CHARLOTTE — The Charlotte 49ers’ high hopes for their first-ever American Athletic Conference game at Jerry Richardson Stadium were dashed Saturday afternoon as Navy came away with a 14-0 victory.
The shutout loss to the Midshipmen (3-3, 2-2 AAC) marks the Niners’ (1-5, 0-2 AAC) first shutout loss since a 6-0 loss to Old Dominion in 2017.
“This is getting all too repetitive standing up here; we’ve lost five games in a row,” Charlotte coach Biff Poggi said after the game. “The elephant in the room is the offense. We thought we would try switching the quarterbacks around and that turned out to not be great. We held the ball too long and we missed open receivers. In the running game, we rushed for only 123 yards. Right now, we’re not functioning efficiently.”
While both teams finished with 265 total yards, Navy was able to put points on the board in the second half.
Early in the third quarter, Navy ended the 0-0 stalemate with a 69-yard touchdown pass from Braxton Woodson to slotback Eli Heidenreich to make it a 7-0 game.
The Niners had one of their biggest plays of the game early in the fourth quarter as quarterback Trexler Ivey threw a 34-yard pass to wide receiver Jairus Mack. However, Charlotte immediately turned the ball back over to Navy when Ivey fumbled on the next play.
The Midshipmen responded with a 62-yard touchdown rush up the middle from fullback Alex Tecza to go up 14-0.
Although Charlotte topped Navy in time of possession, the Niners failed to capitalize on both sides of the ball in the second half of play.
“It’s all accountability — not being selfish and playing for the guy next to you,” Charlotte linebacker Nikhai Hill-Green said. “I can’t really speak to the offensive side because I don’t know the X’s and O’s, but it’s about exhausting all your effort. I don’t know if we exhausted all our effort today, but I know Navy did. I saw it. I saw them giving it all they had.”
On Charlotte’s next drive, Ivey tossed a 51-yard pass to Duane Thomas Jr. — easily the Niners’ most explosive play of the contest — but the 49ers’ drive stalled at the Navy 6 on an incompletion on 4th-and-1.
Ivey finished with 142 passing yards on 11-of-27 passing.
After the game, Poggi admitted Charlotte is still searching for the type of quarterback play that will elevate his team.
Senior dual-threat quarterback Jalon Jones — who has completed 61.1% of the passes for 420 yards, two touchdowns and three interceptions this season — took snaps at wide receiver Saturday, but he didn’t record a reception.
Jones also rushed the ball twice for 4 yards.
“As I’ve said all along, this all comes back on me,” Poggi said. “And right now, I’m running out of ideas, but we’ll go back and figure it out. We have another quarterback we’ve talked about trying who is a combination of Trexler and Jalon, and that is Micah Bowens, who transferred in from Oklahoma. We’ll talk about that as a staff tomorrow.”
Charlotte did have some success running the ball, with redshirt junior running back Shadrick Byrd carrying 20 times for 92 yards. But without a competent passing game, teams can easily focus on stopping the run.
Poggi revealed after the game that running back Durell Robinson is likely done for the season with an injury, leaving Byrd and Terron Kellman to carry the load going forward.
The Niners next travel to Greenville for an AAC against in-state for East Carolina (1-5, 0-2 AAC).
