Following a 23-3 loss to rival Air Force on Saturday, Navy fired offensive coordinator Ivin Jasper. The Midshipmen have scored only 23 points in their past five games dating to last year and have gone just 3-9 since 2019's stirring 11-win campaign. In some way, you can't blame them for pushing the panic button.
The only problem: head coach Ken Niumatalolo had nothing to do with the decision. It was done entirely by athletic director Chet Gladchuk. Niumatalolo disagreed with the call and convinced Gladchuk to bring Jasper back as quarterbacks' coach -- a role he has served in Annapolis since 2002 -- on Monday.
Safe to say, firing an assistant coach without the head coach's approval seems like a shaky way to go about your business. But while the soap opera got messy, you can't necessarily blame Gladchuk for panicking. Despite last year's 3-7 campaign, and despite the bar being set pretty low because of it, Navy has underachieved dramatically thus far in 2021. The Midshipmen fell 39 points short of the closing line in Week 1's big loss to Marshall, then fell another 14 points short of the line against Air Force. That's 53 combined points, the worst in FBS through two games.
What does it mean to defy the sportsbooks -- in this case, for the worse -- by this much early on?
In most cases, the books will adapt. Between 1978 and 2020, 25 teams managed to miss the mark by even more than Navy has this year; 16 of them overachieved against the spread, on average, the rest of the year.
Some teams, like 1997 Texas (minus-77.5 points vs. the spread through two games, -8.3 points per game the rest of the year, 4-7 finish), 2008 Washington State (-68, -9.0, 2-11), 2012 Houston (-56, -6.1, 5-7), 2001 Cal (-54, -6.3, 1-10) and 1980 Cal (-53.5, -5.2, 3-8) managed to continue stepping on rakes the rest of the way. Others, like 2004 Toledo (-76.5, +4.4, 9-4), 2008 Rutgers (-58.5, +11.5, 9-4) and 1992 South Carolina (-55, +8.7, 5-6) rebounded a bit. But for the most part, the books adjusted accurately to the unfavorable new data.
Navy probably isn't going to be a particularly good team the rest of the way, in other words, but the Midshipmen probably aren't going to be historically bad either.
Navy obviously isn't 2021's only early underachiever. In all, 14 teams fell at least 30 points short of their closing lines in their first two games of the season, so the Midshipmen have company.
Worst underachievement vs. closing line through two weeks, 2021
Navy: 53 points
Ohio: 52.5
Georgia State: 51.5
Georgia Southern: 47.5
Washington: 43
Iowa State: 36.5
Louisiana: 34.5
Oklahoma State: 32.5
Vanderbilt: 31.5
Rice, Washington State: 31
Colorado State, UConn, Northwestern: 30.5
The bar was set in all sorts of different places for the teams on this list. Iowa State, Louisiana and Washington were all preseason top-25 teams, and Oklahoma State started out 26th. (Ohio was considered a preseason MAC contender but went through a surprise coaching search upon Frank Solich's mid-July retirement and doesn't seem to have adjusted well out of the gate.)
Meanwhile, very little was expected of teams like Vanderbilt, UConn and Colorado State, and very little should have been expected of a Northwestern team that had to replace more of last year's production than anyone else in FBS.
What do these early struggles mean for these teams moving forward?
On average, about eight teams per year hit the "30 or more points of underachievement through two games" benchmark -- 346 in all since 1978.
Thirty of them (8.7%) still managed a win percentage of .750 or higher, equivalent to a 9-3 record or better. That includes a pair of national champions (1997 Nebraska, 2016 Clemson), plus quite a few teams that achieved high heights -- 1988 and 1989 Florida State, 1996 Nebraska, 1998 Florida State, 2001 Nebraska, 2012 Oregon, 2014 Florida State, 2020 Texas A&M and others.
Applying that percentage to the 2021 batch, an average of 1.3 teams would expect to hit this mark. Considering there are four preseason top-26 teams among the 14, that means at least a couple probably aren't going to rebound and finish ranked.
Another 87 of the 346 big underachievers (25.1%) finished with a win percentage of .500 (equivalent to 6-6) or better. That was disappointing compared to expectations for some teams (1985 Tennessee, 1997 Notre Dame, 1999 Arizona, 2016 Georgia) but just fine for others. That means that for this year's 14 underachievers, about 3.5 on average will fall in this range, and 4.8 would still end up bowl eligible. If you had asked me before the season, I'd have guessed about eight of them would.
