While USF rested Saturday, Navy's unbeaten season sank and Charlotte scared Memphis

USF’s open date this week gave Green, Gold, and Bold the chance to check out other teams in the American Athletic Conference – particularly Navy, which entered a showdown with Notre Dame with a 6-0 record.

Instead of a showdown, though, it was a beatdown. The Irish won  51-14 in a game that wasn’t as close as the score indicated. Navy fumbled seven times and lost five of them, and quarterback Blake Horvath threw an interception.

Is Notre Dame that good?

Maybe.

Is Navy not as good as its record suggested, or was it just a bad day at the office?

I think it’s probably the latter.

The Midshipmen play USF in Tampa on November 9, and off of what we’ve seen so far, the Bulls will have trouble containing Horvath. He’s a true dual-threat quarterback; he rushed for 129 yards and a touchdown against the Irish.

But it also looks like USF can score on Navy, so we could have a shootout for the Bulls’ homecoming game.

The most eyebrow-raising result of the day was Charlotte’s near miss at Memphis. The Bulls play at Charlotte the week after the Navy game, and, probably like most of you, I had that in the “safe win” column before the season began.

That may have been a miscalculation.

The 49ers were down 14 points entering the fourth quarter but rallied and took the lead with 1:20 to play. They couldn’t stop Memphis quarterback Seth Henigan, though. His TD pass with 31 seconds left put the Tigers back in front, and they tacked on a safety to close out the game with a 33-28 win.

This is the same Charlotte team that lost 51-17 last week to Navy and 52-14 to Indiana, so maybe we file this result under “fluke” too. From what I saw of the 49ers' effort against Memphis, though, they look like they could be a handful for USF.

The Bulls’ opponent next Friday night, Florida Atlantic, didn’t play Saturday, but the Owls have lost three of their last four games. They also surrendered 127 points in those losses, including a 48-14 loss to UConn, so this looks like another game where the Bulls can put up points.

We still don’t know whether quarterback Byrum Brown will play against the Owls. The left leg injury he suffered at Tulane left him on crutches, but he seemed to be walking well in this video tweet promoting a bus trip for fans to the FAU game, so there is that.