A lot can change in two weeks.
Penn State football went from being a nationally ranked team to an unranked team with a fired head coach. That kid from Vanderbilt now has half a million in his bank account and a potential career in kicking.
Two weeks ago, Penn football silenced doubts about the secondary and stability of the run game after the many roster departures on both sides of the ball. The Penn secondary headlined a victory over Dartmouth, while senior running back/return specialist Julien Stokes and sophomore running back Sean Williams, Jr. filled gaps nicely on the ground in both wins against Dartmouth and at Columbia.
Now — with Stokes injured for most likely the rest of the season — the run game has become unreliable, and the way Penn football addressed it on Saturday cannot continue.
At Yale, the Penn offense scheme was unrecognizable. In the Quakers’ second drive of the day, senior quarterback Liam O’Brien rushed for four plays in a row — foreshadowing the overreliance on his athleticism that continued for the rest of the day.
By the time the clock hit zero, O’Brien was Penn’s leader on the ground, rushing 22 times for an abysmal average of 2 yards per carry. “O’Brien quarterback keep,” echoed over the speakers in the Yale Bowl way too many times. Sophomore running back Donte West added 47 yards on the ground to bring Penn’s total to just 92 rushing yards for the game, while junior running back Williams didn’t even register a carry.
Relying on O’Brien to run the ball is not the answer, and other offensive woes only exacerbated that. At the start of the second, O’Brien fumbled the ball on another quarterback keeper, which Yale returned for a touchdown.
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In the air, O’Brien completed only 53% of his passes — his lowest completion rate since Penn’s season opener at Stonehill. Penn scored only 13 points to Yale’s 35, even though the Quakers had possession for over half of the game.
Simply put, it’s unsustainable for O’Brien to continue to be QB1 and RB1. The running room of West and Williams must once again embody the team’s ‘next-man-up’ mentality to have a chance at glory this season.This strategy is not sustainable especially with penalties continuing to follow the Quakers week after week.
At Columbia, the Quakers left the field at the half tied up with the Lions 14-14. Before that weekend, Columbia’s offensive unit had averaged 12 total points per game. The tight matchup with a seventh place team in the Ivy League was due to a first half riddled with turnovers and penalties. Penn racked up five penalties by the end of the day with an average of 9.6 yard loss per penalty.
At Yale, these errors got worse — and Penn suffered the consequences. Turnovers by Penn in the first half once again played a role in Yale propelling itself to a substantial lead early, and the whole game was riddled with undisciplined penalties. In the second quarter, Penn committed three unsportsmanlike conduct penalties in a row and ended the day losing 110 yards on 10 penalties.
“We had too many undisciplined problems with the penalties. … It wasn’t what we normally have done. Our kids know it. We control everything at this point in time, so kids will learn from this, and we’ll move on,” coach Ray Priore said.
This time last year, the team was arguably in a similar position — suffering a blowout loss against Yale and the offense in need of a new strategy.
This time, however, there’s a clear answer for where Penn football goes from here to reach the ring that the team has been itching for: fixing the ground game and staying disciplined.
VALERI GUEVARRA is a Nursing and Wharton senior from Wyckoff, N.J. studying nursing and healthcare management. She currently serves as DP sports editor. All comments should be directed to dpsports@thedp.com.
