COLUMN: Harvard game no different than '96

Scott Miller, Commentary Just when one thought the Red and Blue have turned everything around and make a viable contender for the Ivy crown, the squad was dominated in all facets of the game against Harvard. In that one game, Penn played like a carbon copy of the 1996 Quakers: a team that was predictable, inefficient and very beatable. The most obvious aspect was Penn's reliance on running back Jim Finn. Harvard apparently found it equally obvious. Finn was held to 2.7 yards per rush. Although some of that had to do with the slippery conditions and missed blocks, Finn has been used more and more as the weeks have gone on. He received the ball 34 times versus Princeton -- over 10 more times than in weeks before. So it was no surprise to Harvard that Finn was the going to be the mainstay of the Penn offense. Flashback to 1996: does the name Jasen Scott ring a bell? Scott was personally responsible for 51 percent of all plays from offense and 39 percent of Penn's total yards on offense. In last Saturday's contest, Finn's 88 yards accounted for 61 percent of the team's offensive production. Penn's weak spot against Harvard was the defensive backs -- basically the same group which defended the pass in 1996. Opponents in 1996 amassed 63 percent of their yards on offense from the pass. Saturday, Penn allowed 60 percent of the yards gained against them travel through the air. This is obviously emphasized by Harvard's ability to convert on third and fourth downs. Of the Crimson's 11 successful conversions, only four of them did not come at the hands of the defensive backs. Although Mike Ferguson and Larrin Robertson had particularly tough days, every one in Penn's defensive backfield got burned: Ferguson, Robertson, John Bishop and Joe Piela. Worse, this quartet looked just like the 1996 version of themselves, as they were consistently beaten playing several yards off their men. Defense aside, the 1996 dependence on Scott was largely to do with a lack of an accurate, decisive quarterback, and versus Harvard, fans saw inaccurate quarterbacks and equally ineffective receivers. The big picture looks like this: in 1996, Penn completed 49 percent of its passes, averaging one interception per 20 attempts. In Saturday's loss, Penn completed 33 percent of its passes and averaged one interception per 11 attempts. Certainly, however, the incompletions can't all be blamed on bobbled balls. One of the interceptions was a fluke play, as Finn bobbled a pass to the flat, but the other two were merely overthrown into the hands of Harvard defenders. Those overthrows on Saturday, combined with passes behind, in front and short of their intended receivers made the Penn passing game just as, if not less, effective than 1996. Then there was the icing on the cake: Penn coach Al Bagnoli. Nothing was more reminiscent of 1996 than what he had to say following the devastating blow his team was dealt at the hands of the Crimson. Throughout the 1996 season, Bagnoli consistently said he was out of solutions to his squad's problems. "I don't have any answers, but it's pretty obvious that [the defensive backs] are struggling because they continue to give up way, way too much yardage," Bagnoli said after Penn's loss to Brown last year. "I don't have any answers because I don't have any more kids" A few weeks earlier, after Penn's romp over Colgate, Bagnoli had no answer for the concentration problems with his offensive line. "I don't know what to think now. I wish I had better answers, but it's a different kid each time," he said. Skip forward to last Saturday. Bagnoli again had no answers as to why Harvard dominated on offense. "They were able to keep the chains moving, and we were not. I don't have many answers," the sixth-year coach said. Obviously his answers are coach-speak -- the man is trying not to point out one or two players or coaches, no matter how obvious the problems were. The fact that he had to revert to this coachspeak, however, is enough to make you wonder just how 1996-ish his problems were on Saturday. It's been 362 days since the doors shut on a long 1996 season. Last Saturday, however, Penn was playing like it was living in the past.