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Perhaps the most physically talented of the football teams the Farmers played in 1911 was their fifth game, against the Naval Academy. The Navy was consistently among the best teams in the southeast, constantly churning out wins. Though forbidden then by faculty from playing any games off of home grounds except for the venerated Army-Navy game*, the Midshipmen (often contracted to "Middies") remained one of the biggest draws of football along the Atlantic due to the exceptionally strong teams they consistently put out. When NC A&M played Navy in 1911, it had been 2 full years since their most recent loss, back on October 30th, 1909 against Princeton; it would be another year before that streak was broken.

Under the leadership of new coach Douglas Howard -- a former Tar himself -- the Middies' pattern of domination had largely been maintained: the Annapolis boys won their first three games by a combined margin of 64-5, being scored upon only in their season opener against Johns Hopkins, which they won 27-5; they also defeated St. Johns of Maryland and Washington & Jefferson by 21- and 16-to-nothing, respectively. Interestingly, Johns Hopkins was the first team to score on the Tars since 1909; they went through all of 1910 unscored upon.

Their subsequent two games were both scoreless ties, one expectedly coming at the hands of a strong Princeton team, but the second, against Western Reserve, coming as something of a surprise. Around the country, it was seen as a massive blow to the prowess of the Sailors. However, some sports writers noted the bruised leg of Dalton, who had been largely unable to practice due to his injury, and dismissed the loss because of it.

The Aggies left for Annapolis on Thursday night. The Farmers stayed the night somewhere outside of Annapolis and arrived in the city before noon on Saturday; though not explicitly stated, this was likely to get one final practice in with some privacy before venturing to enemy territory (The Raleigh Daily Times, November 3rd, 1911, p. 2; The (Annapolis) Evening Capital, November 4th, 1911, p. 4). Sadly, papers did not give any indication as to what the team did to practice in the intervening week since their last game.

The papers did, however, make one important remark during their departure: the faculty had constructed a visual way to display the game to the students who stayed in Raleigh. Using a play-by-play relayed via telegraph to Pullen Hall, students could 'watch' the game: "a board has been arranged to correspond to a full size gridiron, [and] upon this board the plays will be placed as they are received over wire, in order that every one may understand the plays will be called off as they are received."** Attendance was 50 cents (about $15 in 2019) to cover the cost of the special cable (The Raleigh Daily Times, November 3rd, 1911, p. 2). This appears to be the first known time an NC State away game was relayed as a visual play-by-play to students.

Navy, on the other hand, had been practicing fairly rigorously after their shocking non-win against Western Reserve. On the Thursday before the game, the team was run through "the stiffest kind of scrimmage," devoted almost entirely to offensive work (The (Baltimore) Sun, November 3rd, 1911, p. 10). The Friday before the game the team was held to lighter work, focusing on only signals and formation drills. Local reports warned of the speediness of the A&M team in contrast to the heavier Sailors, though they also noted that the other teams they had played primarily had lighter teams (The (Baltimore) Sun, November 4th, 1911, p. 12). Notably, Dalton had also been practicing for the week (The (Baltimore) Evening Sun, November 4th, 1911, p. 8).

* Navy had not played a game away from home aside from the Army-Navy game since their 1904 game against Virginia, and would not again until their 1914 game against Penn.

** Though not explicitly stated, this device sounds exactly like an early version of a device known as a "grid-o-graph" or "grid-graph" which was especially popular from the 1920s to 1930s, when it was largely replaced by radio broadcasts. Here is a description of a mechanical grid-graph (A&M's likely was), as described on Duck Downs:

"The contraption on the stage was a miniature football field, slightly inclined at the back for ease of visibility to the crowd, made of plywood. Above the field was suspended a small football, connected to a series of pulleys and strings that allowed an operator to move the ball back and forth. Western Union ran a telegraph line from the Broadway station to the Heilig, where McKevitt would set up his portable “ticker” backstage. McKevitt would translate the dots and dashes received from the remote game transmitter into English, relay them to the guy with a megaphone, who would in turn announce the play by play results to the Heilig’s audience, while the boy running the pulleys would move the ball back and forth across the field, and another would track the score on a small scoreboard.

