Navy quarterback Blake Horvath is having a historic season

ANNAPOLIS, Md. – On a hot, sunny September morning, hundreds of midshipmen, dressed in their matching fatigues for a “Tactical Thursday,” crisscrossed the Navy campus to get to their next class, identical black backpacks slung over their shoulders hanging.

Mid-stride, a midshipman peeked out from under the brim of his duty hat to say “good morning” with a broad grin.

“That’s our quarterback,” Navy fullback Daba Fofana told a nearby visitor.

With a height of 1.80 meters and a weight of 80 kilograms, junior Blake Horvath easily fits in with his classmates on the playground during school – including his grade point average of 3.53 in his major in Operations Research. When it comes to Navy quarterbacks, however, Horvath stands alone as the best dual-purpose quarterback the program has ever seen — and probably the only one in the country who wasn't a household name this season but is up there with some statistically a lineage among the best in the sport.

The highest finish a Navy quarterback has ever achieved in the QBR – which ESPN has tracked since 2004 – is Malcolm Perry's sixth place finish in 2019. Horvath landed at No. 3 in the overall QBR rankings this week, but has been around a month No. 1 for a long time – a spot that has been reserved in recent years for the likes of Jayden Daniels (2023), Ohio State's CJ Stroud (2021), Alabama's Mac Jones (2020), LSU's Joe Burrow (2019) and Kyler Murray of Oklahoma (2018) was reserved.

Just a few first-round NFL draft picks.

“And there’s Blake!” Navy quarterbacks coach Ivin Jasper said with a smile.

Not bad for a humble kid from Ohio who was recruited by a handful of Division II and Mid-American schools in Toledo, Ball State and Miami (Ohio) – as a wide receiver and safety.

“People don’t understand,” Jasper said. “Blake is really incredibly athletic. You see a high school movie of him jumping up with two legs and dunking it – I mean, going up and dropping it. It was like, 'Whoa.'” But he walks in the room, he's got this goofy smile on his face, he's always making jokes and giving the guys a hard time. He reminds me of the character Mahoney from Police Academy. People were looking for him as a safety, as a receiver – he's a really smart football player, I'm sure he can do all those things – but we're glad he's playing quarterback for us.”

Horvath is a big reason why Navy enters Saturday's decisive game against Notre Dame at Metlife Stadium with a 6-0 record for the first time since 1979. He leads the nation's No. 4 scoring offense (44.8), which is Navy's highest average in more than 100 years. The Midshipmen are also No. 1 in red zone offense (23-23), No. 2 in yards per completion (19.3) and No. 4 in rushing offense (274.8).

Horvath, whose breakout season is also his first as a full-time starter, joins Alabama's Jalen Milroe and Notre Dame's Riley Leonard as the only quarterbacks in the FBS to lead in both rushing (10) and passing this year. touchdowns (10) have reached double digits. Horvath, who has thrown just one interception, is responsible for 20.7 points per game, which ranks seventh nationally. And he enters this week as the No. 1 overall quarterback in the FBS by Pro Football Focus with a grade of 92.7 and the No. 2 overall running back (all players, not just quarterbacks) with a grade of 93.0.

This is an undefeated quarterback whose course program includes advanced mathematical programming, data processing and visualization, cyber engineering applications, and dynamic and stochastic models.

(Free wings for any college football fan who knows what stochastic models are.)

“Academics are pretty tough here,” Horvath said. “So being able to get a bad grade on a test or a bad quiz and move on to football and forget about it – or the other way around, and not let the success of football get into your head and make you take it with you .” Academics are a little easier because they are both equally important in their own right.

“In the past, testing weeks have been one of the big things for our football team,” he said. “It gets pretty stressful during exam weeks and last season our two worst games were in exam weeks because of the stress and all that. This year we already had one during UAB week and were able to take the win. This is it. This is a sign of our team and our ability to overcome some things this season.”

(No, they don't have any exams this week before the Notre Dame game.)

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Blake Horvath throws a 77-yard pass to Nathan Kent for the Navy TD

Blake Horvath connects with Nathan Kent on a 77-yard pass to make Navy over UAB 21-3.

Instead, the test will be whether Navy can maintain its offensive success against a Notre Dame defense that will be light years better than any the Midshipmen have faced so far this season. The Irish are No. 5 nationally in scoring defense, holding their opponents to 11.86 points per game. Navy's opponents currently rank 119th in winning percentage (.433).

While Navy's offense was on a roll, it only faced one team with a winning record: Memphis (5-1). Temple, UAB and Air Force combined for four wins.

However, this is not the Navy offensive you are used to.

