Week One Ivy Takeaways

Jack Heneghan


Biggest Result

Dartmouth's 22-21 win over New Hampshire seems most significant because of the play of QB Jack Heneghan. It appears Heneghan was just the emergency starter for the supposed top QB Bruce Dixon. But it may be hard to get Heneghan out of the starting slot now. Also the Dartmouth defense looked better than advertised.

Big Deals

Penn's defense was mostly AWOL in its 49-28 loss to to Lehigh. The Quakers gave up 200+ yards rushing, 300+ yards passing and had no sacks. I can't remember the last time Penn played a game with no sacks. The Quakers started the season slowly last year, so perhaps this game is only a blip.

I've never seen Yale worse than the Elis looked in their 55-13 loss at home to Colgate. The stats were ugly, but watching the game on tape was worse. The Yale D-line looked like blocking dummies all day. It was a stunningly bad performance for Tony Reno's team, and I'm the guy who picked the Bulldogs to come 7th!

Brown's offense got back into normal Phil Estes era mode as it exploded past a 21-0 deficit to beat Bryant 35-27. This game would be a bigger deal if it weren't for the fact that the Bears running attack still wasn't great and Brown is almost always a fast starting team.

Cornell's 24-16 win over Bucknell was mostly impressive thanks to the great performance from sophomore RB Chris Walker who ran for 141 yards in his first start. The Big Red now gets to host a Yale team on its heels.


No Surprises

Harvard whipped the first of its three non-conference whipping boys by dismantling Rhode Island, 51-21. New QB Joe Viviano finally got his first start and he threw for 290 yards, three TD's, and no interceptions.


Princeton beat Lafayette 35-31, in a mostly expected result. But the new Tiger secondary was porous, giving up 350+ yards. On the bright side, RB Joe Rhattigan proved he's ready to be the primary starter as he had 136 yards on 22 carries and three TD's.