The game kicked off at 2:30 with weather that was, aside from a slightly-overcast sky, descibed as ideal (The (Annapolis) Evening Capital, November 4th, 1911, p. 4). The crowd, which was described as large, ranged from somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 spectators, depending on the source. And despite the fairly large final score margin, the game was nip and tuck throughout. Red and White called it "the most glorious defeat A. & M. has ever suffered"; "Taking modern football into account," noted one widely-circulated report of the game, "the lads from the Tar Heel State clearly outplayed the sailor boys in the early stages of the contest," noting the visitors led 6-5 at the half.

The beginning of the game was described as listless and slow, with neither team progressing much, though Dalton for Navy was slowly gaining 5-to-15 yards per punt against Cool, who was kicking for the Aggies. About halfway through the first 10-minute quarter*, Hartsell cleanly recovered a punt at the Red and White's own 20-yard line. On the first play of the drive, however, McIver made a bad pass to Stafford which was intercepted by either Dalton (Red and White) or Elmer (Washington Post), who ran to the 15-yard line before he was tackled. Either Dalton (most sources) or McReavy (Washington Post) covered most of the remaining 15 yards in just two plays. On the third play, Dalton crossed the goal line from just 3 yards out for the first touchdown of the day. Brown missed "an easy try for goal" to put Navy on top 5-0 near the end of the first quarter.

The second quarter opened up with A&M in possession of the ball on either their own 30 yard line (Red and White and Washington Post) or midfield (most other summaries) with a full head of steam. The Farmers then "began to cut loose with their fancy plays" and made "a brilliant display of open tactics." A forward pass from Stafford to either Seifert (Red and White and Washington Post) or Hartsell (most other sources) opened the drive up with a 25-to-30-yard gain. Here, accounts of the game differ slightly: probably, a delayed pass from Stafford to either Seifert or Hartsell which yielded 15-to-20 yards was surrounded on either side by a peppering of marginally-successful runs by Anthony and Hartsell, which put the ball just 1 yard shy of the Navy's goal. Hartsell did the honors of crossing Navy's goal line, going through RG Howe, and Hurtt (most sources) or Hartsell (Washington Post) made the goal kick, putting the Farmers up 6 to 5. In total, the drive went 80 yards in as few as 6 plays.

That the Farmers ever held a lead at all was an accomplishment to be proud of; this marked the first time Navy had trailed in a game since 1909. It was also the first true, non-fluke of a touchdown against them in that time, as the score yielded in the Johns Hopkins' game came as a result of a fumbled ball rolling over the Navy's goal line on a wet and dreary day (The (Baltimore) Sun, October 8th, 1911, Part 2, p. 2). Post game reports noted that this score "gave the Navy the scare of their lives" and that it was especially shocking because "the Aggies... are generally classed some three or four pegs below the Blue and Gold."

During the remainder of the quarter, the Farmers "played all over the Middies," though Red and White noted that "There was some good playing by both sides." Evidently, the close of the quarter also saw A&M get a crucial penalty, with a referee calling back a "pretty pass" from Stafford to Seifert because it went over 20 yards -- at that time, it was a penalty to throw a pass more than 15 yards. A&M fans maintained that, had the pass stood, they would have scored again, as the drive would have started at Navy's 25-yard line.

By all accounts, the tide of the game changed dramatically after halftime. Though there was no report of any specific planned activities, around that time there was another event taking place to capture the interest of the spectators: naval aviator Lt. John H. Rodgers was flying his Wright model biplane. He took off from a field just across the shore from Worden Field just after the start of the second half and piloted his plane up and down the harbor for a full 20 minutes before circling the playing grounds several times and landing on the parade ground alongside the gridiron. Reports say this spectacle "practically killed the interest" of the crowd (The (Baltimore) Sun, November 5th, 1911, Part 1, p. 10). This spectacle is more than just passingly interesting: it is tied for the laurels of being the earliest known plane flyover at a football game with the Princeton-Harvard game of the same day. The New Jersey based game kicked off at 2 PM, a half hour sooner, so theirs may have been the very first, but it's impossible to say definitively (Newark Evening Star, November 4th, 1911, p. 1; How Football Became Football, Timothy P. Brown, pp. 227-228).

