BOSTON -- What do you say to a team that has forgotten how to win? How do you motivate a team to go out and play a game that, for all intents and purposes, does not matter -- especially considering that no one on that team has played such a game at Penn?
Then what do you tell your players in the locker room, trailing 26-3 after one of the most regrettable halves of football in the past decade at Penn?
"There's not really much you can tell them because the whole thing has to be with them," said Penn coach Al Bagnoli after watching his team self-destruct for the third straight week.
At the half, his squad was staring up at a 23-point deficit, and what it did over then next 30 minutes would be affirmation of its true character.
The team panicked. Forget the basics, they were trying to win the game with every throw. Those desperate attempts failed, miserably.
And this team does not even look like Penn anymore. I'm sure Bob Shoop's Columbia Lions would like another crack at them about now -- they are still looking for their first Ivy League win. The Quakers, meanwhile, face the prospect of matching the worst season of the Bagnoli era -- the y went 5-5 overall and 3-4 in the Ivy League in 1996 -- if they cannot scrape together a win over Cornell.
That is the sad reality of this season. Penn already has more Ivy League losses, three, than it recorded in the past five seasons combined. Any thoughts of bringing the trophy back to Philadelphia -- and there were plenty of them five weeks ago -- are about as dead as the Red and Blue offense looked on Saturday.
Maybe, it seemed Penn would break out of its funk after Pat McDermott came out firing on his first drive. For about three minutes this looked like the Quakers of old. Result? Field goal. OK, credit the Harvard defense; it is not exactly Columbia, you know.
Then it all went south. Harvard went 68 yards to the end zone with ease. Penn's Braden Lepisto then lost 13 yards on a fumble. Two incompletions later, and the Quakers were back to their old (or rather new) tricks.
The past three losses to Brown, Princeton and Harvard have seen Penn's running game disintegrate on both sides of the ball. The Crimson tore off 176 yards on the ground while Penn managed just 59. Passing game? Not really. McDermott has thrown just a single touchdown to go against six interceptions in his last two outings. And look no further than the scoreboard to see how the defense has played.
What is someone like Bagnoli to do with a mess like this?
"I'd love to tell you we've got some answers, but we don't," he said.
There is no single problem with this team, and each week a new one pops up. When your highlight reel only includes blocking three kicks, you have a real problem on your hands.
"I'm not seeing anything that we can really hang our hat on right now," Bagnoli said. "And that's disturbing in a program that has been very, very good to where we are right now, and we're in a major freefall."
You can see it in Bagnoli's face. Gone is the cavalier look of pure confidence. For the first time in years it is worry, even desperation. Whatever buttons he pushes blow up. His schemes are already schemed by the opponent. And his entire unit seems to be hanging its collective head.
Against Brown and Princeton the reaction to being down two scores early was a frenzied rush, as if they were trying to make up the entire deficit at once. And against Harvard it was malaise. Sam Mathews could not gain any ground. McDermott struggled with simple screen passes.
The collective anxiety level went up about three notches when Harvard's Kelly Widman dove for an 18-yard touchdown catch midway through the first quarter -- leaving Penn trailing 12-3. After that, everything about the Quakers' game plan tightened and became more urgent.
Sure, it's November and there is plenty of pressure to win. But that pressure that was once motivation for the Quakers of old who showed up expecting to win. Those teams were loose. They were not going to win the league with one pass or one kick, so they took things one snap at a time.
This year's Quakers are trying to erase the frustration of four losses with every play. Unless they can release that tension and get back to basics, it will be five.
Jeff Shafer is a senior Marketing and Management concentrator from Columbia Falls, Mont., and editorial page editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is jshafer@wharton.upenn.edu.
