped him to the turf.
Upon landing, Proctor's elbow again popped out of place. Teich's catch netted one yard. But because of a personal foul on Milner, the play cost the Pirates 15 additional yards. It cost Navy and Proctor much more.
He was taken to the locker room, reemerging only as a cheerleader and de facto coach for replacement Trey Miller. Proctor watched the entire second half from the sideline, witnessing yet another excruciating outcome: ECU 38, Navy 35.
Already committed to routine 6 a.m. ice baths, Proctor added two more daily visits to the trainer's room. With treatments, he hoped to be back for the upcoming Notre Dame game. By mid-week, however, he was ruled unavailable for the Fighting Irish. His focus shifted to the home finale vs. Troy.
A recurring elbow problem was interrupting a season in which so much has been placed on his shoulders.
Most of his career Proctor labored in Dobbs's shadow, waiting his turn not just to start here or there, but everywhere the Mids played. When it finally arrived, he showed off the speed and quickness teammates constantly rave about.
In the opener against Delaware, he raced 75 yards for one of three scores. Overall, he rushed for 176 yards. Then in a rout of Western Kentucky Proctor completed two long TD passes.
But those efforts gave way to the rare Navy skid and Proctor's all too familiar injury.
"It's been tough," says Jasper. "I feel for the kid, after sitting behind Ricky for a couple of years, getting his turn and having things go the way they have early this season."
As coordinator, overseeing game plans and calling plays, Jasper also tutors the Mids' quarterbacks. By nature of his dual roles, he works closely with Proctor.
"It's been a great time and a fun year to build my relationship with Coach Jasper," Proctor says. "Sitting in his office talking about what you can do better, what the team can do better, it just makes you feel that much more important in your contribution to the team. I think we've really built our relationship this year."
Much of their conversation revolves around technical teaching points. Jasper helps Proctor read defenses, tunes his throwing motion and critiques his footwork. But beyond all of the above, he counsels his quarterback on leadership.
"I've got to be that guy who sets the tempo early on in practice, early on in the game, so other guys can feed off me," Proctor explains. "That's what I'm working on right now, just keeping the energy level up so everybody can feed off it."
That's hard enough even in prosperous times, particularly by this stage of the year.
"(It's) one of the things you really don't understand -- at least I didn't -- going into this season," Proctor says. "The first week it's so easy to get up for practice and go out and fly around and pump up your teammates. That second week it's still easy. You're a little banged up, a little tired, but you're still flying around.
"But once you get to the fifth and sixth weeks, not only are your teammates starting to drag, but you look at yourself and think, `Man, I'm tired, I've got tests (to study for), I've got all these papers to write, my legs hurt, my feet hurt, I don't want to go to practice. You've got to stay so mentally focused. It's so challenging to go out there every day and grind and motivate your teammates. But it's something you've got to do as a starting quarterback. You're looked at to be that guy."
Win or lose.
"It's so easy to lead when you win," says Proctor. "But when your team hits the wall and people are looking around for somebody to lead them, or looking around to point fingers, you've got to get them focused. You've got to tell them that losers look around and point fingers, and that's not what we're about.
"We look ourselves in the mirror and point fingers at ourselves. Everybody can work harder or do something better for the team."
When good times roll, nobody stops for soul searching. But seasons like this invite introspection. At no time was it needed more for Proctor than on the first Saturday of October.
Twelve months earlier, Air Force ended Navy's seven-year continuous reign over academy football. Fifty-plus weeks of pointing to one game had come and gone. The Midshipmen had their chance to get back at the Falcons.
Yet, for three quarters, what transpired was anything but what anyone envisioned during all those days of waiting and preparing. Twice they fell as far back as 18 points. Five seconds into the fourth quarter, the difference was 28-10.
Joined by a network television audience, 37,506 fans cast their eyes on Proctor and his teammates. What followed the final 14:55 of regulation was mesmerizing. For 12 minutes, 53 seconds of that time, the ball and momentum belonged to Navy.
Proctor led the Mids on three drives, totaling 37 plays and 194 yards. He rushed for a score on the first series; then converted a 4th down and completed a 17-yard pass to set up a field goal on the next. On the third possession, Proctor dazzled with a 27-yard run, threw for 15 yards to give Navy a 1st-and-Goal and threw again to Greene for a TD.
Down to 19 seconds left, he then ran left and pitched to Teich. A two-point conversion tied the game. Seven plays into overtime, Proctor plunged into the end zone for the lead.
Lifting himself from under a pile, Proctor sprung to his feet and for no more than a split-second or two stepped out of character for a Navy player. Instead of embracing another Mid, he turned to a Falcon.
It was, arguably, the kind of action that generally goes unnoticed in football. Not this time. Back judge David Vaughan not only saw it, he penalized Proctor for it.
