Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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38 NOV. 8, 2025 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED GAME PREVIEW: NAVY BY TYLER HORKA N avy's been here before. Just last year. And it didn't go well. That's an understatement. The Midshipmen were 6-0 last year when they took on 6-1 Notre Dame at MetLife Stadium in New Jer- sey. The Fighting Irish were around a two-touchdown favorite, but the na- tional rhetoric was Navy could easily upset them and put a late-October end to their College Football Playoff hopes. Anyone who thought it possible wouldn't admit they ever did a year later, though. Not if they wanted to pro- tect the sanctity of their college football predictions, anyway. Notre Dame won, 51-14. It was over by halftime. Sure, the Midshipmen played right into the Irish's hands — literally — by turning the ball over 6 times. Many of those were the definition of give- aways; Notre Dame didn't have to do much to force them, just be in the right place at the right time. But outside of linebacker Jaylen Sneed literally falling on the ball in the end zone, the Irish still had to take their gifts and turn them into points. And they did that in waves, converting 9 of 14 third and fourth downs, racking up 466 total yards and 6.6 yards per rush, so on and so forth. It was a thorough beating, turnovers aside. So, can it go the same way just over a year later under eerily similar cir- cumstances? Notre Dame is once again one loss away from not having any shot of qualifying for the CFP. And Navy is once again on its way to a double- digit-win season led by the very same quarterback in Blake Horvath who many prognosticators thought could give the Irish defense a tough time in East Ruth- erford, N.J., last year. And to a degree, he did; Horvath led everyone in the game with 129 rushing yards. That was a game featuring Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price, obviously, so that was no small feat. The sting of defeat, though, and es- sentially giving the game away over- rode any positive emotion anyone in the Navy locker room could ever glean from that game. "Sometimes you want something so bad you play outside yourself, and I think we did that today," Navy head coach Brian Newberry said in his post- game press conference. "When you look at almost every sin- gle turnover or fumble, it was some- thing we did," Horvath said. "They al- most didn't touch the ball. That is the most frustrating piece from our point. We wanted it really bad, and we bit our- selves." All that said, Notre Dame didn't take Navy for granted then and the Irish surely aren't doing that now. During BEEN THERE, LOST THAT The Midshipmen went into their game against Notre Dame last year with similar expectations as this year, and were defeated soundly Senior quarterback Blake Horvath accounted for 19 total touchdowns in the Midshipmen's first seven games of the season. PHOTO COURTESY NAVY ATHLETICS