Congratulations, Penn football. The Quakers took down perennial doormat Columbia on Saturday, snapping an eight-game losing streak that dated back to last year and saving their season from descending into chaos.
Their reward? A date with the Ivy League’s leading passer and rusher.
Saturday, the Red and Blue will make the three-hour drive north and try to figure out the formula to slow down Yale and its potent attack — a task that, so far, no one has managed to accomplish.
The Bulldogs (4-1, 1-1 Ivy) enter this weekend’s contest averaging 46 points per game, top in the Ivy League by a wide margin. In its sole loss, a 38-31 defeat at the hands of Dartmouth two weeks ago, Yale still managed to put up 480 yards of total offense.
At first glance, Penn (1-4, 1-1) would appear to not pose much of a shot at keeping the Yale Bowl scoreboard from breaking a fuse. The Quakers have surrendered an average of 34.6 points and 460.2 yards of offense per game, marks that rank seventh in the Ancient Eight.
But against the Lions, the Red and Blue seemed to show that those numbers could be more reflective of the quality of the ranked nonconference foes they had faced rather than major personnel or scheme issues. Penn held Columbia to just 20 rushing yards on 17 attempts and applied constant pressure with the pass rush, resulting in a 31-7 win.
“I don’t think anything’s really changed,” senior linebacker Dan Davis said about the defense’s recent edge. “I think we’ve been pretty consistent as far as prep goes. I think it’s more just the level of competition you’re going against.”
Yale’s offense certainly presents stout competition in its own right. Senior running back Tyler Varga has showed no signs of the foot injury that limited him to just five games in 2013 and is averaging 141.8 rushing yards per contest.
The Quakers didn’t see Varga when they held off the Bulldogs at Franklin Field last year, but upperclassmen on the roster certainly remember his 104-yard performance the last time these two teams squared off at the Yale Bowl, a 27-13 Yale win in 2012.
Penn’s defenders, though, aren’t planning on allowing the powerful running back to bowl them over in one-on-one matchups.
“Swarming to the ball is a thing that we’ve kind of been talking about all week,” Davis said. “We’ve really been doing stuff in practice as far as waiting to blow the whistle until everyone’s there — just the general type of stuff that you’d do against a running back like that where you just have to gang tackle and get as many guys there as possible.”
Don’t expect the Red and Blue to stack the box with eight men all afternoon, though. They can’t afford to against quarterback Morgan Roberts , who boasts an Ivy-best 69.6 percent completion percentage.
“You can’t stack up in any one area,” coach Al Bagnoli said. “I think the whole key to the game is trying to minimize how many big plays we give up and to see if we can create any turnovers.”
Speaking of turnovers, Saturday’s game against the Lions gave Penn fans their first glimpse this season of an offense operating without any self-inflicted issues.
Sophomore quarterback Alek Torgersen had his cleanest game of the year, completing 16 of 22 passes for 214 passing yards, a touchdown and, most importantly, zero interceptions.
And Penn’s rushing attack sprang to life in spite of the injuries that forced senior Eric Fiore to move into the backfield after he started the season at wide receiver. The Quakers ran for 276 yards on 54 carries.
Senior Kyle Wilcox will be back this weekend after missing last week’s contest with a concussion, giving an improving attack another shot in the arm.
“[Last week] I thought we ran the offense we want to run,” Bagnoli said. “We want to be balanced. We ran for well over 200. We threw it for over 200. And I think that kind of showcased what we want to be.”
That kind of offensive efficiency will give the Quakers a chance in any game they play — even if they enter a shootout this weekend they’d rather avoid.
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