On the bitter cold morning of December 7, 2002 in East Rutherford, N.J., hours before the 103rd edition of America's most prestigious college football rivalry would commence at Giants Stadium, which is the last time the Army-Navy game was played in New Jersey, Navy junior quarterback Craig Candeto felt secure with one thought.
The 1-10 Midshipmen, who were desperately determined to finish a painful rebuilding year on a high note under first-year head coach Paul Johnson, could not have been better prepared to face Army, their arch rivals from West Point.
The Black Knights' program also was suffering at that point. Army brought the same 1-10 mark to the Meadowlands. Candeto, who had experienced a grand total of two victories over three seasons with the Mids — Navy finished 1-10 in 2000 and 0-10 in 2001 — knew much about anguish on Saturdays during football season.
Yet there were definite, optimistic signs of life in 2002. Navy's season opening 38-7 rout at SMU and other encouraging flashes in the fall had, to a degree, offset the disappointing record.
"The program had bottomed out. It was probably on life support," Johnson recalls. "We were focused on flipping it, turning it around. We were making progress, but we weren't seeing the [desired] results."
Close losses in November to #9 Notre Dame and Wake Forest gave the Mids more pain and a sniff of late-season confidence. Notre Dame needed to score 15 points in the final four minutes to escape with a 30-23 win. Two weeks later, with Navy again on the verge of springing a major upset, Wake Forest scored a touchdown in the final minute to take a 30-27 victory.
Over the next two weeks, the preparation for Army was intense, in the film room, weight room and on the practice field. Unlike Candeto's first two seasons, when the Mids went home to celebrate Thanksgiving with their families, no one left the Yard. The players and coaches and their families ate turkey together in King Hall. Only academic duties interfered with football concentration.
The serious, businesslike tone of those two weeks was palpable. There was a hugely important game to win in the Jersey swamp that deserved the team's urgent, sustained attention.
Beat Army. Period.
"Johnson treated the Army game like it was a bowl game. We stayed together, we studied film and we practiced hard, even on Thanksgiving. We were so ready and hungry for success," Candeto recalls.
"As the game played out, every [defensive] look Army gave us, we were ready for it. Every adjustment they made, we had practiced against it," he adds. "Everybody laid it on the line that day with maximum effort. We were just so dialed in. It was like a video game out there, like something out of a movie."
From Candeto to former teammates such as safety Josh Smith, offensive guard/tackle Josh Goodin and slot back Eric Roberts, the Mids were confident they were the better team before kickoff 19 years ago.
But no one expected the fireworks that ensued on such an incredibly historic, cathartic afternoon for Navy, which, in hindsight, also launched its football program into a new era of success that day.
The Mids wasted no time establishing who was boss on the 61st Pearl Harbor Day they observed in North Jersey. A day earlier, the Mids had seen the massive, ongoing clean-up and recovery of victims' remains at nearby Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan. There, 15 months earlier on September 11, 2001, terrorists had flown two hijacked airline jets into the World Trade Center, destroying both massive towers and killing nearly 3,000 people.
Navy players prayed, paid their respects and thought about what lay ahead for them as future military officers, while the U.S. was fighting terrorist forces in Afghanistan and girding for war against Iraq.
Then, the Mids refocused on the football task at hand, with unexpectedly devastating results. On game day, Navy's defense smothered Army and kept feeding an offense that hummed with near perfection by scoring touchdowns on eight consecutive possessions.
The Mids etched quite a place in the history books by crushing Army, 58-12.
So did Candeto, who orchestrated Navy's spread option offense masterfully, punctuating his performance by rushing for six touchdowns, an Army-Navy game record that still stands. Those scoring runs included three one-yarders and scores from three, seven and 42 yards out. He finished with 103 yards rushing on 18 carries. He also completed four of five passes, including a 23-yard touchdown toss to junior slot back Tony Lane.
