At West Point, they call them the gray days. They come every winter, not long after football season has ended. The leaden skies are perpetually gray; the cadet uniforms are gray; the buildings are gray; and the outlook, as one frigid day follows another, is often bleak.

That’s been especially true for most of the past 20 years at the U.S. Military Academy, where the success of the football team often dictates the mood of the Corps of Cadets. There are more privileges when the football team is winning, the mood on the post, as the Army campus is called, is lighter, and the gray days don’t feel quite so daunting.

Which is why last Saturday’s 31-14 win over Rice on a hot, humid afternoon was all about bright blue skies and cheery grins for everyone in uniform — football uniforms on the field at Michie Stadium or the summer whites the rest of the corps was wearing in the stands.

For the first time in two decades, Army was 2-0 . Since the last time, the Black Knights have had one winning season (7-6 in 2010), been coached by seven different men and went 0-13 in 2003, a mark for futility that has never been reached before or since in college football.

In 1996, that 2-0 start led to a 10-2 season that included a bowl bid, a fifth straight win over Navy and the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy. Army hasn’t won the CIC since and last fall lost to Navy for the 14th straight time.

Which is why 2-0, including an upset win at Temple in its opener, was such a big deal.

“I love the way winning feels, especially around here,” said Jeff Monken, the third-year coach who appears to be close to finally engineering Army’s long-awaited turnaround. “It means so much, not just to the team but to the corps. Saturday night, I went home with a smile on my face and started thinking about what we were going to need to do to beat UTEP. That’s the way coaches are: You’re really happy to be 2-0, but it doesn’t take long to get focused on trying to be 3-0.”

That’s what Monken was doing Sunday morning when there was a knock on his door. A handful of school officials were on his doorstep. Army’s coaches all live on the post, and Monken, who was an assistant at Navy for six years, was relaxing with his wife and three daughters before heading to work. Like a lot of college teams nowadays, the Black Knights practice on Sunday afternoon, then take Monday off.

As soon as Monken opened the door, he knew the visit wasn’t to ask how early prep was going for UTEP.

Sophomore cornerback Brandon Jackson, the officials told Monken, was dead. They didn’t have many details; it had been a one-car accident in Westchester County shortly before 2 a.m.

[Army cornerback dies in car accident]

“Tragedy is a part of life, I think we all understand that, especially at a place like West Point,” Monken said Tuesday night, his voice filled with sadness. “We all know that even when these things happen, you still have to keep on living.”

He paused. “Still, we’re all reeling right now.”

Jackson was, in many ways, a poster-boy Army recruit: Born and raised in Queens, he was overlooked by most Football Bowl Subdivision recruiters. John Loose, then an assistant coach at Lafayette, began recruiting him because he was a good student and, Loose believed, someone who could start right away at Lafayette, a program in the lower-tier Football Championship Subdivision.

Then, Monken got the Army job and hired Loose, who had been on the last successful Army staff, under Bob Sutton in the 1990s. Loose convinced him that Jackson was a perfect target for Army: He was a good student, a good player and, as with many service academy athletes, had a tie to the military: His mother, Morna Davis, was in the Army reserves and deployed to Iraq in 2006. Unlike many athletes, Jackson saw the chance to serve in the military after graduation as an opportunity, not a roadblock.

He became a starter three games into his freshman season, intercepting two passes in that first start against Wake Forest. By season’s end he was the team’s fifth-leading tackler and this year was a key to the team’s improvement on defense.

He was a rising star as a football player and as a cadet.

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Still in a state of shock, Monken went to meet with his team on Sunday. There would be no practice. The academy prepared as best it possibly could for the reaction to the news in the locker room. Grief counselors were available. So, of course, were the coaches.

“They’ve had all that, but more than anything I think they’ve leaned on each other,” Monken said. “That’s the way this place is. There’s a closeness among the cadets because of the shared experience and that’s especially true on the football team. It really is a brotherhood — not just because we say it is, but because that’s the way the players really feel.”

On Monday, Monken met with his leadership council, 14 players who represent all four classes. The first question he asked them was whether they wanted to play on Saturday in El Paso.

“The answer was emphatic and unanimous,” Monken said. “I was pretty certain it would be because I knew they’d all feel like they were letting Brandon down if we didn’t play.”

Then, Monken asked the harder question: Did he think they could prepare for the game as if it were any other without even considering the notion that they had an excuse for losing? “I said, ‘You can go out there and get your butts kicked and people will feel sorry for you and say it was understandable. Or, you can go in there the way you went into the first two games with an absolute belief you’re going to win the game.’ ”

The answer Monken got came in the form of another question: When do we start preparing? Monken hadn’t decided until that moment whether to practice on Monday or give the players another day off to deal with their grief.

They practiced on Monday.

Monken and the council will meet again before Saturday’s game to decide how they want to honor Jackson on the field.

“One thing I don’t want is for them to feel pressure to win for Brandon,” Monken said. “You should never feel pressure to win for anybody. But there’s no doubt we’re going to honor him in a number of ways throughout the season — some will be subtle, some won’t be subtle. But I know he’ll never be far from our thoughts.”

It will be weeks, according to police, before the cause of the accident is known. Regardless, everyone at West Point will continue to deal with Jackson’s loss, even as they honor him.

The gray days will return, inevitably, in a few months. The mission of the football team to make them a little less bleak is now that much more difficult — and that much more important.

For more by John Feinstein, visit washingtonpost.com/feinstein.