I had a very bad feeling when Marsh went down with a season ending injury. Marsh took over the main running back duties from Colavita at the Fordham game because Colavita needed to take a week off to nurse his injuries. After Marsh went down, putting all the running load on Colavita’s shoulders for the rest of the season turned out to me more than he can handle.

I understand that the freshman class included 3 highly touted running backs—Kyle Wilcox, Spencer Kulcsar, and Dexter Davis. Did the coaching staff make any attempt to get them to play after Marsh’s injuries. While I understand the value of experience, it seems the coaching staff is too scared to give these freshmen RB a chance. Look how well Chuck Bibilio did for Princeton and Zach Boden for Harvard, even though they are both freshmen.

Were the coaching staff too conservative to use underclassmen?

Ethan makes some very good points. The entire season, Penn’s DB’s showed vulnerability and the coaches had to know they weren’t as strong as they have been. The Ivy league is finally catching up to most of college football and is becoming a QB friendly league where the pass is the way to get it done. Especially with Penn not having the dominant O line the have had the last few years, the Quakers needed to change their approach. What the Penn coaches should have learned from Matthews’ performance is that there are few, if any, Ivy squads that can put 4 or 5 DB’s who are strong enough to cover 4-5 wideouts on every play. Many were amazed at what the Cornell QB did. I think every team in the Ivies could do that every week with a decent QB who can make quick reads. The DB’s overall are just too slow. Matthews is good, but I think his performance is replicable. And he will be back next year as will his top targets. How are we going to keep pace? While Billy had a good year, it was not good or consistent enough to overcome the defensive weaknesses. Part of it is play calling, but how many of our losses had Billy throwing key Int’s with the game still within reach? Too many from where I sit. With Scott back next year, Mitchell, Eggleston and maybe Holder back as well, we will have 4 of the best WR’s in the Ivies. I think we need a QB who can make consistently good decisions and we should attack throughout the game. Run 3-4 wide with one of our great RB’s as a sole back. Try Becker or Holland at QB. Let it fly. Make other teams figure out how to stop us instead of the other way around. May even make sense to have Becker & Ragone in the game at the same time. Crazy to think of the options with 2 athletic QB’s on the field together, especially considering they throw the ball from opposite sides. Score a bunch of points and make the other teams try to catch you. Stop playing scared. Win. We will have the weapons.

As someone who goes back to the 70s with Ivy football (and saw Ed Marinaro play at Franklin Field while visiting my older brother at Penn), the wide open passing game is nothing new for Penn. Marty Vaughn, who just was at Franklin Field for the Adolph Bellizeare tribute, was similar in style to what we saw last week. The problem as I see it was not the DB’s (since when does ANY Ivy team have the kind of fast DB’s as the scholarship teams have?) but the fact that Penn’s lines on both sides of the ball were much weaker this year due to graduation losses. That is why no one in the Ivies wins more than 2 years in a row. I am sure Bagnoli will rebuild the team and it may take 2 years to get back, but Penn simply wasn’t as good as Harvard and fell back to the pack. Rebuild the lines and Penn will be as dominant as it was the prior 2 years.

Completely agree with JJ. Penn battled with its identity at times this year and the coaches definitely did not have 100% faith in Billy at times and tried to pound the run when in reality against teams like harvard they just couldn’t do it. With Eggleston and Scott on the outside, Mitchell in the slot and Colavita Marsh and Jack running the ball next year Penn will have plenty of weapons. The best part is they have 3 capable Quarterbacks, and whoever can effectively get the ball to these weapons should play, nothing else matters. If that means splitting time with different QB’s then that’s fine but either way changes in philosophy need to be made and more downfield throws must be in the equation. Frankly I’m excited to see Eggleston and Scott on the field at the same time they could prove to be pretty unstoppable I don’t think any Ivy teams can guard two athletic 6’4” wideouts, actually I’m positive no one can stop that, just have to get them the ball

Absolutely ridiculous year. The coaches should have put the best players on the field and they didn’t. Too many politics. When someone is continuously playing bad then they don’t need to start the whole year. It will be interesting to see if there are any changes in the impact positions next year.

Noteworthy points in all 5 above posts:

@Bigkahuna – Do you recall that when Coach Bagnoli first came to Penn, it wasn’t unusual for Freshmen to start and at minimum see significant playing time. Now it’s very rare; is that impression correct? If so, why; especially as the good teams, and Harvard in particular, regularly have Freshmen starters, and avoid an exodus at graduation as we did last year?

@Jon – Agree with you on the importance of both lines graduations, especially for Bagnoli style football. Bring back last year’s lines, and this year’s team wins it all. This year Harvard had the lines, and their QB had all sorts of time to select multiple talented weapons.

@JJ & Greg – agree with your points.

@Stephen – It would be helpful if you could expand your post with specifics. Otherwise I for one am left guessing.

Thanks to all.