It was, by all accounts, a pretty quiet day for Mike Mitchell. Penn's QB wasn't brought out for Penn's post-game press conference, didn't really make any big plays and didn't get that much praise lavished on him by his teammates.
That seems about right.
Saturday's 20-for-38, 214-yard, four-TD performance was, well, pretty par for the course.
Mitchell put up ridiculous numbers last year, 2,803 yards and 20 scores, but most of the accolades Penn received were given to then-senior wide receiver Rob Milanese or the defense.
Penn won almost every game by double digits last season, though. The two close games in 2002 weren't optimal situations to evaluate Mitchell: the 24-21 win over Lehigh featured a big Penn lead early and the Quakers running out the clock in the second half, and the 17-3 loss at Villanova was played in a downpour.
After a four-touchdown, three-interception performance against Duquesne -- which was a bit spotty at times -- some might have expected Mitchell to crumble against the Lehigh defense.
But let's be honest here: if there were any thoughts that Mitchell's top-tier season last year was solely the product of a strong receiving corps (read: Milanese), they're gone now.
In two games, Mitchell has completed almost 60 percent of his passes, thrown for eight scores and has a rating of 136.3. They're not Payton Award numbers, but they're pretty damn good.
Mitchell's stats are good for 24th in Division I-AA passing efficiency, but a decent number of the QBs ahead of him have put up their numbers against sub-par competition.
Sure, Duquesne isn't at the same level as Penn. And Mitchell still tosses too many picks (13 last year, 4 so far this year).
But in the clutch on Saturday, he was perfect.
Mitchell was 11-for-15 for 130 yards and three scores in the second half. That's a 198.8 NCAA quarterback efficiency rating.
Yikes.
He threw an eight-yard TD strike on the first play after the one-hour, six-minute lightning delay, part of five straight completions to open the half.
In the fourth, Mitchell only threw two incompletions, one of them a gift interception where the ball hit a player out of bounds before falling into the arms of the Engineers' Lawrence Williams. (To be fair, Mitchell had a pick overturned by a phantom pass interference call.)
"I was really just doing my best to get open," receiver Dan Castles said of his third, game-tying touchdown. "Mitch was Mitch, putting the ball on the money every time."
Sagar Patel made a ridiculous catch on the game-winning touchdown, but the ball was right where you're supposed to put it in a tie game in the red zone in the fourth quarter -- where only the receiver can catch it.
"I looked back and [Mitchell had] already thrown the ball," he said.
Imagine how Lehigh's defenders must have felt.
It wasn't a good day to be a quarterback, with the wet, muddy conditions. Goodman Stadium was in bad shape even before the game-delaying downpours.
Mitchell proved on Saturday that he's a guy who the Quakers can count on in any condition.
