Football Analysis: After promising first drive, injuries impede progress

If there were a theme for the season that the football team is currently slogging through, it could be summed up by a single word: injuries. From senior tri-captain and inside linebacker Steve Cody’s season-ending leg fracture in the first game of the year to the upper-body injury to junior quarterback Tommy Wornham that took him out of Saturday’s matchup against Brown, the Tigers have suffered setback after setback in their personnel department this season.

It is no wonder, then, that Princeton (1-4 overall, 0-2 Ivy League) was unable to execute its game plan as crisply as it would have liked in this weekend’s 17-13 loss against Brown (3-2, 2-0). As they stand, the Tigers are a patchwork team, with offensive and defensive lines cobbled together from whatever players are healthy and fit, regardless of how much time the athletes have actually had to play together as a unit.

When capable but inexperienced players are put on the field, gameplay and execution are sure to be streaky. This was the case on both sides of the ball this weekend, as Princeton and Brown were forced to cope with the loss of their starting quarterbacks. Unlike the Tigers, however, the Bears enjoyed some sense of continuity throughout the game — quarterback Kyle Newhall-Caballero was known to be injured before Saturday, while Wornham went out midway through the first quarter.

During the first few drives of the game, Wornham looked as if he were leading the offense with more poise and confidence than ever before. He led a methodical 12-play, 69-yard scoring drive to open the game, completing four of five passes and rushing one yard to earn a touchdown.

A few plays later, however, Wornham was hit hard on an intercepted pass and had to leave the field. After Wornham was confirmed out for the remainder of the game, senior quarterback Andrew Dixon was thrust into the driver’s seat and given control of the team’s offense. Dixon struggled with his consistency, completing only 39 percent of his passes and throwing one interception.

“[Dixon has] been getting better and better and better, but when you bring in a backup during the game, [it’s difficult because] he just doesn’t get enough [practice] reps during the week,” head coach Bob Surace ’90 said. “You only have a limited amount of snaps to get somebody prepared. In the NFL, the starting quarterback gets 98 percent of the snaps [during practice] — here we probably give [him] 85 percent. Andrew is a smart guy — he comes in and manages the game — [but] it’s just hard to execute when you’re not getting as many reps.”

When Dixon and the rest of the team came out of the locker room to start the second half, it became clear that the squad’s inexperience was a liability that Brown would be ready to exploit. The Tigers did not convert a single third down in the third quarter and had the ball for only seven minutes and 21 seconds in the entire 30-minute half.

“We just didn’t execute as well as we did in the first half,” sophomore linebacker Andrew Starks said. “[There are] no excuses for that.”

Princeton had one final glimmer of hope late in the fourth quarter when, with 31 seconds left in the game, it attempted a trick play from its own 21-yard line to try and drive down the field. The Tigers managed to gain 36 yards from the gimmick, but the clock ran out before the team could try to get off another snap.

“Different teams do different versions of it,” Surace said. “It might [have gone] even longer [than it did]. [The ball is] supposed to go to the guy in front, and he’s supposed to option off the guy on the edge, and if it does that, it might be a long gain. Instead, it just went over the top of his hands, hit the second guy, and we probably ended up losing a big chunk of yards on that.”

Despite the team’s second-half struggles, Surace indicated that he was pleased with the way the Tigers handled themselves in the face of Wornham’s injury and the difficulties that came with it.

“The effort was terrific,” he said. “That’s the effort we need; we are not good enough to not have that type of emotion, effort and energy. But in the big scheme, there are no moral victories — it’s about winning and losing. These guys can be resilient and fight, and you saw how much energy they came out with. We’ll keep plugging away, and we’ll keep getting better. We’ll keep fighting, because [that is] the type of guys we have here.”