Keenan Reynolds bucks trends as Navy's freshman leader

• Navy QB Keenan Reynolds looks to cap freshman year with win over Army on Saturday.
• Reynolds will be first freshman QB to start for Navy vs. Army since 1991.
• Reynolds has modeled his game after former Navy QB Ricky Dobbs.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — After playing in Tennessee's high school all-star game last season, Keenan Reynolds watched the Army-Navy game on TV at a restaurant with his family. Navy was recruiting him.

"The previous years, I didn't really sit down and watch like entire games. … Great game, back and forth, lot of emotional highs and lows … and the atmosphere was great,'' Reynolds says of Navy's 27-21 win.

He won't be watching Saturday. He'll start as a freshman quarterback for Navy against Army.

At the academy, he's a plebe (short for the Latin word plebeian, meaning a lower class). During Plebe Summer, he wore a white sailor cap edged in blue. He learned to call a wall a bulkhead.

Class distinctions disappear when it comes to football.

"He's played as calm and collected as any guy that I've ever been around, freshman or senior," says Navy coach Ken Niumatalolo.

Reynolds's breakout came Oct. 6 at Air Force. Navy had started the season 1-3. It trailed Air Force trailed 21-13 with 9:03 left when Reynolds replaced injured junior Trey Miller. With his passing and running, including a 15-yard TD run, Reynolds led Navy to a 28-21 overtime win.

The next week, making the first start by a freshman quarterback at Navy since Jim Kubiak in 1991, Reynolds threw for three touchdowns in a win against Central Michigan. At run-oriented Navy, no quarterback had thrown for three touchdowns since 1991.

"He's come through every test with flying colors," says Niumatololo.

Army is always the big one for Navy.

"I always get nervous before a game. It's just how I am. But once the game starts, I'm good to go," says the 5-11, 199-pounder.

Reynolds has run for 585 yards and nine touchdowns. He's thrown for 754 yards and eight touchdowns.

As a youngster, he got his first passing tips from his dad, former Tennessee-Martin strong safety Donald Reynolds. At Goodpasture Christian School in Madison, Tenn., he ran a wing-T offense that included some shotgun and pistol formations. "We had a couple of triple-options play, but we really didn't run them much," he says.

Reynolds caught the eye of a Navy coach who recruits Tennessee. "I remember him coming back and just showing us the tapes and it was, wow, he's a good player," says Niumatololo. "He said not only that, (he said) that he's Ricky Dobbs. That spoke volumes.''

Dobbs quarterbacked Navy in 2009 and 2010 and led the team in rushing and passing both seasons. But the comparison went beyond that.

"Basically, we were talking about he's got leadership qualities that Ricky Dobbs had,'' says Niumatololo.

Reynolds choice of colleges came down to Air Force and Navy. He went with Navy and its version of the triple option, which he embraces.

"If coach wants to let it go a little more (pass) that's perfectly fine," he says. "But I know the offense is founded on the running game, and we've got to establish that first."

Of course, he's noticed the success rookie Robert Griffin III is having as the running-passing quarterback of the Washington Redskins.

"He's a very humble player. He plays hard, he plays smart and he's just a great guy off the field, great leader," says Reynolds. "I really want to emulate him off the field more than necessarily on the field. What you do off the field kind of carries on to your play."