Navy Football: Brian Newberry leads Midshipmen with steady approach

The 2025 season was another successful season for the Naval academy, finishing 9-2 with some key wins. And while the players played a huge role in the success of the program, head coach Brian Newberry can be ignored when talking about the success of the Navy football program.

Navy Football: Who is Brian Newberry?

Before ever diving into coaching, Newberry’s path was not exactly conventional.

The Navy head coach played college football at Baylor, where he helped the Bears have the nation’s No. 5 nationally ranked defense in 1995 and an Alamo Bowl appearance in 1994. After his playing career ended, Newberry graduated with a degree in education in 1998. However, Newberry did not immediately jump into coaching. In a 2023 ESPN profile, Pete Thamel detailed what Newberry was up to before diving into coaching.

“His first job was at Glacier National Park in Montana, giving guided Red Bus tours in vintage 1930s convertible buses. Newberry would drive a nearly 35-mile road through the park, through the Rockies, over the continental divide, and deliver a Going-To-The-Sun Road Tour.

He also picked up photography, joking that he joined Instagram back in 2011 when it was more of a place for photographers to showcase their work than a social media platform. His Instagram features snowscapes, skies with a kaleidoscope of colors, rustic farms, beaches at sunset, and the occasional breathtaking mountain landscape, along with portraits of his family, including his wife, Kate, and two children.”

Once Newberry decided to dive into coaching, he did not start at the top. Far from it, actually. He took a GA job at Southern Arkansas, followed by roles at Washington and Lee, University of the South, Northern Michigan, Elon, Leigh, Rice, and Kennesaw State. It is a path that, as he said in the ESPN profile, Newberry is appreciative of.

“I needed to be a GA and get beat down and cut grass and paint fields and clean bathrooms and locker rooms and do all that stuff,” Newberry said. “But it was awesome for me because as a GA at Southern Arkansas, I had a recruiting area. I ran a room early on. Most don’t get to do that. In retrospect, that was the best thing that could possibly happen to me. ‘Cause I got humbled a little bit and I did a lot of groundwork, which I needed to do.”

Most importantly, though, Newberry has had success at basically everywhere he has coached. Prior to arriving at Navy, some of the accomplishments include:

• Washington and Lee: Defense produced a school-record 43 sacks. Led the Old Dominion Athletic Conference in pass defense, rush defense and scoring defense (2005 + 2006). Forced 30 turnovers and ranked among the nation’s leaders in pass defense.
• University of the South: Newberry served as defensive coordinator/linebackers coach at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., in 2011. The Tigers improved their scoring defense by 16 points per game and total defense by 85 yards per contest.
• Kennesaw State: Defense forced 56 turnovers over Newberry’s last two years. Kennesaw State’s 2017 defense ranked seventh nationally in scoring defense and third in turnovers gained. The Owls picked off 24 passes, which ranked second nationally, and led the Big South in rushing defense, pass defensive efficiency and red zone defense, while standing second in sacks (31).

Ultimately, these successes led to Newberry getting hired by Navy in 2019 as their defensive coordinator.

Navy Tenure: Defensive Coordinator

Taking over the defense in 2019, Newberry immediately helped Navy’s unit play at a high level. According to his bio on the team’s website, the current head coach helped lead “some of the top defensive units in school history.” His 2019 unit “ranked 20th in third down defense (121st in 2018), 10th in rushing defense (90th in 2018), 39th in passing defense (75th in 2018), 16th in total defense (86th in 2018) and 34th in scoring defense (103rd in 2018).” Additionally, they describe Newberry’s “Get 6” mantra.

“Newberry, a semifinalist for the Broyles Award, presented annually to the best assistant coach in college football, and his defensive staff installed a “Get 6” culture within the Navy defense that took off. Newberry told the defensive players if they got a combination of six three-and-outs, fourth down stops, turnovers and defensive touchdowns in a game, the Mids would win.  In 2019, Navy was 8-0 when it managed to ‘Get 6.'”

This progress continued over the next few seasons. The 2020 defense recovered from a slow start and battled down the stretch, which included solid performances against Army and Memphis. Newberry’s 2021 defense had a 41.1-percent success rate, which was in the top 60 in the country. In 2022, Newberry-led “striker” John Marshall, according to the Navy website, “finished tied for third in the nation in sacks (0.9 per game) and tackles for a loss per game (1.6), while setting school records for sacks in a season (11) and game (4). Marshall was the only unanimous First-Team All-American Athletic Conference selection in 2022, and he was also named the ECAC Defensive Player of the Year.”

Thanks to all of his success, Newberry was promoted from Navy’s defensive coordinator role to the team’s head coach on December 19, 2022.

Navy Tenure: Head Coach

While it did not start at the highest level, Brian Newberry has slowly turned Navy’s football program into one of the best at the G5 level.

In 2023 in his first season as head coach, Navy was still a defensive force. The Midshipmen were 27th in the country with -0.09 EPA per play allowed and were an absolute force against the run, totaling -60.34 Total EPA (6th in the country). And while the offense was not great, Newberry still found a way to win five games, the school’s highest total since 2019.

In 2024, Navy burst onto the scene with overall success. The defense, led by Landon Robinson, thrived against opposing passing attacks (-36.07 Total EPA) and made enough plays against the run to win games. Offensively, Blake Horvath and company thrived under offensive coordinator Drew Cronic. Navy bludgeoned opponents on the ground and hit big-time plays in the passing game when needed. These developments led to a 10-win season, including wins over Memphis, a ranked Army squad, and Oklahoma in the Armed Forces Bowl.

Newberry kept the good times rolling in 2025. Reaching nine wins ahead of the Army-Navy game, the defense was not at the same level as it was in previous seasons. They struggled to keep points off the board and were gashed both on the ground and through the air (0.13 EPA/play).

However, this was mitigated by a lethal offensive attack that was better than 2024’s overall unit. On the back of Horvath and Heidenreich, among others, Navy scored over 30 points in six games this season. They found a way to prevail over countless opponents, including a comeback over Temple and a shootout victory over the then-ranked USF Bulls. Not many teams could stop the Navy rushing attack, or even overall offensive scheme.

The 2025 season, like in previous years, is a testament to what Newberry has done for the program since he arrived in 2019.