Penn suffered a death from a thousand cuts on Saturday, most of them at the hands of Brown quarterback Joe DiGiacomo.
They came in many forms. Short screen passes to tight ends and halfbacks. Tosses to wide receivers for single-digit gains. The occasional keeper or two.
All, though, had the result of moving the chains for DiGiacomo and keeping the Penn offense off the field, helping send the game into overtime and eventually into the hands of the defending Ivy champs.
"Brown throws a lot of stuff at you," senior safety Scotty Williams said. "A lot of formations, sets."
Those surprises included sets of two tight ends or of four wideouts, spread the width of the field or bunched on one side of the pocket.
They also likely had a hand in the Quakers' strategy of playing softer coverages in order to avoid giving up the big play. Penn may have done that - giving up no runs longer than 13 yards and just two passes over 19 - but the Quakers could not stop DiGiacomo from completing 27 passes for 340 yards and two touchdowns.
Coach Al Bagnoli pointed to the matchup of a talented offensive line with Penn's pass rushers: "It was a cat-and-mouse game," he said. "They have a three-year starting quarterback, so he kind of knows where the ball should go.
"We were trying to pressure some, [with] a zone behind it, and we decided his three-step game was frustrating us," Bagnoli said, referring to DiGiacomo's ability to drop back quickly for a high-percentage pass.
In a game where Brown managed 28 first downs to Penn's 15, the numbers back him up.
In regulation, Brown also held the ball almost twelve minutes longer than Penn did. The discrepancy would have been even greater were it not for two fortuitous interceptions that the Quakers forced.
But when they weren't intercepting DiGiacomo, Penn's defensive backs were watching him make plays in front of them.
The Bears tallied their second touchdown of the game on an 82-yard drive near the end of the first half that featured three passes for 23 yards and a 11-yard run by DiGiacomo that helped bring the ball to the Penn 44. The senior then made one of his few big plays, a touchdown strike to wideout Paul Raymond for 44 of his 150 receiving yards.
Five other Brown receivers notched at least two receptions and 17 yards.
Nowhere was the approach more pronounced than in the first quarter, where DiGiacomo led drives of 5:14 and 6:14 featuring six passes of between 10 and 14 yards, most of them on short slant routes.
Had Penn been able to defend them, Irvin may have had more chances to make plays with his arm - and the game may never have come down to Derek Zoch's right foot.