Navy still runs the triple option — in fact, first-year offensive coordinator Drew Cronic's roots lie in the Wing-T. However, the Navy modernized it.

How?

Well, for starters, they call it the “Millennial Wing-T.”

It is a multiple offense. Navy quarterbacks must be fluent in option, RPO and pro style. You make zone and inside zone reads and everything works. Navy is just one of three teams in the country, along with Army and Indiana, to have won every game by double digits this season.

“It's not the old-fashioned Wing-T that some high schools still do, under center, just handoff left, handoff right,” Horvath said. “You can run whatever you want and that’s what we do. We’re going to come out with the shotgun and do whatever it takes to put the football in the right position for our guys to be successful.”

Make no mistake – this is still a run-first attack as Horvath only attempted 72 passes. In comparison, LSU's Garrett Nussmeier has thrown 284 times. The difference in Cronic's system is that Horvath is talented enough to add this option to the playbook. He completed 64% of his passes – almost as much as Nussmeier (64.7%). Heading into a game against Navy's top-ranked opponent, Horvath is well on his way to not only matching, but in some cases breaking, some of the records set by a who's who of Navy quarterbacks.

Horvath is on pace to break the school record for pass efficiency set by Malcolm Perry and is on pace to have the third-best completion percentage behind Hall of Famer Roger Staubach (who is also first and second). He can become the first quarterback in school history to reach 2,000 throws and 1,000 throws.

“We have a lot of really good soccer players here, kids that I think can play anywhere in the country,” Cronic said. “Maybe they are 5cm too small or weigh 5kg, but we have a few kids who can run and do some things and play football. Blake runs past people.”

Horvath can also break the school record for passing yards per attempt (set by Will Worth), passing yards per completion (set by Ricky Dobbs), and passing touchdowns in a season (set by Dobbs).

As a team, the 6-0 start is a departure from the recent past. Navy finished 5-7, 4-8, 4-8 and 3-7 the last four seasons. They haven't had a winning season since going 11-2 in 2019.

“We talk a lot about what the seniors have been through and what a lot of the guys have been through as a team over the last few years,” Horvath said. “We really wanted to make a difference this season and leave a legacy that is different to what we have produced in the past. In the position I'm in, Navy had a lot of great quarterbacks – Keenan Reynolds, Malcolm Perry, Roger Staubach – a lot of guys who were the face of Navy football as a quarterback can handle it.”

Horvath earned the role late last spring when he beat sophomore Braxton Woodson for the starting spot in a head-to-head competition. Horvath started just one game last season – and played in just four total games in his college career. His season ended early in October 2023 due to a dislocated thumb that required surgery and a screw. Jasper said Horvath's arm has gotten stronger, he's throwing the football better – and it's all been “a lot more” than they expected.

“Until he came to the games, you really didn’t know how he would react under the lights,” Jasper said. “We love this. We have our quarterback.”

Just two years ago, their quarterback was on the scout team and didn't play a single snap in a game. He has now thrown for at least 100 yards in all six games – the longest streak by a Navy quarterback since Jim Kubiak did so in 22 consecutive games during the 1993 and 1994 seasons.

“He’ll jump in to throw, know he’s going to get hit and go all out,” Navy coach Brian Newberry said.

And program participants agree that Horvath has remained humble despite all his successes.

“Blake has the ability to convey confidence without coming across as arrogant,” Cronic said. “He has a certain toughness about him. He obviously needs the right skills, but if he's tough and a competitor, and guys believe he'll catch them in the end zone, then that's what you're looking for. When. “They think we’re going to win because he’s in the game, everyone else just plays better, plays more freely.”

Navy, one of just 10 undefeated teams left in the country, was picked by the media to finish 11th in the 14-team American Athletic Conference. The Midshipmen are currently in second place with a win over preseason favorite Memphis. A win against Notre Dame would give Navy its first 7-0 start since 1978.

This would also legitimize Navy as a possible playoff contender, as the top five ranked conference champions are guaranteed a spot in the 12-team field. If Navy wins the AAC – and has a neutral road win over Notre Dame on its resume – the CFP selection committee could rank Navy high enough for inclusion. It would also depend on how the other Group 5 conference races unfold, which begin Friday night with Boise State at UNLV.

Navy has beaten a ranked Notre Dame team only four times in the series' history, the last time being in 2009. While Horvath recognizes that he has worked his way into the elite class, he remains grounded in his personality.

“I don’t have to do anything to win a game,” said Horvath, who was recruited from Hilliard Darby High School in Hilliard, Ohio. “I don’t have to play like Joe Burrow or Caleb Williams for us to win. I can just be Blake Horvath and we can still win the game. As long as everyone else does the same, “we can” will be pretty good.