Fifteen yards. Unsportsmanlike conduct. Explaining Vaughan's reasoning, referee Mike Defee later said that Proctor "got in the face of an Air Force player." Proctor says he "told (the Falcon) to move explicitly."
Whatever was said, the call turned an extra-point try into a 35-yard kick. It was blocked. Minutes later, Air Force scored and converted its PAT for a 35-34 victory.
Outsiders pointed fingers at Proctor. He looked himself in the mirror. And with help from a confidant, turned a momentary lapse in judgment into a lesson to hopefully last a lifetime.
"A close friend of mine gave me probably the best advice that I got," says Proctor, whose soft-spoken answers contrast any on-field exhortations. "He told me that although the stakes were high in the Air Force game -- a game you always want to win -- sometime in the future the stakes are going to be so much higher, whether it's in a time of war, when I'm leading men, or it's in a family crisis.
"(With) the lesson I learned that Saturday -- although it's a costly one -- sometime in the future I'm going to face (similar pressure), and because I've already learned that lesson I won't make the same mistake again."
Jasper concurs.
"I told him, `Kriss, just be a Navy football player," he says. "Find the ref. Find your teammates. Celebrate, but don't get caught up in the moment.
"He wishes he could have it back. We'd all love to have it back. But at the same time, he's going to learn from this to help him later in life."
Justified or not, given the gravity of the game situation as well as the emotion invested in an academy rivalry, Proctor's penalty contradicted the poise he showed up to that point, throughout Navy's dramatic comeback.
Going back to childhood, he competed with a coolness to match the serenity of his surroundings in Big Bear City.
Early in his senior year of high school, Proctor was profiled by Eric Sondheimer for The Los Angeles Times. Sondheimer writes of mornings inhaling "fresh, crisp, invigorating air" and nights gazing "at the Milky Way" from a town "nestled in the mountains of the San Bernardino National Forest."
Proctor himself tells of a youth on Big Bear Lake, the fields around it or the mountains above it. Wake boarding, snowboarding and fishing. Baseball, golf and soccer. And of course, like older brother Scott, football. Those were the things he did and the sports he played.
There was even enough time in his days to play guitar and drums. He'd qualify as a Type A, except that Proctor was the type of kid seemingly immune from stress.
Sondheimer chronicles last-second heroics; like a 37-yard field goal to upend Twentynine Palms, or the time Proctor sandwiched a TD pass and TD run around his on-sides kick and recovery to beat San Bernardino Aquinas, keeping Big Bear unbeaten as a junior.
Low-key when stakes were high was a way of keeping up with his big brother.
"He was that guy that I looked up to," Kriss says of Scott, a Concordia University grad who preceded him as Big Bear's quarterback. "He was always cool, calm, collected, all those things."
Another influence was high school English teacher and Big Bear assistant Mike Benson.
"He gave a piece of advice, `Linebackers play at a certain level and it's way up above your head,'" Proctor remembers. "`They're going crazy and hitting people. A pitcher in a baseball game, he plays at a certain level, and it's way down by your feet. He's relaxed, he's methodical.'
"He said, `A quarterback has to play right in the middle. When you run the ball, you have to be a tough-nosed grinder. And when you drop back to pass, you've got to be methodical, you've got to use your head and you can't panic.' I think from that I've learned that you can't panic and, especially as an option quarterback, you've got to have that fire that gets others going."
Proctor hopes to exert similar influence as Benson, Jasper and Niumatalolo.
"Absolutely," says Proctor, whose first name, Kriss, is spelled like that of a family friend. "That's one of my life goals, to be college football head coach."
Ideally, he'll chase his dream after devoting part of next year on temporary assignment duty assisting the Navy football staff, before training as a Navy Flight Officer.
"NFO is a three-year longer commitment than (the standard five-year obligation for Academy grads)," Proctor says. "I realize that coaching will always be there, so when I get out (of the Navy) just before 30, the same opportunity is going be there as if I got out when I was 27. I think it's just a unique opportunity that I have right now, to go fly."
But why, as someone at the controls of an offense and who wants to call the shots as a coach, opt for the back seat of a cockpit rather than fly the plane?
"I guess it's kind of the offensive coordinator of the plane," he reasons. "You're telling the pilot what to do and where to go."
To fill the post-football void, Proctor will pick up his board and hit the waves or slopes again. He may even take up the piano. What he won't do, Proctor assures, is forget what he's learned in this autumn of his playing career.
"Football is a game of life," Proctor says. "I think everyone who plays it, and even the fans, understand that.
"To me, winning is everything. I don't want to do anything but win. But there are so many ulterior lessons that can be learned, just from the ins and outs of football. I think that's what really makes it such a great game."
