These are not your older brother's Quakers.
If your older brother was around in 2002 and 2003, he saw the Penn football team play 20 games and score more than 30 points in 16 of them. He also saw Penn outscore opponents 709-286 for an average margin of 21 points per game.
While the 2002 team started
4-1, this 4-1 team is not your older brother's Quakers. But in reality, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
With a few exceptions, the 2002-03 teams, which went a combined 19-1, never needed to know how to win. Mike Mitchell would lead the offense to a boatload of early points, and the team would cruise through the second half.
Not so with the 2006 squad, which has needed to use everything it has for the 4-1 record.
The perfect example is the defense, which is by no means dominating opponents the way Steve Lhotak and Duvol Thompson's unit did a few years ago.
Penn has allowed 359.4 yards per game, which ranks in the bottom third of Division I-AA. But the defense has stepped up when needed most.
Thanks to an extraordinary red zone effort, the Quakers rank 15th in the nation with just 14.4 points per game allowed.
It's the essence of a bend-but-don't-break defense, and nobody exemplifies that more than Greg Ambrogi, who broke up five passes, including three in the end zone.
"We've been doing it all year," Ambrogi said. "Once they get in the red zone, we clamp down. We take pride in that."
Now Ambrogi can take pride in the fact that opponents have entered Penn's red zone 21 times and scored points of any kind just 10 times.
And just as the defense has been unspectacular until called upon to come up big, the same is true of the offense.
When Bucknell stunned the Quakers by taking an early lead, coach Al Bagnoli dialed up one play to get the game tied. And within one play - a 72-yard pass - the game was tied.
While the offense ranks in the middle of the pack statistically, it too has come up big.
The Quakers have 21 plays this season of 20 yards or more, scoring six touchdowns on plays of 26 yards or longer, in addition to Ambrogi's 60-yard punt-return touchdown.
Bagnoli has repeatedly expressed his desire for an offense that could consistently pick up four or five yards rather than one that alternates three-and-outs with big plays.
But over the first half - the easier half - of the schedule, it's worked out just fine.
A 4-1 record is no surprise; the Quakers have started
4-1 or better every year since 2001. Even last year's 5-5 team started 4-1, winning the four games by an average score of 41-12.
This season's team appears better prepared for the second half run than last year's did, even if it weren't for the unspeakable tragedy that befell last year's team.
While previous Penn teams may have rolled up 500 yards and held opposing backs to one or two yards per carry, they were missing one thing when it came time for challenging games.
Those teams never needed to know how to win. Never needed to make that one big play - or, like this team, those few big plays - to win a contest that was otherwise played pretty evenly.
And with the remaining teams on the schedule a combined 17-8, there's going to be no substitute for that experience when the game is close and late and there's a title on the line.
Zachary Levine is a senior mathematics major from Delmar, N.Y., and is former Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is zlevine@sas.upenn.edu.
