Penn quarterback Gavin Hoffman had an incredible season last year, setting or tying 14 different single-season and career school records for passing.
Everything Hoffman does in his senior year this year will add to the career records, but he has started this season off the pace of his stellar 2000 numbers.
The Quakers' field general tossed for 226 yards in the opener at Lafayette and just 155 on Saturday at Dartmouth. His two-game total of 371 yards is less than his single-game efforts against Brown and Harvard last season. Very strangely, Hoffman is last among the Ivy League's eight starting quarterbacks in passer rating, at 105.5.
All of those numbers mean less to Hoffman, of course, than the Quakers' 2-0 record.
The early falloff somewhat resembles the senior-season decline of ex-Dartmouth quarterback Jay Fiedler, who is now the starter for the Miami Dolphins. Fiedler set a Big Green record with 2,748 yards in 1992 en route to an Ivy League title. That 1992 season included a five-touchdown game against Penn in a 36-17 Dartmouth win.
The Quakers shackled Fiedler the next season at Franklin Field in a 10-6 win. That game was Dartmouth's only Ivy loss of the season, but proved to be one too many, as the Quakers went 7-0 for Al Bagnoli's first Ivy title.
With one win out of the way, Hoffman is still on track to shoot for back-to-back championships, something that no Ivy League team has done since Penn did it in 1993 and 1994.
Penn was scheduled to open the season at home on Sept. 15 against Lehigh, a date that would have been the earliest home opener in Quakers history. But, since that game was canceled, the Red and Blue will play at Franklin Field for the first time this season on Saturday afternoon, Oct. 6.
The last time that Penn played its home opener so late in the year was Oct. 6, 1973. The Quakers defeated Brown, 28-20, opening up their best Ivy League campaign of the 1970s. Penn went 5-2 in the Ancient Eight that year, tying Yale and Harvard for second place behind a 6-1 Dartmouth.
When Penn defeated the Bears in '73, that was the second week of the season. The Quakers have never had to wait until the third game of the year to play their first home game.
Penn's game against Lehigh will not be made up, even though the Division I-AA playoffs have been pushed back a week to accommodate the cancellations from the weekend of Sept. 15. The Quakers will stick with a nine-game season, something that last happened in 1994 when Richmond pulled out of its scheduled game with the Quakers.
The Red and Blue went 9-0 that year, part of a 24-game winning streak that spanned parts of four seasons.
The Quakers' win on Saturday carried some historical significance. For Al Bagnoli, it was his 61st victory as Penn's head coach, matching the combined total of the three coaches before him. For the Red and Blue, it was win number 210 since 1956.
Two hundred and ten might not seem like and important number, but Penn came into the season with a 208-210-6 record since the signing of the Ivy Group agreement. By beating Dartmouth, Penn finally clawed its way back to .500 from the dismal 1960s and 1970s.
The Quakers are now 152-160-4 in Ivy play, so Penn must wait until next year to reclaim a winning record in the league's history.
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