North Texas Outlasts Navy 49-39 With Touchdowns in All Three Phases

Navy did almost everything it wanted on Saturday. The Midshipmen ran 77 plays, piled up 30 first downs and 506 yards, and kept the ball for 37 minutes and 31 seconds. On Homecoming, in front of 33,166 fans, that is usually how Navy wins.

The problem is that North Texas did not need the ball. It needed about four seconds at a time.

North Texas scored on offense, defense and special teams and beat Navy 49-39 at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis. It was the Mean Green's fourth straight win, and it snapped Navy's eight-game home winning streak. North Texas moved to 5-2 and 3-0 in the American. Navy fell to 2-5 and 1-4.

Fast start, then a long chase

North Texas never trailed, and it made that clear early. Tayven Jackson found Justin Stevenson for a 45-yard touchdown on the opening drive, a four-play march that took 1:33. Navy answered with an 11-play drive that ate 5:50 and ended in a 31-yard Nolan Bartley field goal. Jackson then hit Kyle Koch for a 5-yard score with 26 seconds left in the first quarter, and it was 14-3.

That was the shape of the whole night. Navy would grind out a long drive, and North Texas would answer in a hurry. Jackson Gutierrez ran 18 yards for a touchdown to make it 14-10. Five plays and 1:17 later, Jahiem White scored from 3 yards out.

The plays that decided it

Navy outgained North Texas by 29 yards and still lost by 10. Two plays explain the math.

The first came with 4:22 left in the second quarter. North Texas lined up for a Navy punt with a trick inspired by the 2014 St. Louis Rams. The Mean Green waited to send a returner deep, Lathan Latiolais played decoy, and Dalton Carnes found a clear path down the sideline for a 76-yard touchdown. According to UNT, it was the program's first punt return touchdown since the famous "Peter Pan" play at Arkansas in 2018, and it was the first punt return touchdown Navy had allowed since 2021.

Navy coach Brian Newberry said his team had practiced against that exact look during the week and still did not execute it. Gutierrez scored on a 1-yard run with 11 seconds left in the half to make it 28-17.

The second play came midway through the third quarter, with Navy driving. Brayden Knox forced a fumble, and linebacker Zakye Barker scooped it up and ran 63 yards for a touchdown with 7:55 left in the quarter. That made it 35-17. It was UNT's second-longest fumble return since at least 2001, and the first time since Oct. 14, 2000, against Notre Dame that Navy had allowed two non-offensive touchdowns in one game.

Newberry did not dress it up. "You're not going to beat a good football team when they score 14 points on you like that," he said, per PressBox.

Navy would not go away

To Navy's credit, it never stopped coming. Gutierrez broke a 43-yard touchdown run and hit Jake Norris for a two-point conversion to make it 35-25. Jackson answered with a 53-yard touchdown to Stevenson. Gutierrez then threw a 15-yard touchdown to Michael Barrow with 15 seconds left in the third quarter, and Barrow ran in from 4 yards out with 10:49 to play. Suddenly it was 42-39.

It lasted 71 seconds. North Texas went 75 yards in three plays, and White took the last 59 of them for a touchdown with 9:38 left. Then the Mean Green did something Navy usually does to other people. They took the ball back and ran out the final 6:32 on a 12-play drive, finishing it with a Jackson-to-White completion on fourth-and-1.

The trio that runs the Mean Green

North Texas came into the game ranked in the top five nationally in passing, total and scoring offense, and its three stars showed why.

Jackson completed his first nine passes for 151 yards and two touchdowns and finished 17-of-23 for 305 yards, three touchdowns and one interception, which Navy's Ira Oniha made. It was his fourth 300-yard game in his last five.

Stevenson caught eight passes for a career-high 209 yards and two touchdowns. It was the first 200-yard receiving game for UNT since Wyatt Young had 295 at Rice last November, and the most receiving yards by any Navy opponent since the 2016 Armed Forces Bowl. Neal Brown, in his first year in Denton, said the senior earned it. "He wasn't our No. 1 guy in the spring and probably wasn't early in fall camp either. The credit to him was he continued to work and he allowed us to coach him," Brown said.

White ran 20 times for 174 yards and two touchdowns and caught four passes for 58 more. It was his fourth straight 100-yard rushing game, and he has now scored in all seven games this season.

Newberry was impressed with the quarterback in particular. "They took a lot of shots and got on top of us, and when they did, he put it in the perfect spot," he said.

The stats that matter

The box score looks like a Navy win until you get to the bottom line. Navy ran 65 times for 363 yards and won the first down battle 30-21. North Texas ran only 52 plays, but it averaged 9.2 yards per play to Navy's 6.6. The Mean Green had seven penalties for 80 yards and still won, while Navy was flagged once for 5 yards and still lost.

Gutierrez was spectacular in defeat. He ran 26 times for 228 yards and three touchdowns and went 7-of-10 passing for 133 yards and a touchdown, good for 361 total yards. He became the first Navy player since Blake Horvath in 2024 to run for 200 yards and throw for 100 in the same game. Barrow added a career-high 21 carries for 92 yards and scored twice, including the first receiving touchdown of his career.

On the other side, Barker and sophomore Brandon Jones each made 12 tackles, and UNT had four players reach double figures in tackles for the first time since last season's game against Army. The full numbers are in North Texas' official box score (opens in a new tab).

What it means and what's next

For North Texas, the rebuild is ahead of schedule. UNT says it is one of only two FBS teams that returned zero starters from 2025, and it brought in 70 newcomers this year. It has now scored 40 or more points in four straight games. Brown called it "a three-phase win" in UNT's official recap (opens in a new tab), and the Mean Green kept rolling Thursday night with a 48-41 win over Florida Atlantic in Denton.

For Navy, the margin is gone. The Midshipmen need to win their next four games, starting with Notre Dame on Saturday at noon at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, to become bowl eligible. Temple, Memphis and Charlotte follow. Newberry put the job on everyone, himself included. "We just have to execute better and we've got to do a better job as a staff," he said.

Gutierrez sounded ready for it. "We've got to turn this thing around," he said. "There's still a lot of football left in front of us."

The last word

Brown summed up the whole afternoon in a few sentences, and he understood exactly what beats Navy.

"Special teams, we played really sound and had the punt-return touchdown, which was huge because it allowed us to keep momentum and we never trailed," Brown said. "We made them have to play from behind and that's not something they like to do."

Navy had the ball for more than 37 minutes. North Texas just made sure it was always chasing.

Sources: North Texas Athletics recap and box score, The Associated Press, Eye On Annapolis, PressBox, Southern Maryland Chronicle, SB Nation via Yahoo Sports and WJLA. More college football coverage on Undrafted.

Photos: University of North Texas Athletics.