What To Watch: Week 10

The C-USA and Mountain West are heating up!

Air Force at Army, 11:30 a.m., CBS

What’s better than a pre-Noon service academy matchup on CBS? Not much, especially without a whole lot else going on in the early slate.

To make things even better, we have two legitimately good option attacks here – in fact, this should be one of the better service academy matchups purely from a football perspective in recent years. Plus, the winner is almost certainly taking home the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy, because Navy absolutely stinks this season.

Air Force is hovering around a 42 percent success rate for the season and actually manages to lead the MWC in passing down success rate at just a hair under 34, which is a good indicator of offensive quality for an option squad. If they can get first downs in passing spots, it either means they’re running the ball really well, or they have a playmaking quarterback.

In this case, it’s both. Haaziq Daniels is the best of the academy quarterbacks this season, and Air Force has actually been somewhat willing to throw the ball this season, tasking him with 56 attempts in eight games. Slotback Micah Davis is my favorite part of this offense, but it’s all good.

Army’s offense, somehow, is even better. This is one of the most talented ball carrier stables I’ve seen within an option offense, from slotback Tyrell Robinson to fullbacks Tyheir Tyler and Jakobi Buchanan. Quarterback Christian Anderson has been dinged up for weeks but seems set to return this week if head coach Jeff Monken is to be believed.

“I will tell you that all of our quarterbacks are practicing,” Army coach Jeff Monken said. “They are all out there as they were two weeks ago before we played Wake Forest, without any restrictions. We’ll see how it goes from there.”

If he can’t play, Jabari Laws filled in well against Wake Forest and seems to be the best passing QB on the roster. Either way, this should be one of the highest-scoring option games we’ve seen in quite some time, and that sounds to me like a great way to spend the early afternoon.