Looking at the League

The Columbia Spectator website has an excellent video that shows both the injuries to Brett Nottingham and Seyi Adebayo. Excellent job by those guys.

The headline after this weekend’s games is this:

The stage is perfectly set for the crucial Brown-Harvard matchup on national TV this coming Saturday night.

Brown is always very well prepared to start the season by Head Coach Phil Estes, but the Bears’ 45-7 mauling of Georgetown was particularly impressive.

Harvard is sometime NOT that sharp in week one, but the Crimson were stellar in a 42-20 easy win at San Diego.

Here are the sub-headlines from around the league:

-Yale Head Coach Tony Reno gets it: you do what you have to do to win, screw “the system.” Thus, he had his offense hand the ball off to Tyler Varga 39 times Saturday and he responded with 236 yards on the ground in the Elis impressive 39-22 win over Colgate. I know another coach or two in this league who could learn from that performance. Varga was the best individual performer in the league this weekend.

-Dartmouth Head Coach Buddy Teevens also made the right decision, (one I’ve called for as well), to essentially make Dalyn Williams his full time starter. Williams responded with a stellar game through the air and on the ground in the Big Green’s 30-23 win at Butler. I’m not sure what to make of Butler’s late comeback, but I like Dartmouth’s chances even more than I did before the season.

-Penn looked a little better than I expected them to in  27-21 win over Lafayette. QB Billy Ragone passed especially well, but I will tell you this: the Quakers really do miss Lyle Marsh after looking bad on the ground most of the night.

-Princeton’s Head Coach Bob Surace is all about deception all of the time. And that’s on and off the field. After not listing RB DiAndre Atwater on the two deep and not mentioning his name all off season, (except when I asked him about it), Surace used Atwater early and often and he responded with 111 yards on the ground and nifty TD. But the Tigers are hurting after blowing a 22-3 halftime lead in a 29-28 loss to Lehigh. Mountain Hawk QB Brian Bialkowski was brilliant. He not only passed well, I was really impressed with his ability to avoid sacks. On the other side of the ball, I thought Princeton’s Quinn Epperly was clearly the more effective QB of the Epperly-Connor Michelsen platoon and Surace should adjust accordingly.

-Cornell’s Jeff Mathews didn’t have the kind of stats you’d expect in Cornell’s 45-10 thrashing of Bucknell. That’s because the Big Red defense returned two fumbles for TD’s and shut down the Bison passing game. Cornell still gave up a lot of yards on the ground though, and that’s very bad news for a team that has to take on Tyler Varga and the Elis at the Yale Bowl this coming Saturday. Look for Varga to get another 35+ carries.

Here are my Ivy Power Rankings after Week One:

1) Brown

2) Harvard

3) Dartmouth

4) Penn

5) Yale 

6) Cornell

7) Princeton

8) Columbia