A whopping 147 of the big underachievers (42.5%) finished with a win percentage greater than or equal to .250 (3-9) and under .500. Some managed to show some flashes of life. Matt Campbell's first Iowa State team, for instance (2016), underachieved by 38 points against the line in the first two games but overachieved by 9.2 points per game thereafter, finishing just 3-9 but setting the table for future improvement. Others, like a 2016 Arizona team that was coming off of 17 wins in two seasons, continued to underachieve after the first two games and stumbled to 3-9. Of this year's underachievers, about six, on average, will fall into this pile.
That leaves 89 teams (25.7%) finishing with a win percentage under .250. Nine, including 2020 Kansas, 2013 Miami (Ohio) and 2005 Temple, went winless.
About 3.6 of this year's underachievers would fall into this batch on average. Since UConn (which also fell 14 points short of the spread in its third game this past week) and Vanderbilt in particular were likely to land here all along, they probably lay claim to two of those spots. Who else might join them?
What about the other side of the coin? Who has exceeded the books' expectations so far, and what might that mean moving forward?
Greatest overachievement vs. closing line through two weeks, 2021:
Rutgers: 40 points
Iowa: 38.5
Utah State: 37.5
Georgia: 36
Army: 32.5
Michigan: 31
Marshall, Virginia: 30
Only eight teams have exceeded expectations by 30+ points thus far. They join a cast of 343 other teams that have done so since 1978.
This can mean great things. On nine occasions, it was a portend of a national title run; 1979 Alabama (+37.5), 1980 Georgia (+44), 1984 BYU (+44), 1987 Miami (+58.5), 1991 Washington (+41.5), 1995 Nebraska (+36.5), 1997 Michigan (+31.5), 2003 LSU (+42) and 2013 Florida State (+37.5) all won or shared the title after defying the books early on. (At a whopping +59, you can throw 2017 UCF onto that list, too, if you're feeling salty.) Quite a few other early overachievers, from 1994 Penn State to 2010 Oregon, came about as close as possible to a title without actually scoring a ring. It's been harder for national champions to surprise as of late, with Nick Saban's Alabama scooping up half the national titles of the past 12 years.
At the least, this could say something about Georgia's early 2021 dominance. Kirby Smart's Bulldogs began the year by taking down Clemson and overachieving by 9.5 points against the spread. Then, on Saturday, they might have made an even bigger statement. Despite missing starting quarterback JT Daniels and leaning on last year's emergency starter Stetson Bennett, they beat a rock solid UAB team 56-7, defying the closing line by 26.5 points. Their defense, first in defensive SP+ the past two years but somehow even better than usual at the moment, has allowed just 10 points in two games. The offense certainly didn't do much against Clemson but showed out against a typically strong UAB defense and still hasn't placed its first-choice lineup on the field.
Of course, other early-season overachievers ended up falling flat. The 2020 Wisconsin Badgers looked fantastic at the start (+48.5) but quickly succumbed to depth and COVID issues. In 2019, Maryland beat Howard and Syracuse by a combined 142-20 margin, then incredibly lost nine of 10, underachieving by 14 points per game against the spread. Of the 343 30-points-or-more overachievers referenced above, 59 ended up underachieving by at least five points per game against the spread for the rest of the way.
Still, if you're a fan of a Rutgers or Virginia, things are looking encouraging. Let's break things into the same categories as we did with the underachievers.
Of these 343 teams, 112 (32.7%) ended up with at least a .750 win percentage. On average, then, we could expect about 2.6 of the above teams to go at least 9-3. Even if Georgia and Iowa claim two of those spots, there might be room for another team or two in the front car of this train.
Another 154 teams (44.9%) finished at least .500. That means another 3.6 of the above teams -- and 6.2 in all -- would expect to bowl on average. (For what it's worth, SP+ projects an average of at least 6.5 wins for seven of the eight teams. Only Rutgers, at 5.4 wins, falls below the .500 mark, but the Scarlet Knights have quickly risen from a preseason projection of 4.2.)
Only 73 of the 343 teams (21.3%) finished with a win percentage between .250 and .499, while just four (1.2%) were below .250. There's still time for something to go 2019 Maryland-level wrong for one of these Great Eight, but the odds aren't very high.
We can obviously only learn so much about a team one-sixth of the way through its schedule. There's a reason why SP+ ratings are still drawn about 85% from preseason projections. But defying the numbers even this early can be telling more often than not. Whether that means Georgia will finally win its first national title in 41 years, or Navy's athletic director will be firing even more coaches in the coming months, remains to be seen.