East Carolina Pirates @ Navy Midshipmen Football Recap

East Carolina 38, Navy 35

A red-hot quarterback produced a memorable performance this past weekend in the state of Maryland, but the thing most onlookers will remember from a thoroughly entertaining afternoon of football is that the rules of football are highly questionable.

Quarterback Dominique Davis lit up the sky, setting two NCAA passing records in the process. However, those achievements took a backseat to a controversial call which helped keep Navy off the scoreboard in the final minute of regulation, as East Carolina outlasted Navy by three points in Annapolis on Saturday evening.

When the two teams went to the locker room for halftime, Davis was 26 of 26 for 251 yards, as the Pirates held to a 17-7 halftime lead. Davis’s 26 straight completions broke the record for consecutive completions in a game, previously set by Tennessee’s Tee Martin in 1998 when he completed 23 straight against South Carolina. Davis had also completed his final ten pass attempts against Memphis last week, so his first half performance against the Midshipmen gave him 36 straight pass completions, shattering Aaron Rodgers’s record of 26 which he set at Cal in 2004. When the game was over, Davis was 40-45 for 372 yards and two touchdowns.

The two teams traded scores throughout the third quarter and well into the fourth quarter Navy hit on a 59-yard Trey Miller to Brandon Turner pass to make it 31-28. After Navy took a lead, East Carolina answered with an impressive 15-play, 77 yard drive that ate 5:37 off the clock. Reggie Bullock’s three-yard touchdown run gave the Pirates a 38-35 lead with just 2:14 left.

Navy quickly moved from its own 28 to East Carolina’s 33-yard line. On second down, Miller hit Matt Aiken on a long pass at the one yard line. Aiken appeared to land, spin around, and extend the ball across the goal line, at which point he dropped the ball when landing on the ground. Despite what appeared to be control of the ball, the pass was ruled incomplete and not overturned after replay. The larger reason why the play was ruled incomplete is that college football – similar to the NFL – demands that a process of a catch be completed all the way through. Even though Aiken did break the plane of the goal line with the ball in his hands, his eventual loss of ball control – before he fully and finally stopped moving – was what gave the replay booth the evidence it needed to deny Navy a touchdown. The argument could be made that the call was bad, but the better assessment of the play is that it spotlighted a deficiently written rule in the college football rulebook. Two plays later, Jon Teague clanged a 42-yard field goal attempt off the right upright as time expired, and Navy suffered another heartbreaking loss.

The Midshipmen piled up 284 rushing yards, with a surprising 126 passing yards from Miller. Gee Gee Greene led Navy rushers with 92 yards. Now at a disappointing 2-5, Navy will travel to play rival Notre Dame (4-3) next Saturday.

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