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At a Mountain West Conference media day last month, Troy Calhoun rattled off a familiar list of challenges he’s had to navigate around over his nearly two decades of coaching football at Air Force.
Anyone interested in playing for the Falcons needs to score at least a 1200 on their SAT to earn admission. The oft-discussed transfer portal is a one-way street for Air Force, which can lose players to other programs without the benefit of bringing any aboard. Any recruiting pitch Calhoun offers to a player has to turn at some point to an unavoidable reality: five weeks of basic training, commitment to a minimum of five years of active duty service, and, as Calhoun phrased it, “one heckuva haircut.”
“Are you looking for a unique individual? You are,” he said.
For much of his tenure in Colorado Springs, Calhoun has not only been able to find those unique individuals, but also to win with them. Now, entering the 2025 season, a different kind of challenge awaits: getting Air Force back to contending for conference championships and the top 25 of the national rankings.
The Falcons are coming off an uncharacteristically poor 2024 season in which they finished with a 5-7 record, tied for the second-fewest wins ever under Calhoun. The drop was that much more jarring considering what had immediately preceded it: a 40-12 record over the previous four full seasons, three of which saw Air Force win at least 10 games.
With the Falcons’ season kicking off at home against Bucknell University on August 30, there’s reason to not just hope, but to believe they’ll be better.
Many of last season’s struggles could be attributed to significant turnover on the offensive side of the ball, where they lost virtually all of the key players who had helped them reach such lofty heights from 2019 to 2023. In Air Force’s option offense—a system that requires a high level of collective experience, familiarity, and intense communication—those sudden absences were glaringly obvious, with the Falcons finishing 125th of 134 Football Bowl Subdivision teams last season in scoring offense (at just 18.9 points per game).
This year, however, Air Force brings back eight starters on offense, several of whom were the team’s biggest contributors by the end of last season, including running back Dylan Carson and wide receiver Cade Harris. If there is a question mark on that side of the ball, it’s at quarterback, where Calhoun has yet to reveal a starter. Josh Johnson and Liam Szarka are widely considered to be the two front-runners for the role. Defensively, there’s more to replace, but there are cornerstones around which to build. That group of returners is highlighted by defensive lineman Payton Zdroik, the team’s sacks leader in 2024.
For all of the Falcons’ shortcomings last season, they started to gel late. After a ghastly 1-7 start, Air Force won each of its final four games. During that stretch, the previously lethargic offense came to life, averaging 29.3 points per game. It’s one of many signs that 2024 could stand as an aberration—and that a program that’s been a model of consistent success since the early 1980s could get back to its winning ways (or at least .500).
5280 Record Prediction: 6-6
Can’t-Miss Matchup
@ Navy, October 4: Though it has no bearing on the race for a conference title, Air Force’s two annual games for the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy will always carry that much more emotional heft. This year, the tougher of the two matchups will likely come against Navy, which returns a majority of its starters from a team that won 10 games in 2024 and throttled its fellow service academies by a combined 45 points. If the Midshipmen are able to knock off the Falcons, it’s quite possible they’ll be 8-0 and ranked heading into a November 8 game at reigning national runner-up Notre Dame.
Find the Falcons’ schedule here.
3 Players to Watch
Payton Zdroik, defensive lineman: For all the questions that linger about Air Force’s defense, Zdroik certainly isn’t one of them. The senior, whose father and mother were athletes at the academy, is tied for ninth in program history with 13 career sacks. In 19 of his 30 career games, he’s recorded at least one tackle behind the line of scrimmage. Defensive coordinator Brian Knorr, who has coached in some capacity at Air Force for 13 seasons, told the Colorado Springs Gazette that Zdroik may be as good a defensive player as the Falcons have ever had.
Dylan Carson, running back: In an increasingly pass-oriented sport in which quarterbacks and wide receivers are often the biggest stars offensively, Air Force is still something of a relic, with running back as the fulcrum of the team’s offense. While the Falcons don’t rely overwhelmingly on a single player, Carson is the closest thing they have to a workhorse back. Last season, the six-foot, 215-pound tailback rushed for 600 yards (a team high) and five touchdowns. He was a key figure in the program’s late-season surge, rushing for 447 yards and all five of his touchdowns in Air Force’s final four games.
Costen Cooley, offensive lineman: For a team that runs the ball and operates as intricate of an offense as the Falcons do, the importance of offensive line play can’t be overstated. At the center of that is Cooley—literally. Cooley will be one of the players tasked with opening up holes for Air Force’s ballcarriers to burst through, something the senior has proven to be quite good at over the course of his career. He was one of only two Mountain West players named to the preseason watch list for the Rimington Award, which is given annually to the top center in college football.
