Former Navy assistant leads Georgia Southern against Midshipmen
Saturday’s game between Navy’s Ken Niumatalolo and Georgia Southern’s Jeff Monken matches head coaches who used to be allies. From 2002-07, both were on the staff of Paul Johnson at Navy.
So call Saturday what you will: The Prot?g? Bowl, the Clash of the Pupils, the Disciple Dispute.
In his first season at 1-AA Southern, Monken has a different challenge than that faced by Niumatalolo in his opening year at Navy (2008). While Niumatalolo was using the same triple-option offense as his predecessor, Monken is teaching it from scratch.
“It takes time. It’s a process,” Monken said via teleconference. “It usually takes a season or two to get all the ins and outs where all the guys know it forward and backward.”
Monken was hired to restore Georgia Southern’s tradition of excellence and its triple-option offense. The school has won a record six 1-AA titles, the last two coming under Johnson in 1999 and 2000.
When Johnson left for Navy in 2001, his assistant, Mike Sewak, took over and went 35-14, guiding the Eagles to four playoff appearances. But Southern wasn’t satisfied, so it fired Sewak and tasked its new coach to run a modern offense.
But after two coaches combined to go 21-23, Southern decided to go back to the future, hiring Monken off Johnson’s staff at Georgia Tech.
“It’s not a magic wand,” Monken said before preseason practice. “It’s not a magic offense where you say, ‘We’re running this offense and now we’re going to rush for all these yards and score all these points.’ You’ve still got to execute it better than the other team can execute their defense.”
Helping ease Southern’s transition to the option is junior quarterback Jaybo Shaw, a transfer from Georgia Tech, who guided an offense that produced 540 yards Saturday in a 48-3 win over Savannah State.
Monken, however, was far from satisfied.
“I don’t think the score was indicative of how poorly we played. We made a lot of mistakes,” Monken said. “We’ve got to get a whole lot better if we’re going to win any more games.”
Navy (0-1), college football’s foremost practitioner of the triple-option, will be another task altogether. The Mids lost their opener to Maryland, 17-14, despite rushing for 412 yards and dominating possession, holding the ball for 39 minutes, 26 seconds.
“They are much more efficient at [the option] than we are,” Monken said. “They’ve been doing it a lot longer. Those kids in that program have not ever done anything else on offense, but that offense.”