With Candeto at the controls, making correct option reads and distributing the ball flawlessly behind dominant blocking, Navy rolled to a 28-6 lead at halftime. The Mids scored three more touchdowns and added a safety to make it 51-6 after three quarters.
By then, Candeto and numerous other starters on both sides of the ball were done, while victory-starved senior backups such as fullback Bryce McDonald got in on the action. McDonald finished Navy's scoring with 63 yards rushing and a touchdown run early in the fourth quarter.
The 58 points scored by Navy remains an Army-Navy game record, topping Navy's 51-0 shutout in 1973 — the only margin of victory larger than the 46-point rout the Mids achieved in 2002.
The 70 combined points scored still stands as the highest output in the Army-Navy series, which finally returns on December 11 to East Rutherford at MetLife Stadium for the first time since '02, marking the 122nd meeting between the service academies.
Navy piled up 508 total yards of offense, 421 on the ground. Both were Army-Navy game records. Navy fullbacks Michael Brimage and McDonald each carried 10 times for a combined 147 yards, while Brimage added a 40-yard pass reception. Roberts and Lane combined for 100 yards rushing and 36 yards receiving. The Mids held the Black Knights to 56 yards rushing on 30 attempts and forced two turnovers.
Navy did not turn the ball over or commit a single penalty and did not punt for the game's first 50 minutes.
"To have that kind of statement win was unbelievable. We didn't necessarily feel like a 1-10 team coming into that game. We had grown as a team. But no one expected to blow [Army] out the way we did," recalls Josh Smith, then a sophomore at Navy. Smith recorded 83 of his team-high 127 tackles over the last six games in '02. That included a 21-tackle feat and an interception and fumble recovery against UConn.
"I was thrilled we could win that one for the seniors. I was not used to losing coming out of [Attica] Indiana. We needed a guy like [Johnson]. He changed our mentality and how tough we had to be," adds Smith, who remembers being introduced to Johnson's exhausting, early-morning "fourth quarters" workouts in early '02.
"There were guys walking off the field left and right. They were done [with Navy football]," Smith adds. "The ones who stuck around and pushed through the pain realized your limit was not really your limit. Our spring and summer practices were no-holds barred. Lots of hitting. Johnson really tested us."
Johnson indeed would flip the program's performance on a fast timeline, as his staff impressively recruited and developed the good talent that came to Annapolis. Johnson sharpened the spread option with a succession of solid quarterbacks and a schedule that subtracted some Division I heavyweights to better fit Navy's then-independent status.
Johnson was a classic disciplinarian who was known to ride his players hard, constantly demanding improvement.
At halftime of the Army rout, Johnson spent the session pointing out the things the Midshipmen had done wrong and challenging them to correct them. He wanted more points. He demanded no let-up in focus or execution. Forget celebrating on the sideline early. Keep taking care of every detail of business.
"[That first year] was about changing the narrative. We had to change attitudes and perceptions and a lot of other things about the program," Johnson recalls. "I really fought the excuse-making — we have to march and do military things, go to [a tough] school. My response was to tell them to quit feeling sorry for yourselves. Prepare better and play better."
"I was always confident that it was only a matter of time [before Navy would start winning again]," Johnson adds. "Everything came together that day [in '02 against Army]. I think that win probably laid the foundation for a lot of success we had."
That unexpected rout lit a fuse, all right. Johnson would lead Navy to an 8-5 finish in 2003 and the Mids' first bowl game since 1996 and their first Commander-In-Chief trophy since 1981. Navy would go on to win a series-record 14 straight games against Army West Point and seven consecutive CIC trophies.
Starting in 2003, Navy would post 14 winning seasons (and bowl game appearances) over 15 years.
After the 2-10 rebuilding year, Johnson went 43-20 and won two bowl games over five seasons, before leaving to become head coach at Georgia Tech, as Numatalolo took over at the end of the 2007 season. Johnson's six-year record against Navy's service academy rivals was 11-1. He never lost to Army.
