NEW HAVEN, Conn. - Last year, it took three overtimes to decide the annual cardiac stress test that some refer to as a Penn-Yale football game.
This time around, three field goals did the trick.
Behind the strength of Andrew Samson's right leg and another gutsy defensive showing, the Quakers came from behind to nip the Bulldogs, 9-7, on Saturday afternoon at the Yale Bowl, improving to 3-0 in Ivy play for the first time since 2005.
Samson's final knock, a 31-yarder, put Penn on top with 4:35 to play in the fourth quarter, and the defense, which surrendered just 92 yards of total offense all day, held the Bulldogs twice more to shut the door.
"We knew we were gonna take it to them physically," said defensive lineman Joseph Goniprow, who anchored a vicious Quakers pass rush with two half-sacks and a litany of run stuffs. "A lot of comes from our secondary. We get a lot of coverage sacks."
The victory places the Red and Blue (4-2, 3-0 Ivy) in a first-place tie with Brown atop the Ancient Eight, while the Bulldogs (3-3, 1-2) saw their championship aspirations take a brutal hit one year after a six-win conference season.
"I'd like a laugher just one time," Penn coach Al Bagnoli joked. "We can put all the subs in, and I can just sip on some Gatorade and watch. This was very typical of Penn-Yale recently."
While Saturday's affair hardly lent itself to a leisurely beverage break, Bagnoli certainly had no qualms about going to his bench - and early.
On the second drive of the second quarter, the veteran coach called on backup quarterback Kyle Olson - who doubles as the team's punter - to relieve struggling starter Robert Irvin for the remainder of the afternoon.
Olson hardly lit it up, completing 11 of 25 passes for 62 yards and never reaching paydirt, but he committed no turnovers and presided over a couple of gritty second-half drives that put Samson in position for the three-point boots.
"I was looking for a spark," said Bagnoli, who did not speak with Irvin on the sideline following the benching. "It seemed like each individual series [in the early going] there was a breakdown."
Against both quarterbacks, the Bulldogs squandered opportunities to force a game-changing turnover, with seniors Bobby Abare and Steven Santoro each failing to corral potential interceptions.
"I thought those were two tough balls to catch . but we could've had them," said Abare, the Bulldogs' senior captain. "That's just the way it worked out today."
The Irvin miscue on which Yale did capitalize set up the game's only touchdown less than six minutes into the first quarter. The senior signal-caller's third-and-seven pass sailed well over the head of wideout Marcus Lawrence and into the hands of Yale's Paul Rice, who returned the pick up the left sideline to Penn's 17-yard line.
Two plays later, sophomore Brook Hart, making his first career start in place of the injured Ryan Fodor, flipped the ball out to tight end John Sheffield in the right flat for a seven-yard score. (It was officially ruled a rushing touchdown because the catch was made behind the quarterback.)
The rest of the way, though, Hart had little room to operate. With senior workhorse Mike McCleod managing just 28 yards on 18 carries - his bid to break the all-time Ivy rushing record taking another hit - the Quakers threw a wide array of blitzing schemes at Hart.
"As I said to my players, this one's on me," Yale coach Jack Siedlecki said. "I had no answers offensively, and we did not give our players a chance. We were absolutely ineffective with what we were doing."
Linemen like Goniprow and fellow senior Drew Goldsmith each got free to disrupt Hart in the pocket, and cornerback Tyson Maugle - in his first action since breaking his nose against Dartmouth three weeks ago - blitzed from the weak side to force and recover a Hart fumble midway through the third quarter, setting up Samson's first kick.
"At the end, we made one more play than they did," Bagnoli said. "I certainly don't think offensively, on either side, it's gonna be an instant classic by any stretch."
