While he might not have looked it during Penn's 35-0 rout of Dartmouth, Pat McDermott is still an inexperienced quarterback.
But Penn coach Al Bagnoli is a seasoned veteran at what he does, and for the Quakers, that is the most important thing.
Winning games with inexperienced quarterbacks is getting to be old hat for Bagnoli. Since he took over in 1992, Penn has been quarterbacked by the likes of Gavin Hoffman, Jim McGeehan, Mark DeRosa, and most recently, Mike Mitchell. All sit at the top of the Quakers' record books for passing.
And that isn't a coincidence.
Bagnoli knows how to develop quarterbacks, and judging by McDermott's strong performance against the Big Green Saturday, Bagnoli is on his way to creating another good one.
In the home opener against Villanova, McDermott looked like a quarterback making his third career collegiate start. Chief among his problems was a tendency to hold onto the ball too long and then scramble out of the pocket.
This rarely worked out well for the Penn offense, and contributed to McDermott's poor showing in the first three quarters against the Wildcats.
On the first possession against Dartmouth, McDermott again looked shaky on his first two throws, waiting a second or two too long before throwing the ball into the ground.
Penn kicker Evan Nolan then had a 28-yard field goal blocked, and the game looked like a replay of the week before.
But Bagnoli and the Quakers adjusted. The Penn coach called almost exclusively three and five-step drops for the next quarter and a half. Swing passes, screens and short outs were the norm.
With this game plan, McDermott engineered a 17-play, 80-yard drive. The march finished with a play that defined the drive as a whole, as McDermott hit wide receiver Dan Castles for a 2-yard touchdown on a three-step drop.
McDermott was even better on the second possession, which covered 94 yards in 13 plays, culminating in a 24-yard touchdown pass to Castles.
With McDermott's confidence growing, Bagnoli loosened the reins on his young quarterback in the next series. Sensing a mismatch with Castles against the Big Green secondary, Bagnoli scrapped the short stuff and let his quarterback and best receiver go up top.
Castles burned Dartmouth on the first play of the Quakers' next drive for a 52-yard score, and the duo connected again on a post pattern down to the Dartmouth 5-yard line just before halftime.
"Pat can make all the throws," Bagnoli said of his quarterback's willingness to try more long passes. "I just think that when you're playing with young kids, you don't want to come out there with seven-step drops and have [McDermott] fire the ball all over the place until he gets into a little bit of a rhythm and confidence.
"It wasn't until Mitchell's senior year that we came out firing right from the first play. But we had somebody who had a few hundred snaps under his belt. It's a little bit easier to do. It's the same with Mitchell, or Hoffman or anybody else."
Perhaps Bagnoli is right to compare McDermott's development to former players that he's had under center. But McDermott is not the same type of player as Mike Mitchell. And no one understands that as well as Bagnoli.
What has made the coach so successful during his tenure in Philadelphia is that he caters his game plan to his signal-caller's strengths and weaknesses.
He is quickly realizing that sitting in the pocket and throwing on the run are not strengths of McDermott's, at least not yet. But McDermott does have a good arm as well as good feet.
Bagnoli tailored his game plan around McDermott getting rid of the ball quickly, so he could use his arm without having to worry as much about reading the defense. In the coming weeks, I expect Bagnoli to add a number of plays to take advantage of McDermott's feet, such as quarterback draws, bootlegs and the like.
When it comes to creating winning quarterbacks at the I-AA level, Al Bagnoli has done it before. And this year, with Pat McDermott, he's well on his way to doing it again.
Harry Berezin is a senior history major from San Francisco and is Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is harryb@sas.upenn.edu