"You can't remember that Army game without remembering all of the pain that came before it," says Goodin, who concluded his junior season in the rout of Army.
Goodin says the arrival of Johnson and his new staff — which included future head coach
Ken Niumatalolo, quarterbacks coach
Ivin Jasper, current assistant
Danny O'Rourke and slot backs coach and now eighth-year Army head coach Jeff Monken — convinced him to stay.
"That win against Army was my third win in my third season. Football is what makes the academy tolerable, but football had gotten so bad before P.J. came back," Goodin says.
Besides Johnson's successful two-year Navy stint as offensive coordinator in the mid-90s that featured a triple option attack that carried the Mids to a 9-3 record in 1996 and a victory over California in the Hula Bowl, Johnson had gone on to win two Division I-AA titles as head coach at Georgia Southern. He won 62 games over five seasons in Statesboro, Ga.
"Paul had so much credibility as a winner and an offensive mind and a tremendous play caller, and he brought in a strong, competent staff, guys like Niumatalolo, Jasper, Monken and [defensive coordinator] Buddy Green," Goodin adds. "We'd been through the crucible. Now, we were pulling in the same direction and getting better.
"That Army game was the first time we put it all together. It was like flushing the toxins out of the system. To see the way the defense played lights out and the brilliance of the offense and what it could really do was just special. And man, did it motivate us in the offseason. The amount of accountability that was part of winter workouts and spring ball was intense."
"To annihilate Army on that big of a stage showed us all we really had something and we had to keep it going," says Roberts, an impact sophomore slot back in '02 and part of a combined 18 victories in 2003 and 2004, when the Mids finished 10-2. During Roberts' three varsity seasons, the Mids beat Army every time by a combined score of 134-31.
"It made us exhaust ourselves in the offseason. Our coaches knew what it took to win, they wanted to win and they were very hard on us, and they didn't settle for anything else but a culture of winning," Roberts adds. "We obviously needed that. It did not take long for us to embrace it. We had a lot of fun while working and competing very hard."
After playing quarterback and slot back in the early 90s at Hawaii under Johnson as offensive coordinator, Jasper first coached with him at Navy a few years later before Johnson took his first head coaching job at Georgia Southern. Jasper's first two experiences with the Army-Navy game were riveting and maddening.
The Mids lost those games in 1995 and '96 by a combined five points. It was the tail end of a five-game losing streak to the Black Knights by a combined 10 points. Most of the games were low-scoring, which has been typical throughout the majority of this huge rivalry.
"I'll never forget the first time I walked on the field [before the 1995 game]. The march-on was happening, the stadium nearly packed. The pressure to win squeezed you," says Jasper. "And the way those two games ended was gut-wrenching."
Jasper eventually followed Johnson to Georgia Southern and assisted him for three years, before they returned to Annapolis together to help rebuild what had fallen apart over the previous five.
Jasper is finishing his 20th straight season at Navy and 22nd overall. Like Niumatalolo and O'Rourke, he has been on a very successful ride there.
Since that amazing rout over Army in 2002, the Mids have secured 11 CIC trophies, had 15 winning seasons, won eight bowl games and 146 games overall.
"The first time I felt that winning feeling against Army [in 2002], it was incredible, especially how we won. We beat them pretty good a few more times during the [winning] streak," Jasper says. "That game is usually on a more level playing field, a real fight with no one having a [major] advantage. It's so hard to put into words how we won 14 straight against them."
Candeto's mind drifts back to that historic day 19 years ago, specifically the moment during the first half when it was clear to him and his offensive teammates that Army could not stop the Mids on either side of the ball. He remembers addressing the offensive huddle with the Mids leading by two scores and driving for more.
"I told the guys this is a great rivalry game, but it doesn't have to come down to the fourth quarter or be close today. Let's blow these guys out," Candeto says. "We were the better team and so ready for a breakthrough. And we meshed together and had a day."
