Navy had reduced North Texas’s lead to three points. Jahiem White restored the ten-point margin with a fifty-nine-yard touchdown run before the Midshipmen could begin another possession. The most urgent answer of his afternoon came on the ground.
After Barrow scored on a 4-yard run with 10:49 remaining in the fourth quarter, Navy had pulled within 42-39. North Texas responded with a three-play, 75-yard possession that took 1:11. White finished it by racing 59 yards for a touchdown at 9:38, restoring a 10-point margin in a 49-39 victory in Annapolis, on Navy’s home field.
North Texas won 49-39 on Saturday, with White providing a different route to an explosive score than the passing partnership of Tayven Jackson and Justin Stevenson. The Mean Green could attack through either part of the backfield. When Navy made the game close in the fourth quarter, the running back supplied the immediate response.
White carried 20 times for 174 yards and scored twice on the ground. He also caught four passes for 58 yards, giving him 232 yards from scrimmage. Those numbers do not mean every rush became a breakaway or that the running game operated at one uniform level.
They mean White handled a substantial workload and produced the play North Texas needed when the margin was most fragile.
His first touchdown was a three-yard second-quarter run, scored at 10:05, a finishing play that helped convert an existing advantage into points. The later score carried a different weight. Navy had just made this a one-score game; White’s long run immediately rebuilt the cushion before the Midshipmen could test North Texas again.
The run’s value was not simply its distance. It altered the arithmetic of the final 10 minutes. North Texas did not need a long sequence of cautious plays to regain control, and it did not need Jackson to manufacture another answer with his arm. One handoff turned a tense game back toward the Mean Green.
Jackson and Stevenson had already made that handoff easy to overlook. Jackson completed each of his first nine throws, producing 151 yards and two touchdowns during that opening stretch. Stevenson caught eight passes for 209 yards and two scores, including a 45-yard touchdown early in the first quarter and a 53-yard scoring reception in the third.
Stevenson accounted for most of Jackson’s 305 passing yards. White contributed another 58 yards through four receptions, giving North Texas another productive receiver alongside his work as a runner. His twenty carries and four receptions made him a substantial part of the offense before that final long touchdown, rather than a player whose entire contribution depended on one breakaway.
