Carrying the Load, Lifting the Mood

Navy Fullback Kettani Has Been Abusing Defenses and Amusing His Teammates

Eric Kettani is a typical Navy fullback, made up of equal parts physical talent, extreme toughness and outsize personality.

Just watch him run: Kettani, a senior, rushed for a career-high 133 yards on Sept. 20 against Rutgers, and then surpassed it on Saturday with 175 yards against Wake Forest. Just look at his arms: There are clusters of scabs around his elbows, the result of being slammed and dragged across the turf. And just listen to him talk: He rattles off animal facts and claims to have the best body on the team.

"It's not your traditional fullback position, so you have to have a little bit of flair about you," said Chris Culton, who coached Navy's fullbacks for five seasons before switching to the offensive line this fall. "You're going to get pounded. It's a physical toll, so you have to be a little left of center, a little crazy to deal with it."

Navy's triple-option offense is centered around the fullback, and Kettani is following the path set by recent standouts Kyle Eckel and Adam Ballard, both of whom finished their careers ranked among the program's top 10 career rushers. There's a certain amount of pressure that comes with being a fullback, particularly one who is considered to be more physically gifted than his predecessors.

In the week leading up to the Rutgers game, Coach Ken Niumatalolo said Kettani has the potential to be as good a fullback as Navy ever has had, but that he hasn't reached it and that the team needs him to be more productive. At the time, Kettani had run for a total of 127 yards on 21 carries and was nursing a strained left hip that caused him to miss nearly all of the Duke game on Sept. 13.

"I was pleased, but then I was taken aback," said Kettani, who led the Midshipmen in rushing last season with 880 yards. "It's an honor to have him telling the newspaper that I'm one of the best fullbacks he's seen in the Navy program -- that's saying a lot. But I also have to live up to my potential. The last two games, I believe I've stepped up."

Eckel, who was released last week by the New England Patriots, is the standard by which all Navy triple-option fullbacks are measured. He is the last Midshipmen to break 1,000 yards rushing in a season -- he did so in 2003 and 2004 -- and he is the only non-quarterback to reach that mark since Napoleon McCallum in 1985.

But more than that, Eckel had a swagger. He may have been "disheveled in appearance," as Culton affectionately put it, but he also "showed up on game day, big-time." He had charisma; the brigade chanted "Eckel" or "Diesel," his nickname, as he plowed over and through defenses. He also had an "it" factor, which Culton described as "being comfortable with contact, and then having an understanding of where you fit in the scheme."

"Your job is not just to carry the football," Culton said. "Your job is to make some people take you, and sell the run. When you figure out where you fit in the offense, that's when stuff really starts clicking. And the better [the fullback] gets, the better we get."

The 6-foot-1 Kettani, who is slightly taller and looks leaner than the broad-shouldered Eckel, is starting to do that. He came to Annapolis straight from Lake Catholic High School in Ohio, where he was a standout running back and linebacker, and spent his first three years at Navy splitting carries with Ballard and Matt Hall. This is his first season as the full-time starter; Eckel was Navy's last full-time starter at fullback.

His past two performances have been especially impressive because of the way he responded when the Midshipmen turned to him down the stretch. He picked up 103 yards and scored a touchdown in the second half as Navy rallied to beat Rutgers, and he had 84 yards, including a timely 57-yard gain, in the second half as Navy held off Wake Forest.

"He shows up on game day. He comes out, and he's a hoss," quarterback Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada said. "He's hard to take down. He runs really hard. He's smart, and he sees the field. He has a good feel for what the defense is going to do, and I think that's big. He uses his head -- instead of all of his fat."