I'd like to think that this spectacle distracted the North Carolinians, who were less likely to have seen many flights in such an intimate setting, more than the Middies, who had seen Rodgers' flights since early September, and that this caused the poor playing of the North Carolinians, rather than the large number of substitutions the Navy made, or the claim by the Washington Post's reporter that the Tars had identified several (though not all) of A&M's passing formations.

Alternatively, what really saved the day for the Navy boys was "that old-time Navy spirit." Dalton opened the second half by returning a kick off 40 yards, and after a series of back-and-forth punts, he implemented a successful onside kick; that, coupled with the bull rush of McReavy, Dalton, and Rhodes brought the ball to the Red and White 5-yard line, from which Dalton punched it over for a touchdown. Most reports agree that Dalton also made the goal kick, however The Sun wrote that Brown made the kick. The scoring drive started after just two minutes of play in the third quarter.

Following the game's third touchdown, the Navy made some substitutions: Nichols took the place of McReavy at right halfback, and Leonard replaced Rhodes at fullback. Though younger players, both brought "greater vim and dash" and routinely pulled off runs of up to 30 yards, frequently netting 10-to-25 yards, for the remainder of the game. Later in the third period, on the heels of the fresh players (as well as the seemingly unstoppable Dalton, who evidently shifted at some point to one of the ends), Navy had the chance to score again: somewhere between 1- and 1/2-a-yard from the A&M goal line, the Middies fumbled; Washington Post notes that Sowell recovered the ball, probably short of the line to gain, resulting in a turnover on downs, though they mistakenly reported that his actions resulted in another touchdown. Additionally, at some point in the quarter, Dalton attempted a field goal from placement, though his attempt was unsuccessful.

Not much of the fourth quarter was reported on anywhere; Red and White notes that Dalton scored his third touchdown of the day, netting most of the yardage on their scoring drive from a forward pass from Sowell to Hamilton disguised as a fake place kick play before a series of rushes by Nichols and Dalton before the latter finally crossed the A&M goal line. All sources agree that Dalton made the final goal kick of the day, giving Navy a 17-6 lead. The Farmers reportedly tried the forward pass repeatedly, but good interference by the Navy thwarted them, though they did continue to find success using "fake interference" and delayed pass plays.

As alluded to earlier, though NC A&M lost, the players and the general public were proud of the success they found during the early portion of the game. Stars for the Farmers were reported to be Floyd, Hartsell, Seifert, and Dunn, though "Every man on the team played brilliantly." The Sun said that "the Aggies gave the finest exploitation of open football that has been seen here [in Annapolis] this season, noting that the team's usage of the forward pass and varied formations was "cleverly executed" and generally successful.

Though the victors, most of the press on Navy was critical. True, Red and White lionized Dalton, whose role in the game is hard to miss just upon reading the summaries, as well as Nichols, however the general takeaway for most fans was that "the middies [sic] were entirely off color" and that "the middies [sic] did not show anything that would prove a boon to their chances for a victory in the annual contest with the West Point cadets" (Red and White, Vol. XIII No. 3 (November 1911), pp. 217-218; The (Baltimore) Sun, November 5th, 1911, Part 2, p. 2; News and Observer, November 5th, 1911, p. 1; Greensboro Daily News, November 5th, 1911, p. 1; The Washington Post, November 5th, 1911, Sporting Section, p. 2; The Washington Herald, November 5th, 1911, Sporting Section, p. 1; Charlotte Daily Observer, November 5th, 1911, p. 10; Army and Navy Register, November 11th, 1911, p. 5).

The skeptics among the reporters were quickly proven wrong: Navy finished the season strong, following up their victory over the Red and White with a 32-0 blanking of West Virginia before tying Penn State 0-0. The vaunted Army game yielded a 3-0 result in favor of the seamen, giving the Navy an undefeated record of 6-0-3 and extending their undefeated streak to 20 games.

* All reports of the game which gave a time noted that the quarters were all 10 minutes, except The (Baltimore) Sun, which wrote that the periods were 12 minutes each.