Fourth time was no charm

For the first time in a over a year, football coach Al Bagnoli had a real kicker. But he didn't use him.

Down by 15 points in the fourth quarter, the Quakers had turnovers on downs four times, all inside the Dartmouth 30-yard line.

Obviously hindsight is 20/20, but had kicker Andrew Samson made two of those three possible field goal attempts (he had hit from 23 and 45 already that game), he would have earned himself an opportunity to win the game from short distance. But the Quakers went 2-for-8 on fourth down, and paid for it in the 21-13 loss.

With just over 11 minutes left in the game, down by 15 points, instead of opting for another 45-yard field goal, Bagnoli opted to go for it. The yard line was the 28. The down was fourth. The distance? Fifteen. Fourth and fifteen. Quarterback Bryan Walker duly threw an incomplete pass and Dartmouth took over.

A possession later (8:00 left) Penn had a 4th-and-3 from the Dartmouth 9, and the pass to Koontz fell incomplete. Then (3:00 left) a pass to Kyle Derham hit the turf on 4th-and-2 from the Big Green 13.

Then came essentially the final play of the game, 4th-and-4 from the Dartmouth 6, when Walker just barely couldn't find Dan Coleman in the back of the end zone.

While I slightly disagreed with the fact that the Quakers went for the first few conversions, it was both the non-concrete result and the way that they approached the fourth downs that got to me.

Ignoring the 4th-and-15, Penn had conversions of three, two and four. How many times did they run the ball? Zero.

Even if Sandberg wasn't 100 percent, Mike DiMaggio or even Walker himself would have had a great chance converting the short fourth downs by running the ball. The Quakers ran twice on fourth down and passed six times. (The Red and Blue converted a couple first downs on penalties drew on pass plays, but those don't count as conversions.) Guess which two plays were the ones that turned into first down conversions? Both times that Walker ran for it.

In all, the Quakers had their "running" quarterback in the game, and passed the ball 60 times. That's enough to make Peyton Manning jealous.

When you look at the stats, going for fourth down really isn't a bad idea if it's a reasonable conversion. But this isn't chess. Football is an emotional sport, and once again the C-word is plaguing Penn.

No, certainly not "Choke", "Coaching" or "Courage" or anything like that, I'm talking about Confidence. When the team drives down the field only to take away absolutely nothing from that possession, it's a downer. But if, with 11 minutes to go Samson hit another field goal, or with eight minutes to go he chipped one in another, the offense gains some confidence of putting a few points on the board.

It is all hindsight, but you have to look back and question things any time that Penn loses to Dartmouth.