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Penn football beats Cornell at Ithaca in their final game of the 2008 season. Penn 16 Brendan McNally Credit: Katie Rubin

ITHACA, N.Y. - To the names Irvin, Olson and Garton, add McNally.

The Penn quarterback position seems to have an injury hex on it, but Brendan McNally stepped into the role on Saturday and avoided disaster.

McNally spelled the injured sophomore starter Keiffer Garton in the first quarter of Penn's 23-6 victory over Cornell and hardly missed a beat, even if he did resemble a tailback more than a signal caller. The junior threw for just 22 yards on four completions, but more than compensated with 80 yards on the ground. That made him the second-most productive cog in Penn's formidable running attack, behind tailback Mike DiMaggio, who had 129.

McNally was Penn's No. 2 quarterback for much of last season, but when transfer Kyle Olson won the job of backing up then-starter Robert Irvin this fall, McNally's role had to change. Since his athleticism would be wasted if he were buried on the quarterback depth chart, the coaching staff looked for another way to get him on the field. They settled on defensive back.

But one week after McNally made his first big play as a safety (an interception at Yale), Olson went down with a torn anterior cruciate ligament. So McNally went back to quarterbacking.

"It's been a roller-coaster year for me," McNally said.

Owing to Garton's balky ankle, Penn coach Al Bagnoli had planned for McNally to take many of the runs that would normally have belonged to Garton. McNally ended up taking all the other snaps, too, after Garton was tripped up on his first carry.

"He just did a tremendous job protecting the football under very dire weather conditions, and continually tried to eat the clock up, move the chains and stay on schedule," Bagnoli said of McNally.

"If you had asked me at the start of the season if I would be playing quarterback against Cornell, I would have said, 'Probably not,'" McNally added with a touch of irony. "I would have said it was a long shot."

In any case, McNally is offically no longer an unknown commodity.

Cornell coach Jim Knowles said he had thought that McNally might make an appearance. Knowles expected a steady diet of designed runs from the Quakers, regardless of who was under center, yet the Big Red had a tough time laying a hand on McNally.

There are no more games this year, so McNally seems safe from any hexes, at least until spring practice.

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