Aaron Bailey looked like he was going to be good, maybe even special.
For those who don’t remember, Bailey was a freshman on the Penn varsity football team last season.
The 5-foot-9, 180 pounder saw action in all 10 games. Officially, he’s listed as a wide receiver, but a designation of “athlete” or “flex” would be more accurate.
He ran the ball 23 times for 191 yards and two touchdowns, good for a team-high 8.3 yards per carry.
Despite being used only situationally, he ranked fifth on the team in all-purpose yardage.
As a freshman.
Small sample size? Yes. Did Bailey show a ton of promise? Absolutely.
Bailey, a former track star, had speed to burn. He had that rare big play potential and power to electrify.
But Aaron Bailey is no longer on the football team. In fact, he is not even a student at the University of Pennsylvania at this time.
He is currently serving a one year suspension due to academic shortcomings in his freshman year. Bailey hopes to be back in classes and back on the field next school year — Penn football hopes so too.
While he was certainly not a focal point of the offense last season, he added a dimension that made defending Penn a difficult proposition.
One play that the Quakers would run specifically for Bailey was the jet sweep. He’d line up in the wideout position, then motion across the back of the line prior to the snap of the ball.
The quarterback would hike the ball, then turn and hand it to a sprinting Bailey. At that point, it was off to the races. Bailey’s speed around the edge meant he could often turn the corner and get good yardage up the sideline.
Penn misses that dimension.
On Saturday against Lafayette, the offense looked stagnant. A collection of inside and outside runs, play-action passes and screen plays were not enough to move the ball against a maligned Lafayette defensive unit.
It is, of course, impossible to say whether Bailey would have made a difference in that game.
Still, it can be said that his absence leaves Penn slower on the offensive side of the ball and makes the Penn attack easier to defend. The lack of an explosive player who can line up in the backfield, the slot or split wide is one less thing to worry about.
Will Bailey be back? The outlook is good.
The Quakers certainly hope that the former track star’s race is not yet run.
ETHAN ALTER is a junior history major from Los Altos, Calif. He can be reached at dpsports@theDP.com
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