Defensive line controls the ball for Penn

Penn senior Jason Maehr led a group of strong performances by the defensive line on Saturday in Ithaca. ITHACA, N.Y. -- Penn defensive lineman Jason Maehr walked off Cornell's Schoellkopf Field on Saturday, wearing a jersey smeared with blood and dirt. It looked as if Maehr had just been in a street fight. In a way, he was. And he won. Maehr ganged up with other members of the Penn defensive line and spent Saturday afternoon pummeling Cornell quarterback Mike Hood and the Big Red offense. "We went into the game with a game plan that we have a lot of experience up front, and they have a young offensive line so what we wanted to do was take advantage of that," Maehr said. The Quakers' defensive front took advantage of Cornell from the very start of the game. Senior left tackle Larry Rascoe stomped Cornell halfback Deon Harris on the Big Red's first offensive play of the day. The pressure would not stop for the rest of the afternoon. Although the Big Red finished with more total offensive yards than its average for the season, several long completions by Hood led to the totals. Throughout the game, Hood was rushed, hurried, frightened and clobbered by Penn defenders. On one play near the conclusion of the fourth quarter, following a vicious hit by Penn's Ed Galan and Brian Person, Hood stood up and then looked as if he were about to go right back down again. Stumbling, he was reminiscent of a boxer in immense pain who gets up just to avoid a knockout. "Toward the end of the game we kind of wore them down a little bit, got a lot of pressure on them," Maehr said. Penn finished with four sacks, but this stat does not reflect the amount of time Hood spent on his back. He released numerous pass attempts at the last possible instant, avoiding the sack but not the beating. Hood got rid of the ball, but he was rarely able to see where the pass ended. Instead he spent this time becoming acquainted with Maehr, Mike Germino, Adrian Puzio or one of their friends. "Our whole game plan was just trying to get to [Hood] and trying to get him to force it where he's not going to be as comfortable as he would like to be," Penn coach Al Bagnoli said. "Most of the time, it was a four-man rush; occasionally we pressured five and occasionally we pressured six. Most of the time, the front four did a nice job," he said. Maehr finished with two sacks for a total loss of 11 yards, and Germino had one and a half for losses of nine. These sacks -- combined with a plentiful portion of knock-downs -- must have given Hood a splitting headache by game's end. The Penn front line's play must have also given the Cornell offensive line whiplash. The Big Red linemen -- two freshmen, two sophomores and a junior -- tried its best to stop the Quakers linemen. Much more often than not, however, their efforts were in vain as the Red and Blue breezed past them on their way to flattening Hood. "We can dwell on the negatives, but [the Cornell offensive linemen] did the things they had to do to give us a chance. It may not measure up in some situations, but they're doing everything they can do," Cornell coach Peter Mangurian said. "Sometimes it's not good enough." It was not good enough against the Quakers, as the Penn defenders stormed through the line like bulldozers. While Hood was lucky enough to connect with a few receivers, the Big Red running game did not have as much success. Prior to Saturday, Cornell was averaging 103.1 yards per game on the ground. The Quakers held them to a mere 34. When Hood gave the ball to Harris, the line of scrimmage often turned into a brick wall. The Big Red's top ball carrier ran for 2.5 yards per carry, but was often met by unfriendly Quakers before he could get much farther. During a year when Jim Finn breaks the Penn season rushing record and Matt Rader has one of the best seasons for a quarterback in Penn history, it is easy to ignore the contributions of the defensive line, but it was not so easy to ignore on Saturday.

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